Are musicians at more risk of a hearing problem?
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All musicians are at risk of a hearing problem if they continue to be exposed to music noise. Exposure to loud sounds is one of the main reasons for hearing loss in adults.
It is advisable to protect your hearing before too much damage has been done to the hearing nerve.
Here is Doug Feld's account of what's it's like to suddenly lose his hearing while being an avid guitarist, You can read it here.
How do singers with hearing loss judge how loud they are in relationship to the piano and the venue?
There are some answers here.
In this Finnish study an increasing number of classical musicians suffer from hearing loss.
Daily noise exposure limit
In the European Union, the EU directive sets a daily noise exposure limit value of 87 dB in the workplace. If noise levels cannot be adequately reduced, hearing protection must be available and regular hearing tests must be conducted to safeguard the employees’ hearing health.
Few use hearing protection.
Music Induced Hearing Loss Is Becoming A Big Problem!
A stressed ear
A stressed ear cannot properly listen very well. This means impairing your judgment and hurting your ear. Ear is sensitive to certain frequencies, such as 20Hz to 20000Hz which are the only frequencies, our ears can listen. Again, ear is very nonlinear, it does not evenly hear it all. Instead, it is more sensitive to what is called “voice frequencies” which is around 300 Hz to 3000Hz. This is the bandwidth of the telephone also.
High fidelity mix
However in the high fidelity mix, you are expected to listen very well 50 Hz to around 15, 000Hz. Of course, the lowest frequencies (~50Hz) are the bass while the uppermost ( 15,000Hz) are treble, tweeter sound. These extremes in the hi-fi frequency range are the most sensitive when our ears are stressed. For example, if the ear is very tired, it cannot listen properly to the hi-fi frequencies.
Or even if you are always abusing your ear , like listening to a louder volume always, you will lose your high frequency reception earlier than what it is normal. It is why, old people cannot properly listen high frequencies because their ear cells are already old or damaged.
So how can you
protect your ears?
