How Loud Should Your Headphones Be?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2018-05-06
·
850 words · ~4 min read
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thanks for watching techwiki click the subscribe button then enable
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notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos you
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probably know how satisfying it feels to crank up the volume and get lost in your
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favorite sounds whether you're a bass head a metal fan or just like hearing my
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voice overwhelm your consciousness when you watch techwiki and you've probably
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also heard the dire warnings about what loud noises can do to your hearing but
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how loud is too loud i mean obviously nobody's going to listen to their
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headphones so loudly that it causes physical pain
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but could the volume be high enough to injure you without you even knowing it
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so it turns out that long-term exposure to sounds above 85 decibels is enough to
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put you at risk for permanent hearing damage roughly as loud as the blender
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you're using to make your avocado drink or whatever you kids are
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eating these days but okay how does this translate to headphones well because
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headphones have different sensitivities or decibels per volt it's extremely
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difficult to show an accurate reading on your phone or computer screen one way to
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get a rough idea is to use a pad like this to seal the ear cup against a
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quality decibel meter but most people don't own one of those and of course
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that still doesn't address another fundamental problem whether you're
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gaming kicking back to some tunes or watching latin soaps what you're
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listening to is constantly changing in volume and as you keep listening your
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ears naturally adjust to the sound levels meaning it's easy to keep turning
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up the dial the longer your listening session gets so what can you do well one
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of the best things is to use an equalizer you see the reason many people
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turn their volume up to unhealthy levels is because there's some detail in the
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music that they're struggling to hear maybe it's weak bass or vocals that are
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getting drowned out by other instruments equalizers allow you to overcome this by
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boosting only certain frequencies instead of turning up the volume across
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the audible spectrum this allows you to hear the details you want to hear
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without pummeling your eardrums and the best part is that equalizer
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functionality is available for free in many devices and software products
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another tip if you can try to get music from a better source your collection of
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mp3s from the early to mid 2000s were probably encoded at a low bit rate while
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higher quality files above 128 kilobits per second will allow you to hear subtle
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details without putting your ears at risk another option is to consider
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buying a pair of headphones conducive to the audio experience that you want
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different headphones have different frequency responses which you can learn
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more about up here simply put however some headphones
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emphasize bass some mid-range and some
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treble by doing some research and picking up a model that has a sound
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signature that you like you won't find yourself reaching for the volume knob as
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much to boost frequencies you'd have a hard time hearing on a different pair of
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headphones and while you're at it consider something that will shut out
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external noise to some degree in-ear monitors are a good choice for this and
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headphones with active noise cancellation are even better but you
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just have to have the money in the bank to actually be able to afford them but
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regardless of what solution you do decide to go with remember that your
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hearing is already deteriorating with age so why speed it up i know none of
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you want to be relying on hearing aids before you're even eligible for the old
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