Ear Protection

[Sam Taylor]

So just a quick question...

We all love to party and most of us go to a club to have a good time. Now, due to the high dB levels at clubs, we all are damaging our ears. Constant ringing = Permant Damage! Personally, I believe I have a slight case of Tinnitus... I have that ringing when I hit the bed at night (on a scale of 1-5, I'd give it a 1.5). Sometimes when I leave a club you can really hear your ears ring! This is bad. Every club I've been to, the DJ always has the volume high... High volume does not equate to good sound. Anyways, do any of you wear ear protection? I do as of now, and will definitly be bringing my plus on the trip (They are molded ones, got them for $50). Sure, you don't hear the music as clear (they cut off the majority of the highs (high hats, symbols, you know the sounds that really **** up your hearing). So, any of you wear ear protection?

 

[alialoggi]

I put a passing Thai girl on my shoulder's so I can use her thighs as ear muffs!


Are you being serious??? Or are you honestly that thick!

 

[hooba booba]

Now I'm not sure whether to vote or not??? What??

 

[Mark aka jack573]

Do the right thing... Always use protection....

 

[Dinky the Enthralled]

It's a well known medical fact.....

..that putting condoms in your ears stops your hearing from getting fcuked !!!!!

:go:

 

[SucreCaramel]

Tinnitus can be very bad, if you have a slight case of it now it can only get worse, it never improves so you're right in taking steps to prevent that from happening.

It has been a few years since I've experienced silence, a thing you seldom appreciate untill it's gone, can be hard trying to sleep with a high ringing sound in your ears..

The easy solution is to avoid clubs, which I usually do since most of the music is rubbish and I like to interact with other people.

 

[TheProgressive]

heard stories (excuse the pun) about Thai girls suffereing from hearing problems after years in the bars etc....you could wear ear plugs but then again you wouldnt hear the music...my advice is live fast... party hard....you never know when its all gonna end. I have to admit tho HOLLYWOOD in Patong is painfully loud but TIGER is loud enough to party and scream instructions and requests at a wanna be tgf.

 

[shadow95340]

While Tinnitus does mean ringing it is clinically a little more the defined than that.
The ringing that you experience on a case by case basis is associated with TTS (Temporary Threshold Shift).
Exposure to high levels of noise will cause temporary damage, but it takes repeat and prolonged exposure to sustain PTS (Permanent ...)
A person who visits a "typical" disco for a few hours a couple of time per months does not, in and of it self, have a high risk of hearing damage.
Based on US occupational exposure limits a worker is allowed to be exposed to "disco" level of noise for about one hour per day, 5 days per week for the duration of a career.
Among the younger age groups the use of headsets has proven to be much more damaging.

You mention that high volumes does not equal good sounds.
That is largely correct, however, if you study the physiological response of the human ear over a frequency range (The Phon Response Contours) you will find that around 100dB the response is nearly linear, where as at lower level the response to lower frequencies is quite poor and to some extend that is true for higher frequencies.

Hearing protectors (insertion) does the opposite. The hardly do squad at the lowest frequencies and do fantastic at the higher.
In turn they make the music sound muffled.

All that said, I would advocate the use of hearing protection for anyone who frequently go to discos and/or live concerts.
In my younger age I did that, but not I largely avoid them all together and for the occasional exposure it is no big deal.

For those interested there are special ear plugs available, which as a whole are not as effective, but they are more linear.
Often referred to as HiFi plugs.

 

[IronMan of Rome]

Custom molded ear-plugs, with replaceable filters:

Etymotic Research, Inc. - Musicians Earplugs

These are for wearing on concerts etc., where you want to listen to the full sound, but do not want to be exposed to such high levels of sound.
The Police motorcycle riders here in Norway use these for hearing protection while riding, and at the same time being able to hear the correct sound from built-in speakers in their helmets for communication.
I have had a set made for me some years ago, very comfortable and works as advertised.
You need to see an Audiologist to have imprints of your ear channels made, to have these produced.
Not cheap, but noticeably better than standard ear-plugs!

 

[Jill Kim]

Had tinitus in one ear since 1984. Up to that point I was pitch perfect and playing classical guitar at concerts. I now need an electronic device to tune it correctly and my playing has never been the same. It makes you more prone to depression as well and, since you lose the higher frequency sounds, you can hear people speak but not understand what they say. The specialist (and Ive seen lots) told me that the 'information' in speech is in the higher frequencies. Knowing that stopped me going crazy.

Once the nerves are damaged then its there forever. Avoid it at all costs.

 

[Elii [ucansuckkit]]

^ Sorry for your loss...

Luckily I can still hear pretty much everything (20hz), I just see that now my ears are a bit more sensitive... Left ear feels a bit soar after listening to loud music. With ear plugs they are good to go.

 

[insect.tech]

how are you supposed to hear when someone talk to you in a nightclub..surely it not be loud enough to get through the ear plug?? be a bit werid if you have to say excuse me and then take them out..yuk

 

[Passion]

It won't be loud and it will sound like crap. Let's go to a loud club and wear ear plugs. 55555

I'm glad my ears survived the Rock decades.

I walked in Lucifers once and had to leave. It was never that loud when I was young. But I truly believe that Thais like noise all day.

 

[BrooklynChk]

These are brilliant ! Sound isn't muffled, really clear across all frequencies.

Most of the guys I DJ with have a pair

 

[Pompal 09.]

Their custom made with filters, u can hear ppl talk to u.

 

[my sign]

If you are thinking about wearing earplugs to a night club your life is officially over and you need to follow the elephants to the place they go to die.

Seriously if it has got to the seforum.xxxe where you need any kind of assitance to enjoy an enjoyable place, it is over. Do you get a chair lift up the stairs? need a mobility scooter on the dance floor?

 

[Smart Guy]

Thats the best example of 'Im going to live forever' advice Id normally expect from adolescent kids that have never been laid and are not going to live very long anyway.

You need an environment where sound levels are actually destroying your hearing and have the temerity to say our lives are over because we don't like it?

 

[WhatFunHeresLisa]

When I was a teen, I worked in the steel mills in my home town of Pittsburgh. The noise level there was very high volume and constant. Mostly I worked in the blast furnace area, unloading ore cars. There was always the background noise of the 5-story high steam engine building nearby, about 20 yards away. It was actually a building/engine, the whole structure serving as sort of an engine block with huge multi-story giant pistons inside it. Then when we unloaded the cars, the sound of the ore dropping into the metal bins was louder than any disco I've ever been to. This was for 40 hours per week. The older men working there all seemed to be hard of hearing.

In little over a year of working there, I suffered a hearing loss. However, it is not generalized, but only at very specific frequencies, so it doesn't affect my ability to hear speech.

Several years of working in rock bands probably didn't help, either. But I don't have any problem with ringing in my ears.

The only time I really notice a problem is when sounds are coming at me from several different sources at once, they all seem to blend together, and sometimes it can make it difficult to discriminate between them. That can make it hard to separate a voice from the other sounds.

Although I didn't find the volume level at most Patong clubs to be a problem, when I went to Patts, the volume level at Insomnia was simply unacceptable. I don't see how anyone could enjoy that. It was unbearable. Since that was the club my regular preferred, I started using ear plugs. Since I would not be able to hear the girl talking over the loud music anyway, it made no difference if I was using the plugs.

With the plugs, I could still hear the music, and feel the bass speakers shaking the building and vibrating my body. That was good enough for me. Why suffer? Seems masochistic, when the volume is so loud it hurts.

Never found the volume in Lucifer's to be a problem, but I did start making a habit of carrying ear plugs with me, in case I need them.

 

[fgfdgfdgfdg]

Well don't fcuking go there then.

If you need to have some of the experience altered for you as you are of a certain age does that not maybe say the experience is not for you.

Try bingo or bowls.

 

[ChipA]

I don't 'fcuking go there' as you put it. 'not like it' refers to losing my hearing not jumping about in sweaty noise boxes trying to pull.

No one goes there for polite and intellectual conversion so whats the point of even wanting to hear what people say?