Comment on How bad is it really to listen to music with headphones? My mother told me if I keep doing that I'd go deaf... Is that fearmongering?

foodandart@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

• DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  If you leave them at a level, where you’re able to hear the outside world around you

  Noise cancelling, you can have it at half-volume and it already covers up all the external noise.

  I think they still don’t know what noise cancelling headphone are, or the fact that noise-cancelling is even a thing, and assume the music must be too loud

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  • adespoton@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Remember: noise cancelling works by playing the inverse waveform to cancel out the external one. That’s still pressure waves in your ear; they’re just no longer registering as sound.

    There have been plenty of studies in this area; to minimize the risk of hearing loss, keep the headphone audio between 60 and 85 dB (remember: it’s a logarithmic scale)

    Anything from 70dB down should be safe; you want to listen to 70-80dB a maximum of 40 hours a week, and 80-85 a maximum of 8 hours a day.

    It doesn’t matter where the sound is coming from; those are just the guidelines for sound waves in your ear canal. Headphones can actually muffle external sounds louder than 85 dB, protecting your hearing.

    Most phones have a setting somewhere to prevent the headphones from emitting sound over 85dB; this is required to be the default by law in the EU.

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