Does bass damage hearing? Edit: Perhaps I have found the answer.

[Ultima]

Originally posted by: Harvey

Originally posted by: Kinger
My signature states my opinion.

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"If it's too loud, you're too old!"

You're a moron. Can you hear me, now?
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Yr... a m..r..n. Ca.. yo hr.. me, na..?

harvey if you know so much about this can you give me a scientific explanation or at least go into some detail about what I'm asking? There doesn't seem to be much information on this and a common (mis)conception is that bass doesn't damage your ears (as much). Up to now I sort of agree with that, especially after seeing that bass is 30dB weaker on the dBA scale.

 

[Ultima]

Originally posted by: BD2003
Although it probably causes enough damage by itself, if I hear your bass THAT loud, I'm going to cause some damage to you on the spot.

hehehe. I don't have a sub or even a car yet but I'm an SQ guy If I did get a sub (when I get a car), I'd likely set the gain so that you could never play the bass louder than say 105dB at max volume with max everything (to protect both the sub from distortion and my ears from damage).

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: Ultima
harvey if you know so much about this can you give me a scientific explanation or at least go into some detail about what I'm asking? There doesn't seem to be much information on this and a common (mis)conception is that bass doesn't damage your ears (as much). Up to now I sort of agree with that, especially after seeing that bass is 30dB weaker on the dBA scale.

Here's some info:

From the The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD).

What are the effects of NIHL?

The effect from impulse sound can be instantaneous and can result in an immediate hearing loss that may be permanent. The structures of the inner ear may be severely damaged. This kind of hearing loss may be accompanied by tinnitus, an experience of sound like ringing, buzzing or roaring in the ears or head, which may subside over time. Hearing loss and tinnitus may be experienced in one or both ears, and tinnitus may continue constantly or intermittently throughout a lifetime.

From Familydoctor.org

What are the effects of noise?

Aging, some drugs, head injuries and too much noise can all cause lasting damage to hearing. This handout discusses the most common type of permanent hearing loss--the loss that results from too much noise.

Long exposure to noise can damage the soft tissue of the inner ear. Cells and nerves in the inner ear are destroyed by continuous or repeated exposure to loud sounds. If enough cells and nerves are destroyed, hearing is permanently damaged.

Whether noise harms your hearing depends on the loudness, the pitch and the length of time you are exposed to the noise. The loudness of a sound--measured in decibels (dB)--and the length of exposure are related; the louder the sound, the shorter the exposure can be before damage occurs. For example, 8 hours of exposure to 85-dB noise on a daily basis can begin to damage a person's ears over time. Using power tools (at about 100 dB), listening to stereo headsets (at about 110 dB), attending a rock concert (at about l20 dB) or hearing a gunshot (at 140 to 170 dB) may damage the hearing of some people after only a few times.

Can you hear me, now?

 

[Meltz]

A few things:

1. Yes your hearing can deteriorate from prolonged exposure to high levels of low frequency (i.e. bass) sound. Generally, this deterioration will occur more slowly than it it were caused by exposure to high freqency sounds, but it will happen. Moreover, the degredation in hearing will occur for both your high frequency hearing and low frequecny hearing. Although it doesn't sound intuitive, the reason is that when sound is introduced into the cochlea (inner ear) it sets up a travelling wave along the basilar membrane that goes from the base of the cochlea to the apex. Because frequency is essentially mapped out on the basillar membrane from high frequencies in the base to low frequencies, high intensity low frequency sounds will affect the high freq. hearing part of the ear since the travelling wave will pass throught the high freq. location.

2. Chickendinner and billgates300: once you start getting this kind of hearing loss, getting a bigger amp will only do so much. Sound induced hearing loss essentially involves damaging or killing the hair cells in the inner ear which transduce the vibrations into neural signals. If you don't have functioning hair signals for a given frequency band, you're not going to hear those frequencies (to a 1st approximation) no matter how much you turn up the gain. This is the reason why the effectiveness of hearings aids are limited for a large number of people.

3. Ultima: the A-weighting and C-weighting takes into account the fact that the human ear is more sensitive to some frequencies (i.e. around 1000 Hz) than others (especially lower frequencies) at different sound levels. A-weighting was based on human hearing at moderate sound levels and C-weighting is for higher sound levels.

Hope this helps.

 

[Ultima]

Thanks for the answers. So I guess even if the bass is 30db lower on the A scale its not really if I'm listening to it loud cause the ear responds more like on the C scale? Or something like that..

I guess when I get a sub I'll get one of those sound meters (which I'll get anyway to tune the system) and set the gain to 100dB at max volume, so I'm usually listening at 70 - 80dB ( which shouldn't be dangerous).