July 2, 2012 Hearing protection
Ears are important for your work.
Working in the music industry means ears and hearing are especially important, without good hearing it will be impossible to do your job as a musician, producer, instrument tech or engineer. As such it is vital that you protect your most sensitive assets. I am sure almost everyone is aware of that ringing in the ears after a night out in a club or at a gig. Well the bad news is that means you have likely exceeded the safe level vs time exposure period for your hearing. Do not panic, it does not necessarily mean instant and or permanent damage has been done. (although with very high sound pressure levels, such as 135dB-140dB it certainly can be.) However ringing is your ears way of objecting to the level and exposure time. These signals must not be ignored and the response is to use ear plugs, the basic means of hearing protection in noisy environments. I am sure all of us are familiar with the foam roll up type ear plugs and these do offer a good level of hearing protection. This protection will attenuate sound between 125Hz and 8kHz (and above) by approx 20-40dB. The lower the frequency the lower the attenuation because the sound waves are very long at low frequencies and cannot effectively be blocked by a small 2cm foam plug. (i.e. at 125Hz the wavelength of a sound is 2.7 meters).
hearing protection | tagged hearing protection, protect your ears