A Drop Of The Loud Stuff

With spiralling regularity, our ears are being assailed with warnings that playing or listening to music at high volume or at close proximity can permanently damage our hearing. Pete Townshend, a notable generator of loud noise himself, has warned iPod fans they may suffer hearing loss if they pump up the volume too much and too often. “Hearing loss is a terrible thing because it cannot be repaired”, he warns. “If you use an iPod or anything like it, or your child uses one, you may be OK. But my intuition tells me there is terrible trouble ahead.”

Brett Anderson has also admitted experiencing hearing problems after a night on the loud stuff. “Sometimes my ears ring dull and low. I hear something that sounds like a cross between the hum of a Hammond organ and the purr of a well-tuned luxury car. Other times the noise is a faint, high squeal that alternately surges and recedes like surf. Most often, my head hisses like the inside of a seashell,” is how he describes it.
The list goes on. Soul Asylum’s Dave Pirner has suffered from tinnitis, as did Thin Lizzy’s Philip Lynott. Benno Nelson from National Dynamite has admitted that sometimes the noise gets so bad, he’ll think to himself, “‘Could this drive me crazy? Will the ringing ever stop? It fucking sucks.”
A recent study carried out by researchers in Belgium showed that just one hour listening to an mp3 player can damage hearing and an hour listening to rock music at more than 50% volume risks temporary changes in hearing sensitivity. Peter M Rabinowitz, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine in the USA, also argues that using iPods at too loud a volume can be dangerous. “Earphones inserted into the ear canal produce sound levels which can exceed 120 decibels, a similar level to a jet leaving the runway,” he claims. He also reckons that about 16% of people aged between 16 and 69 in the USA have damaged hearing and adds, “use of personal music players is associated with worse hearing function in adolescents and young adults”.
So what advice is available to lovers of loud music in Ireland? Hot Press spoke to Paul Hussey, managing director of Hearing Healthcare Ireland Ltd, and he agrees with the concern expressed by the individual musicians and in the afore-mentioned studies. “It’s not just the volume itself that causes the problem, but there’s the repetition factor. It’s also important to have sufficient interval times between exposures to loud music. There can be a substantial difference to the risk of hearing loss if you listen to loud rock music once every six months compared to, say, two or three time a week or several times a day. This is an issue that not only affects fans but the musicians themselves. We have musicians coming in to us who are concerned about the fact that they are subjecting their hearing to loud volume on a very regular basis. It might be their own sound or it might be another member of the band beside them on stage. There’s also the fact that the sound source for on-stage musicians is often very close to them,” he argues.
The proximity of loud sounds is equally problematic for the personal stereo user using earphones, but the Hearing Healthcare man suggests that there are some quality brands on the market that may reduce the risk of hearing loss, offering as an example of poor-quality earphones the guy on the DART whose music is audible to his fellow travellers from ten rows back. “There’s no doubt that people are these days likely to be exposing their hearing to an increased volume of music over prolonged periods of time and on a regular basis. There are genuine reasons for serious concern and who knows what problems might lie in store maybe ten years or so down the line?” he cautions.
While Hussey concedes that volume can be an essential part of the fan’s listening experience, he also agrees with Townshend’s argument that hearing loss can’t be repaired, although he points out that while the ears might be ringing after a hectic night in the club dancing close to very loud speakers, this can disappear fairly quickly. It’s the repeated exposure to loud noise that causes the problem. Unfortunately, the risk of damage is hard to quantify because each person’s use of loud music will vary and their interval recovery time will also vary. So it seems it’s impossible to give any kind of hard-and-fast guidelines as to how often any individual might safely expose their hearing to a high level of volume, other than to advise caution and to give the ears time to recover after being exposed to loud noise.
But if all these rumours are true, I have to wonder why aren’t all the living members of heavy rock bands like Led Zeppelin, Motorhead or Metallica, who subjected themselves to loud noise on-stage for decades, not all carrying ear-trumpets. Hussey dismisses my grasping at straws. “More than likely they are suffering from some hearing loss. They just don’t want to admit it,” he reckons.

Hearing Healthcare will be exhibiting at the Hot Press Music Show, which takes place in the RDS, Dublin on October 2 and 3.