Herb, the name for the effect is the psychoacoustic perception of loudness, which was alluded to earlier in Richard and my responses. The author of the mix article misses out on the cross-modal psychophysical response. He address equal loudness contours only - which is also critical to understanding perceptual differences in sound based on it's level - but it's not the only hearing mechanism.

It's not just rock music, either, but rock music was the first that was amplified to stadiums where the long distances between stage and farthest seating represented huge amounts of attenuation through the air. In order to get comfortable listening levels at the farthest seats, the stage-oriented playback had to be ridiculously loud.

Now it is somewhat of a social / cultural expectation for all popular music forms to be cranked up, including at restaurants and bars - where it isn't being performed live, but fed over the PA system. There's a whole LinkedIn discussion group on Restaurant Noise that collects information and enters discussion on this topic.

The situation is not likely to change soon in any type of venue. So, wear hearing protection that clearly works for you both to obviously reduce volumes, as well as allows clarity of music enjoyment/discernment.

Also, for the record, hearing damage risk involves a coupling of the level of the sound as well as the duration of exposure. It is a dosage type of risk criteria, not just level-specific.

I recommend using NIOSH's exposure guidelines as the most conservative risk criteria guidelines. http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/noise/chart-lookatnoise.html
NIOSH uses the "85/3" guidelines, where exposure is normalized to an 8 hour day, with 85 dBA exposure for 8 hours in a day being safe.
Every 3 dBA increase from there, cuts the safe exposure time in half.

Notes brings up a very important distinction about weighting - these guidelines are for A-weighted exposures. C-weighting results in much higher reported values. Also, don't trust any application on your phone to represent either very accurately - the sensitivity to low frequency sound on any phone microphone is intentionally low.

For the record, I am on both the American National Standards Institute/Acoustical Society of America and Canadian Standards Association committees for hearing protection standards development. I deal with this topic daily. It's pretty difficult for me not to turn this into a commercial for my company's products.

In my opinion, NIOSH is the most non-biased authoritative resource on this topic as they are not tied to the department of labor, as is OSHA. NIOSH's guidelines are more conservative in nature than OSHA.

Not everyone can afford to carry around an SPL meter with them, nor is this necessarily convenient! So, what can you do that is reasonable? If you find that you have to use a raised voice for face to face communication - you are likely in a noise environment that could result in noise-induced hearing loss and to reduce your risk, you should be wearing some type of hearing protection. Make it convenient for you to use hearing protection - keep some in your gig bag, in your car, in your backpack or purse, at home in the shop, etc. Make sure you follow the manufacturer's fitting instructions precisely. Far too many people do not use generic fit hearing protectors properly. All of them require deep insertion into the ear canal.

-Scott

Last edited by rockstar_not; 01/22/14 12:42 PM.
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