Hi there,
I'm rather confused as to what are the recommended long-term listening levels (for both headphones and speakers). Most articles mention 85dB as long-term safe level (8 hours a day), however this value is pretty vague.
85dB continously (so 8hrs/day listening to square wave is fine )? At which frequency? Are lows/mids/highs most damaging element?
I find most comfortable volume level to be 90dB peak (about 65-68dB average), but don't want to risk my hearing so it'd be useful to know.

While experimenting with headphone driver efficiency, I played 1k sine at 88dB (=1mW | 0.5VRMS @ 1mA * 2) for about 30 seconds. And my ears took 2-3 hours to fully recover from that.


BTW, huge apology to all of you (especially fraifikmushi) for my recent freak out in mobile section. I was on edge that week, well never been so tense recently when I posted the question. Hope it's OK now

 

Good question i have been wondering about this too. To my knowledge 85db represents where the hearing is most liniar so I would asume that if you want to do any tests at this level it should be with white or pink noise spread across the frequency spectrum. Focusing 85db energy in to one tone might be way too much. Maybe the idea is any thing below 85db is scienticaly safe for short periods as a health and safety bench mark ??? Which may not translate well to real life

 

Short periods? Actually no, all the articles I read listed 85dB as safe for 8 hours a day, 88dB for 4 hours and 91dB for 2 hours.

Source: http://www.blameysaunders.com.au/sound-advice/safe-noise-levels

Source: http://www.dangerousdecibels.org/education/information-center/noise-induced-hearing-loss/

Source: http://www.noisehelp.com/noise-dose.html

Still no-one in these articles mention which frequency range is the most dangerous, and/or what type of noise should be avoided above 85dB

 

Seriously, I had to look up what you are talking about so I think no harm done

On topic:

All I can say is that I cannot work with elevated levels for too long - ear fatigue will set in pretty early for me.
So as a general rule I tend to work with the music to low. E.g. I often have to turn off the fan I use in my studio during the summer because I couldn't hear all the nuances if I didn't.
So trust your ears and be considerate about your body. You know, like Ice-Cube said

p.s.: that test of yours, listening to a sine at xx hz with zz db (which kind of db? dba? dbfs? they are all different and your data is useless without the correct scale) for yy s, I think that is no way to a reliable result.
In general, putting a number on health and safety can never be more than a rule of thumb. Your ears may be more sensitive than mines so what doesn't harm me will harm you.
Trust yourself, and more importantly: listen to your self.
Plus, the absolute peak level is not the relevant measurement for your question. You cannot neglect factors like loudness etc in that context.

 

I tend to set listening volume to match volume of a human talking at 1 metre (65dB). That's considered quite low to my friends and they often ask me to turn up the volume .
However with volume set too low, the transients tend to fade away and the sparkle is not there. That's when it's time to turn it up, but usually just a bit. As I said earlier, 90dB is often peak volume with happens like once in an hour (piatti/cymbal hit) and lasts for only couple of miliseconds.
Most of the time it's way below 80dB

 

For me is composition and arrangement at low-medium volume and mixing at low-medium and short bursts of high volume. Always (on the clock) 10 minutes break after 50 minutes of listening, regardless the volume.

 

I always keep it around 70db and there and about that 85db for short bursts when mixing. The last bunch of years or so and have noticed that I am very sensitive to loud noise in public such as sirens or public announcement speakers, and this week the cacophonous roar of the NYC subway system which I have need to frequent on our vacation. I have tested my hearing and am on par for my age at approx 16,500k. I need to hold my hands over my ears when the loudness begins or else it hurts. My 56 year old ears need protecting lest my 70 and beyond wish to enjoy the beauty.

 

Hi everyone,

well the most tenderest/sensitive frequency range lies between 1 and 5kHz, its an evolutionary thing, the human hearing is designed for the human voice. So this is what what i would suggest as "dangerous".
But this is a question of loudness and as fraifikmushi wrote you cant put the subjective loudness in the context of an objective dBSPL or dBA measurement.
This is a difficult topic especially for livesound.

This 85dB are a reference for permanent noise pollution of machines at work, audio peaks like yours at 90 dB are harmless.
In my education as live sound engineer my teachers said peaks till 99 dB cause no damage for your hearing.

So you and your hearing are definitely safe when I read your posts.

Hope this helps a little bit.

Cheers

 

85 dB at listening position is mentioned in the most papers. But, its commonly used for "bigger rooms". Mixing on nearfields at 1.2m at 85 dB is way to loud. At least for me. As I'm doing post, in my smaller room I had 79dB at 1.2 meters. It felt comfortable.
I was lucky to move to a room with Dolby dimensions and still think 85dB is way to loud (midfield at 3 meters..)

I think the linearity of the ear doesn't mean a bone. People listen on toilet speakers, they don't care about 2 db at 20kHz.
Just get a nice level comfortable to you. And stick to it. Once in a while push the boxes to the max to check if the mix is collapsing. Thats it.

 

I`d say 65-70dB is normal if you have s good amp with good speakers.

The problem is that if You are performing live, this is waay to low.
I spent countless hours in front of a full blown plexi, and I can still hear, so I`d say that the "safe" limit is much higher than 85dB.

Anyway, the most comfortable levels to listen for details is around 65-70dB for me, but I believe this is very subjective.
The quality of your gear plays a big role here... the crappyer the gear the louder you are prone to push it...

 

Safe listening levels are comfortable listening levels. Yes, it's almost that simple.

Yes, there's also the Fletcher-Munson curve and the ears different frequency response at different dBSPL.
Yes, there's also "the revised standard (by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, SMPTE) of 83dBSPL (as measured on a full‑bandwidth SPL meter with C‑weighting and slow averaging from a ‑20dBFS RMS pink noise source)".

 

spinal tap, these go to 11.. *yes*

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4xgx4k83zzc[/media]

lol

 

eh, what did you say?