Hearing plays a vital role in our daily lives, helping us communicate and function with ease. That’s why it’s important to protect our ears whenever we’re exposed to loud sounds—whether it’s noise or music.
However, protecting our hearing from music differs from protecting it from industrial or construction noise. In noisy environments, certain frequencies are typically reduced more than others to minimize harm. But with music, we want to preserve the integrity of the sound. This means all frequencies (pitches)—low, mid, and high—should be reduced evenly to maintain the full richness and balance of the audio.
When we listen to music via headphones, we should follow the 80/90 Rule.
The 80/90 Rule is simply not exceeding 80% volume for 90 minutes a day when listening to portable music.
Did you know? It is common for musicians to have a slight difference between their ears compared to traditional industrial hearing loss due to the head shadow effect, which is even present in drummers due to the high hat being on one side. The head shadow effect refers to how the head partially blocks sound coming from one side, reducing its intensity on the ear furthest from the source.
There are two factors which affect noise induced hearing loss: 1. Sound level and 2. Duration.
The 3dB Exchange Rate, sometimes called the 3 dB Trading Relationship is trading off the sound level for the duration or exposure time, and vice versa. Here are some examples of the 3 dB Exchange Rate: 85 dBA for 40 hours/week is identical exposure to 88 dBa for 20 hours/week, 91 dBa for 10 hours/week, etc..
By using appropriate noise/music protection you can increase your duration in noise/listening to music. With 3 db of attenuation (reduction) you can be exposed to music 2x as long, with 6 dB of attenuation you can be exposed 4x as long, with 9 dB of attenuation you can be exposed 8 x as long, with 12 dB of attenuation you can be exposed 16x as long and with 15 dB of attenuation you can be exposed 32 x as long before damage to your hearing will occur. For this reason, we strongly encourage the use of ER-15 Musician Plugs. These plugs will attenuate all frequencies by 15dB using a special filter (hence their name).
There are 3 key ways to prevent hearing loss for musicians:
Listen in moderation
Use Hearing Protection
Reduce environmental noise
Some environmental techniques to reduce noise exposure are:
Elevate speaker amplifiers off the floor. If you leave them on the floor, the low frequencies get lost to the floorboards, and we compensate by turning up the volume. Even putting them on ½ cm legs make quite a difference. This is the common theme for all 4 ways to reduce noise exposure.
Strings should have at least two meters of unobstructed space above them for similar reasons. There is a high frequency loss with overhangs which are too low.
There should be 2 meters of unobstructed floor space in front of the orchestra, again due to loss of low frequencies.
Treble brass instruments should be on risers due to loss of high frequencies.
This information has been taken from Musicians and the Prevention of Hearing Loss presented to the Audiology Pacific Group by Marshall Chasin.