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Originally posted by Raphie better solution?!? self control/dicipline?!?

The problem is there isn't any real way to quantify hearing damage until its too late as far as I know. I *BELIEVE* that I am not listening loud enough to damage my ears. I use the "can you hear the headphones when they are off your head" and "can you hear things outside of your headphones". Both of those are relative to my hearing though.

I bought earplugs recently to start protecting my ears at concerts, you never realize how uncomfortably loud things are until you're wearing earbuds and you take them out to hear the difference in the middle of the show. So bad for your ears!

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Damaged the hearing in my left ear about 10 years ago roughly when i DJ'd at a party with the loudest shittiest monitor speaker ever, have tinnitus in my left ear as a result and also slightly in my right

And its pretty much for life now unless science comes up with a cure

As raphie and cryo have said - take regular breaks from mixing and also mix at lower volumes - not only does it help your ears but i believe for me it helped my mixing an awful lot too

And be really careful with headphones too

p.s. for those who go clubbing id recommend some etymotic earplugs - they dull the music a little at first but your brain soon adjusts to that and they really reduce the ringing effect after nightclubs, especially ones with crappy soundsystems

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I've been really careful over the years - even though a lot of my home producing has been on headphones, I do it at really low volumes, nearly to the point I'm straining to hear.

The only time I monitor loud is on a fully calibrated system using monitor speakers.

And here's the key" a fully calibrated system (especially to -18dbfs) means your ears will hurt (I mean that literally) when you redline.

It teaches you not to clip and secondly not to produce too loud. Some speakers are worse than others; gene's and Adam's give me fatigue way sooner than other brands.

The only times I've come close to damaging my ears were drunken/wasted DJ gigs or going to clubs where they kept jacking it up too much. I remember one night in London, it was so fucking loud, I was down to about 30% hearing for the next two days. It gave me an insight what it must be like to be deaf. No fun. I basically avoided all noise for a week, doing things like immersing myself in water and not having any music or TV on. It helped my hearing sensitivity come back and thankfully I have no lasting hearing issues.

It was kinda scary when i first started working in studios; every engineer over 40 couldn't hear anything above 15k (sometime as low as 12k) and all the 1st engineers had really bad tinitus, like Van Gough, cut your ear off bad.

Headphone Monitor low, watch your levels on speakers and calibrate so you can never go there.

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Originally posted by Richard Butler I damaged my left ear a while back. Again headphones but in my case it happened in an instant as I was wearing them when turning on my system and leaning on a hardware synth keyboard and as everything booted up at once including my interface there was a momentary horrendous screech into my left phone shell. Don't think the ear will recover.

That's terrible. Hope you can at least tolerate the effects.

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quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN I basically avoided all noise for a week, doing things like immersing myself in water and not having any music or TV on. It helped my hearing sensitivity come back and thankfully I have no lasting hearing issues.

Yeah I need some intensive strategies like those. Go camping for a week in an remote area with no noise or something.

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Originally posted by Trancelover03591 Yeah I need some intensive strategies like those. Go camping for a week in an remote area with no noise or something.

Seriously, I think I made the difference between me having lasting hearing damage and not. I just switched off everything in the house that makes background noise, even shit like the DVR or TV which still make noise in standby mode. Every day I took like a hour long bath and submerged my head for most of the time. Not having to filter out all that background noise really makes a difference - It's really crazy when you actually realize how much ambient noise there is at any given time.

I pretty much damaged my cueing ear because high db levels coming from my old sony mdvr silver headphones. I thought I wasn't hearing it loud enough when I was mixing back when i was 17. Worst dj headphones ever!

I produced on loud Sony MDR-V700s for a while when I was younger and pretty sure I fucked my hearing a bit doing that. Looking back it was SO loud

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Originally posted by PaULiN0 I pretty much damaged my cueing ear because high db levels coming from my old sony mdvr silver headphones. I thought I wasn't hearing it loud enough when I was mixing back when i was 17. Worst dj headphones ever!

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Originally posted by Evolve140 I produced on loud Sony MDR-V700s for a while when I was younger and pretty sure I fucked my hearing a bit doing that. Looking back it was SO loud

Too bad about that guys. Hope you can find a ways to manage it.

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So, I essentially have not improved or worsened from the description I gave in 1 1/2 years... until this past week.

As far as I can tell the ringing in my right ear when I hear mid-high pitches seems to have gone away or at least improved significantly, suddenly. (My very mild tinnitus seems to have slightly improved as well but I probably haven't been in a quite enough environment to really analyze that well.)

The only thing I can really attribute it to is that I went to a music festival on Friday night and used downbeats. I have never worn them before and pushed them in pretty hard. Don't know if that somehow did something to my inner ear and made things better but other than that I don't really know why. Cautiously optimistic but expecting it to come back.

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quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN The only times I've come close to damaging my ears were drunken/wasted DJ gigs

I've caught myself kind of daydreaming (at night don't know if there is another term) like nothing is going on leaning forward on my desk when my monitors are blasting on either side of me when I've had a good amout of drink.

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