The best system upgrade I ever did was to buy some good quality hearing aids! Just saying.
Despite my tinnitus I have literally never thought about this and have zero interest in using meters etc. to measure it. The only question for me is whether I can hear what I want to hear. I listen to music as an active thing i.e. as an activity largely to the exclusion of other things just as if I were watching a film in the cinema or reading a book. It generally gets 100% of my attention. How loud it goes to get that will vary.
Late at night when the family might be asleep then it’s lower than it might be earlier in the evening. It’s also lower because the ambient noise from family, traffic etc. is also lower. It then varies with the recording. Brilliant music but from a different era (Phil Spector springs to mind) may have very distorted vocals which no system can rescue. I’’ve zero interest in it being exceptionally loud unless we’re hosting a party and even then nowadays most of our guests enjoy conversation ahead of dancing. Similarly, once I have my head around the lyrics and music within an album I’m more willing to have it on all the way through at a lower volume. I’m currently playing the new albums from Hurray for the Riff Raff and Ruth Theodore at lower violumes then they were being played a month ago simply because I now know both inside out and can enjoy them when I am flat on my back doing physio. just as much as if I were sat dead centre and giving them my full attention.
All this of course before you get into the thorny matter of the levels changing from album to album and sometimes track to track. Albums are mastered to completely different levels and switching between local streams, Obuz, Tidal and radio only emphasises this further.
Bearing all this in mind it is absolutely beyond me how anyone can credibly say I listen at 9 o’clock or ay 80db as though that is what they’re doing all the time. Surely not?
My wife thinks anyone over 50 is too loud. Usually me.
Unfortunately this is also 100% true for me as well.
I am as convinced, as far as I can be, that I am now hearing my system as well as I was before age began taking its’ toll on my hearing.
I am frustrated by the number of people here who appear to take a pride in their hearing not being what it once was.
Spending large amounts of money on equipment seems silly to me when you know you can’t hear it properly. It also impacts other areas of your life, often when you don’t realise it until you do something about it.
The forum search tool is your friend, as they say… this is a much discussed subject, with quite a few threads, e.g:
(These are all links that should open the relevant thread)
Hearing AIDS were a revelation and easily the best upgrade in years. I have a music setting put in by my Audiologist which helps SQ even more.
Thanks @Innocent_Bystander. As you advise, there are many threads about this. People don’t use the search option, myself included sometime. Again thanks for your efforts.
Yes I think I will have to get some, I will have to wait while the swelling goes down first as some of my hearing may come back over time.
Guilty as charged, soon as I sent the post out I realised and did a search. However I found intetesting that some people thought hearing aids were a help so I am definately going to explore this further.
This quite normal for a marriage.
Quiet (!) normal.
Not sure how factual this is but I downloaded a DB app to my phone earlier today, it provides a sound chart and states no more than 2 hours exposure to 85DB of noise. I am not sure at what level I listen to at this stage but in terms of listening time, 2 hours + would not be unusual on a Sunday!
Until a couple of months ago I usually had the volume level on the NAC 552 set to 9.30pm. Then the (b)light of my life finally persuaded me to get my hearing checked, and I now have some rather expensive hearing aids. Now the volume is set at 9.00pm or a little less. Should have got the aids some time ago.
Alas my B&W on-ear headphones are not really compatible with the hearing aids, so I’m going to have to go out and find a local dealer with some good quality over-ear (wired) phones to replace them. I use the headphones if I want to listen when “the boss” has gone to bed before me!
Focal Utopia. Love them.
Hi
I have contemplated hearing aids but assume music would sound a bit strange ?
How do you find it listening through them and which hearing aids did you purchase.
I assume it takes a while to get used to them.
Only strange because you suddenly can hear the high frequencies more clearly than you have for a while without realising they had become muffled. I found it took a couple of weeks to get used to them, not because of the improved sound, but integrating the source in my ear with the direct sound. Best benefit is not music but tge ability to converse in noisy crowded places. Mine are Phonak Novak Nova, provided by NHS - I am lucky to have an NHS audiology service in my local hospital - and it has a very good reputation.
Out of curiosity I subsequently tried a private audiologist, who recommended an expensive model (Starkey Audibel AI 2400, £5.7k), which I trialled: I didn’t feel it was really any better except marginally in the most noisy environments, otherwise often sounding too shrill, at times leading to me turning it down though I tried not to in order to try to get used to it which was the audiologist’s advice when I went back after the first 3 or 4 weeks. Overall I wasn’t impressed and after 2 months returned it for a full refund (he claimed I was the first person to do that!)
There are a few threads on hearing aids with a lot of interesting and potentially useful information - use the search tool.
I think several posts point out that the dB is a logarithmic scale. This means that 50dB is pretty quiet, 70dB perhaps a conversational level in the room 80dB is getting to a comfortable ‘loud’ 95dB is party loud and over 100dB guaranteed to annoy the neighbours.
So get yourself a free dB meter on your phone and measure what feels comfortable, remembering when we listen to music there are peaks which are quite high which I tend to ignore and focus on the average measure.
Most people in this forum have invested heavily in equipment that produces clear and undistorted sound so in my opinion the dangerous level is perhaps beyond 85dB (although headphones played very loud may be more damaging). I have had to look into this as I have a petulant neighbour who complains if he hears anything at all (our boundary wall is 1.5m thick and acoustically isolated) even a gentle drift of Sandy Denny from an open window results in an angry text message.
Consequently and in the spirit of being a good neighbour I only play very loud (110dB+) when they are out or away. When they are home I can be sure that 75dB will be inaudible to them. The chart below is useful but I do not agree with the 70dB boundary, but then again 64 years of listening to (very) loud music has I am sure blunted my hearing!
Source : Hearing health foundation
As is hearing (which is the reason for the choice of decobel scale).