Sound Advice for All, especially Niels. (Off Topic)

by GC, Tuesday, March 15, 2005, 01:34 (6983 days ago) @ GC

Dear Niels;

Despite your firearms phobia, I agree that we are pretty much on the same page. One suggestion I'll make is instead of creating a mental list of situations where the sound pressure level might be high enough to cause hearing damage consider every situation you encounter individually.

A good way to do this is to sit down with your audio system and an accurate SPL meter. Adjust the volume up on your system until the SPL meter shows you are at the threshhold of the level where you (or you and your doctor) believe hearing damage will begin happening. I use pink noise for this so the level remains constant. Now find a easily created, quantifiable, easily repeated sound that you can use to tell you in the future if you are in an enviroment this loud or louder.

Examples of such a sound are rubbing your thumb and forefinger vigourously together one handswidth away from your outer ear. If I can hear this I assume I'm OK. If I can't I change my distance from the stage (speaker, machine, etc.) to attentuate the volume. This is all so idisyncratic that I'll not list other examples.

Sincerely,
Don Reid

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