does working with sound sensitizes our ears?

[acetheface954]

louder the better was my motto. but now i find myself wanting to listen to music at lower levels and saying things like, "too loud" and "smh, damn that loudness war" lol. i won't even go to a night club or music festival without earplugs. is all this the result of learning how to make music? a subconscious way of wanting to turn things down?

[bandcoach]

several things come in to play.

We are constantly conditioned in our response to our surroundings, blocking out normal background sounds without realising it, allowing for more urgent out-of-character sounds to come through. It is also how we adjust our sense of smell to what is our normal olfactory environment (go to any other country or environment for an idea of what some consider normal background smells versus what you consider outrageous conditions or vice versa). Our sense of sight adjusts to poor light conditions readily as well as adjusting to brighter lighting conditions

So - protecting your hearing will do you some good now.

But what you exposed yourself to in the past has desensitised your hearing to some extent, probably taking out your responsiveness to very high freqs and very low freqs, the places where your ears work the hardest to know about stuff anyway, as well as damaging your responsiveness to freqs in the generally well heard band of freq.

the only way to know for sure is to find an audiologist who will do a comprehensive test to determine your overall hearing loss due to age and exposure.

Musicians suffer from industrial deafness just as much as others in this regard, as we are fairly ignorant of such issues when we first start to play gigs and make music - we make it loud because we (falsely) think it is better louder....

[acetheface954]

But what you exposed yourself to in the past has desensitised your hearing to some extent, probably taking out your responsiveness to very high freqs and very low freqs, the places where your ears work the hardest to know about stuff anyway, as well as damaging your responsiveness to freqs in the generally well heard band of freq.

hmmm i don't know, coach. my hearing has actually gotten better since i trained myself to listen more to the subtleties versus overly loud mid range frequencies.

[bandcoach]

Your short term loss of sensitivity caused from your earlier exposure to loud sounds (remember those mornings you would wake up with ringing in your ears???) has probably been affected positively but your long-term prognosis is the gradual reduction in sensitivity - age takes us all down with time my friend. there is one guy who only has one ear that works well enough for mixing and mastering, but he still pursues his career as an engineer because he has adjusted his techniques to match his condition, as we all must if we are to survive just making music alone.

I still have severe tinnitus from when I was a much younger man and listening to stuff loudly and having people shout in to my ear at concerts or in quiet places - it is no worse now than when I was 26, but it is still annoying.

There is little medical evidence to suggest that we are able to regenerate our hearing capacity, as most investigators suggest that the loss of hearing at specific freqs is due to the death/cessation of function of the individual cilia (hair) that corresponds to that range of freqs in the organ of corti.

At best we may hear things more clearly in quiet, controlled environments, but not every sound will be heard equally well........

[Tarekith]

I find that I'm the same way about loud sounds being bothersome more now than before. Especially crowded places where it's just random noise, after awhile I just can't stand it and have to find somewhere quiet.

As for our hearing improving with age, I'm on the fence. At my last bio-tech job I had to get a hearing test every year, and despite the fact that we're supposed to lose our hearing as we age, mine tested better year over year ever so slightly. Don't know and can't explain why.

[F4ALLOUT5HELTER]

80db spl is considered the best mixing level. Increasing the volume as your ears fatigue. But quitting before it gets too loud. Low volume mixing is great for checking balance after the initial mix is done.

[Yuno]

I always find myself criticizing a mixer at a live show or at any random place with a PA.

Unfortunately though, I still like loud music.

And I think when you talk about being more sensitive to sound you mean a different "type" of sensitive. Your brain has gotten accustomed to listening for imperfections in the balance of a sound. This doesn't mean you've actual sense has become better. I'll try to make this a example relate-able but if you walked into a room full of really loud infra-sound, you might feel uncomfortable but you wouldn't be able to hear anything despite your more critical sense of hearing since you started producing. You would be able to point out any imbalances in a sound you percieve but you can't point out said imbalances when you dont percieve something.

[Fifth__]

I agree with the top comment, you also have to take into account that when you turn up, you are damaging your ears. The best thing to do is to expose yourself for very short amounts of time, if you have to when you are mixing a track and then turn it back down.. Just so you can tell that the track is clean there is no clip. Playing music at a sensible volume on your monitors and headphones helps in the long run because the hearing a Hi hat or a snare going from the back at the bus from when your at the front is a worrying thing.. Protect your ears.


All the best


Cirrus

[ObiK]

Your ears have muscles, the more you use them the stronger they get. The more you use them the more experience you get which helps you make better judgements when it comes to manipulating the audio. I say yes.

[n-duced]

Vestibular hair cells are stimulated by movement of fluid in the semicircular canals and the utricle and saccule. Firing of vestibular hair cells stimulates the Vestibular portion of the eighth cranial nerve.

Your brain starts to develop a better understanding or refinement of hearing as we begin listening for other things or more subtle things. Its not a muscle issue at all, its a recognition, identification, and construction issue in the brain. Your vestibular hair actually stops growing after about 4 years of age, if I remember correctly from my physiology classes, and begin atrophying when your about 30 years old (although and extremely slow process, you hearing does begin declining technically when your 30). But the brain is the central organizer of information sent to it from the ear. The brain will dissect the information and give it a sort of taxonomy, the better your brain learns to organize sounds and noises, the better it is at manipulating it. But no actually processing of information happens in the ear so refinement in your technique comes from "learning" to listen, rather than just hearing (The ear is nothing more than a transducer, its the brain that once it receives the transduced information makes sense of it). This is why you can hear the same thing one engineer is listening to but never listen to the material the same way.