Can iPods Cause Tinnitus?

The simple answer is yes, they can.

Listening to music for 4 hours straight without any or very few and short breaks is too wasteful. What makes it worse is the use of "in-ear" earpods/headphones, earphones a.k.a. "apple airpods" and the like, regular headphones with headband. In that order. Speakers are best to use on medium volume setting.

But even then, even with the use of speakers, it's best to limit the amount of time spent listening to music, radio, TV, etc. Take at least 10 minute breaks on regular basis. Every half an hour, take a 10 minute break. When you take a break, don't just unplug the earphones and walk into a room full of noise with people talking loudly, radio on high volume, machines working, etc. Find some nice quite space where you and your coworkers can sit down and relax, get away from the noise to properly give your ears some time to rest.

I don't want to discourage you from listening to music. But you have now all the more reason to take better care of your ears. Don't take them for granted. You only get one pair. If you are working in a loud environment, take care of your ears. Use ear protection. Use muffs or plugs.

I used to listen to music a lot. I made music, and I played music. Music was a big part of my life. I didn't exactly use an iPod because they were not invented at the time. I used Sony Walkman, cassette tapes and then CD and MD discs. I always used Sony! No Apple, never had had one of those. Then I started using a Samsung Galaxy smartphone to listen to music on the go. You know how it is... music is all over the place now... you got iTunes, Spotify, Deezer, etc. That's all nice but it's making people go deaf! And! They get tinnitus.

I have pretty much normal hearing if you look at my audiogram. All up to 20 dB, which is normal. But I did have a 30 dB dip at 6000 Hz on my first audiogram. This was the first audiogram I ever did, I had never had problems with my ears or hearing, ever. Perfectly nice working set of ears, but I damaged them through noise. Mostly by listening to music. I would probably have not done any hearing test at all if I didn't start having problems with the left ear. This is my more damaged ear.

The 30 dB dip was most certainly caused by a technical problem I had with one of my computers where it would sometimes emit a high pitched, intense squeal sound following a software update. I was exposed to that a couple of times, and one of the times, I had my headphones on. That messed me up badly! That was the last straw so to speak. I started having muscle spasms in the left ear after that. That sound was at about 6000 Hz. I know because I have a recording of it. This matches my tinnitus frequency, almost exactly. The tinnitus noise is at about 5900 Hz.

I did a second audiogram 2 months later, and it showed 15 dB at 6000 Hz. It was around that time I started to experience a more intrusive tonal tinnitus. My tinnitus is still mild, but whatever I had lost, my brain has compensated for it by setting me up for this agonizing condition.

Don't trust audiograms much, latest research shows that they can't detect all forms of hearing loss or inner ear damage. So called hidden hearing loss. The brain is capable to compensate for the sensory loss, and that is most likely what gives us tinnitus.

So take care of your ears, avoid loud noises, listen to music on low to medium volume, prefer speakers over headphones. Now that you have tinnitus, I advise you to ditch the headphones. Limit the time you spend listening to music, take regular breaks. Use ear protection when using power tools, or when others are using them in your surrounding.

 

I was thinking maybe 70 dB. I found a formula once that helps you calculate the safe exposure time depending on decibel level. I think that around 70 dB is unsafe for 4 hours. The higher the volume, the shorter the listening time should be.

Relative to what? With all these portable music devices, it's not clear how loud the music is. Sometimes you have just a volume knob, sometimes you have a small display with small dots that light up to indicate volume setting. Sometimes there is a percent reading. It would be nice if they displayed the actual decibel level, but I know that it's hard to represent the actual loudness in your ear. Of course if you do have some kind of indicator on your device, you should probably not go above the mid point mark.

I don't know... people don't like that when they have healthy ears, and they actively look for ways to disable that annoyance.

This is just one of many such guides on how to disable this annoying feature that is trying to save you from yourself. There is just no end to human stupidity.

So I don't know... this guide was written for Galaxy S5 phone. I have the older S4 version, and I have no way of disabling this feature. So my guess is that Samsung has fallen under the pressure from its many customers to at least offer them an option to disable this feature. It has to be enforced in order to be safe.

 

How loud the sound actually is depends on a lot of different factors. But since a software update released in 2006, you can set a maximum volume on the iPod. You just need the determination to be conservative with maximum setting.



This guy gets it:

@Travie808

 

Yeah, it gets complicated very quickly. Just wishful thinking! What you would need is some kind of microphone in your ear canal. There are those tinnitus detection headphones from Plextek. It's an interesting idea, but not exactly what you need to get a decibel reading. Besides, I think those headphones are a bit too late if they help you only after you start having signs of tinnitus.

What about earphones with a microphone that measures the output and feeds it back to the phone/device wirelessly? That might work. It would have to be very tiny. ACS makes in-ear monitors with mics for ambient noise and it relays this to a handheld device. We could do something like that.

Just throwing out some ideas. It may be complicated, but it is not impossible. Make it a requirement that all headphones have monitoring mics, and require all audio device makers to force a hardwired 85 dB output limit for all compatible devices. This includes virtually all mobile phones which are at the main stage these days when portable music is concerned. So called smart phones deserve to be smart. They are not smart when output volume is concerned.

@GregCA