Since their debut in the marketplace, iPods have revolutionized the way we listen to music. iPod hard drives store up to 300 hours of music, batteries last for 12 hours, and the volume can be cranked up to 120 decibels. That’s louder than a chain saw or pneumatic drill, and equivalent to a jet plane taking off! But iPod fans are being warned to turn their music down. Even manufacturer, Apple, includes a cautionary note with every iPod, warning, “permanent hearing loss may occur if earphones or headphones are used at high volume.”

Currently, 16 million baby boomers have hearing loss and the number is expected to surge to 78 million by 2030. Amazingly, nearly three-quarters of them admit that they have never visited a doctor or hearing health specialist to have a hearing test. In spite of this lack of concern, there are more boomers aged 46 to 64 with hearing loss than seniors over the age of 65 with the same condition, and hearing loss among baby boomers is 26 percent more common than in previous generations.

Loud music and noise causes hearing loss by damaging the delicate hair nerve cells in the cochlea, a part of the inner ear that helps transmit sound impulses to the brain. These hair cells often recover from temporary hurt. But, permanent hurt can occur with prolonged exposure to extremely loud or moderately loud noise. When these nerve hair cells are ruined, irreversible hearing loss results.

Many people who listen to iPods in noisy environments pump up the volume to perilous levels to drown out background noise. Busy city hubs and subway noise (around 90 decibels) are already sufficiently loud to cause permanent hurt with considerable exposure. Although the hurt from chronic exposure to these sound levels is generally slow, it is cumulative. Music lovers who tolerate noise levels above 85 decibels for long periods will end up with irreversible hearing loss.
Here are five steps you can take to protect yourself from hearing loss:

1. Limit the volume of your iPod to 60 decibels (db), about two-thirds of the maximum volume.
2. Try to limit listening to no more than 60 minutes a day.

3. Wear sound-isolating or noise-canceling headphones that fit over the ear, instead of ear buds that are inserted directly in the ear.  This is because when using ear buds, you still hear the external noise. You turn up the volume to drown out the noise, boosting the sound signals by as much as six to nine decibels over the noise. You can hear the music from your iPod, but you are unaware of the excessive volume.

4. Take advantage of the free download Apple is now offering for the iPod Nano, and iPod models with video-playback capabilities.  The download contains a setting to limit the volume.

5. If you are experiencing tinnitus (ringing in the ears), muffled sound after listening to your iPod, or you are having difficulty hearing conversations, visit to a physician and take a hearing test.

During my first 20 years in hearing health practice, our clientele were mainly seniors around 75 years of age. But, over the past 10 years, I have noticed a huge difference in our clientele. Nowadays, baby boomers of all ages are making appointments, and most of them have noise-induced hearing loss.

Loud rock music and living life ‘full on’ in an amplified noisy society have contributed to hearing loss amongst baby boomers. Nevertheless, if we follow the iPod 60-60 Protection Plot, we can delight in our iPods and continue to live life to the fullest.

Observations of an ANC Industry Insider 1 of 3

Active Noise Cancellation vs. Passive Noise Cancellation

Any time I am questioned what I do in a social setting I have to brace my self for a lot of blank looks. In the beginning I would answer with a very forthright; “We produce active noise cancellation systems for heavy industry.” This was always followed by a lengthy silence until some courageous soul would say, “So you make insulation?” or something to that effect. To the lay individual, when confronted with the words active noise cancellation, all they really hear is noise cancellation, and they fall back on their previous experience to help them categorize what I do, that generally means insulation.

In the last few years, active noise cancellation has become more common place and understood because of the remarkable efforts of BOSE and others in producing active noise cancellation headphones. There is still a significant amount of confusion though about what exactly active noise cancellation (ANC) is and how it is different from passive noise cancellation products such as insulation. The purpose of this document is to try and describe those differences in a manner that is both accessible and understandable to all.

The Basics

Simply place, passive noise cancellation treatments are all about deflection and absorption. They are in essence a barrier between the observer and the noise source. Passive treatments take the form of foam plugs in the ear, foam lining between the engine of a car and the interior and even the 20 foot concrete barrier walls that line busy streets. Their sole purpose is to either absorb the sound, and turn it into something else (commonly heat), or reflect it in another direction.

Active noise cancellation on the other hand relies on the principle of destructive interference; the thought of using one wave to cancel out another wave. The simplest way to visualize this principle is to use waves in water. If I drop a pebble in a pond, it makes ripples (waves). By dropping a second pebble in the pond shortly after the first, as the ripples from each rock intermingle, small areas are made where there are no waves visible. In fact at those points the surface is perfectly smooth. This phenomenon is a product of destructive interference.

Another way of visualizing it is by imagining a wave.  Every wave has two core properties: how quick it goes up and down (frequency) and how far it goes up and down (amplitude). Also, remember that a complete wave has peaks and valleys. Now, imagine adding a second wave to the first. This second wave is identical in frequency and amplitude, but the second wave is out of synch with the first. So much so, that the peaks and valleys of the second wave line up exactly with the valleys and peaks respectively of the original sound wave.  When identical sound waves are combined, they add their energy. Let’s say the first wave at its peak has an energy of 1, and the second wave at its valley has an energy of -1. Adding the two together causes the combined energy to equal zero!

Why use Active Instead of Passive

If that explanation sounded very complicated, don’t worry, it is. Implementing active noise cancellation is even more complicated than describing it. So why bother with it all? Because there are certain waves that passive treatments are not able to stop. A co-worker of mine is fond of saying “With enough concrete and re-bar, anything can be made silent.” Unfortunately there are lots of applications where concrete and re-bar are not an option.

Take your home for example. Usually, with the doors and windows shut, you don’t hear birds chirping, or the typical car drive by. But even with everything closed tight, you can still hear that car with the bass thumping as it drives by. The reason for this is that low frequency noises are able to penetrate physical barriers more effectively than high frequency noises. It’s the same principle that allows you to get an AM station while driving in the hills when you can’t get an FM station at all. AM waves are much lower in frequency and not affected as much by physical barriers.

That being said, passive treatments have a practical lower threshold at which point they offer limited or no reduction. The lower limit is debatable, but for the most part, passive treatments start suffering reduced effectiveness at about 1000 Hz, and their performance degrades as the frequencies get lower.  Active noise cancellation works best on noise below 300 Hz. It is possible to use ANC on noise up to 500 Hz but the reductions are limited and have to be considered on a case by case basis. (For more information on why ANC is only useful up to 500 Hz, please read part 2 of this series.)  As you can imagine, with such distinct areas of effectiveness, the two methods for reducing noise are really complimentary to one another. Active noise cancellation should not be considered as a replacement for passive treatment. In fact, we often recommend to our customers that they first do everything they can with passive noise cancellation, and if the noise levels are still too much of an issue, then consider active noise cancellation.

Conclusion

While active noise cancellation is a high tech solution to unwanted noise. It’s not a substitute for a excellent piece of high density foam. Because of the costs associated with each system, we recommend doing everything possible with passive forms of treatment and then re-evaluate your environment before deciding to implement active noise cancellation.

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1. Protecting your assetSo, you’ve just splashed your hard-earned cash on a smart, new MP3 player? Now, surely it’s sensible to spend a few more money on a cover to keep it shiny and new – not least after the horror tales surrounding the nano’s scratchability. 2. Hearing every soundMuch like elsewhere in hi-fi, neglect one key aspect of your system, the other components will be underperforming. Even fantastic MP3 players can be humbled by the low-quality ‘freedie’ headphones they’re usually sold with. Upgrading to even a budget pair of phones can transform the sound. The £35 Sennheiser PX100s remain as excellent an investment for better sound. 3. Keep it alive longerGreat-sounding kit is no use if you’re caught small with a dead battery, so invest in Gear4′s PocketPower, which provides eight hours of extra juice for your player while you’re out and about. It uses four rechargeable AAA batteries, charged by your computer using USB. Your trusty iPod will never desert you again!4. Making the connectionThe standard connection from MP3 player to computer is USB (Universal Serial Bus). The latest version, USB 2. 0, is high-speed connection that allows for quicker file transfers. Some MP3 players are only USB 2. 0 compatible, so first, check your computer is up to it and, if it isn’t, consider upgrading to speed things up. Firewire, which is common on Apple Macs, is another quick transfer socket. 5. Use iTunes as your libraryRemember that you needn’t have all your music stored on your portable. iTunes can act as your desktop music library, from which you choose specific music tracks to load on to your portable. Connect your iPod, open ‘Preferences’ and click on the iPod icon. Ensure you’re in the ‘Music’ screen, and click on ‘Manually manage songs and playlists’. Once this is done, you can simply drag tunes from your library to the highlighted iPod. This also means deleting music files from your iTunes can be done independently of your connected iPod. 6. Trimming your tunesBonus tracks on CDs are well and excellent, but where’s the fun in having to sit through 10 minutes of silence before your next track? Fret no more. You can easily get rid of any uncomfortable silences using iTunes. Select the errant track, click on ‘File’, then ‘Get Info’. Then select ‘Options’ from the dialogue box. The ‘Start Time’ and ‘Stop Time’ options let you specify precisely when the tune starts and stops. 7. Keep tunes on the levelIf there’s one sure-fire way to ruin your journey to work, it’s having your ears battered by a track twice as loud as the rest. The solution? Get iTunes to sell your music to the same volume. Click on ‘iTunes’, then ‘Preferences’, and then ‘Playback’. Just tick the ‘Sound Check’ button and iTunes will do its magic. 8. Freakin’ format wars The generic term for digital music players, MP3 players, is now somewhat confusing. MP3 is merely one of the many file formats that you can choose to rip your music in. in order of sound quality, I would rank the three best-known systems as follows: AAC, WMA and MP3. Then there’s the bit-rate (ie. the quality of the file) to consider, too. 9. Upping your bit ratesThe bit-rate of a file refers to the amount of information (in kilobits) in each second of data. The higher the bit-rate, the better the sound, but files are larger, and so take up more hard disk space. For better sound, stick to 192kbps and above. To adjust this in iTunes, go to ‘iTunes’, then ‘Preferences’, then ‘Advanced’. Click on the ‘Importing’ tab, and get tweaking that bit-rate. Note, you can’t increase bit-rates retrospectively: musical data left out can’t be place back later. 10. CD-quality soundOkay, so now you know that the bit-rate affects the sound quality (and also size) of your music files. So what happens if you want the best sound possible? If you’ve the room on your computer, there are a number of ‘lossless’ options that deliver the highest quality. Lossless codecs such as FLAC, Shorten and Apple Losslessmuse a variable bit-rate (VBR) to deliver much higher quality sounds. An Apple Lossless file will be roughly half the size of a CD-Audio music file (so you’d get two full albums on one CD, not one), but up to five times larger than an AAC file. 11. Tagging ‘em upKeep tabs on your tracks by making sure you mark them using ID3 tags. This is a means of embedding relevant data such as artist and album details into your MP3 player files. Most tracks are identified automatically by iTunes, but adding tags (use ‘Get Info’ in iTunes) can be handy when burning more obscure CDs. 12. Cut out the duplicatesShould your iTunes become cluttered, try the ‘Show Duplicate Songs’ selection. This feature allows you to easily delete tunes you have more than one copy of, clearing out space for new music. Go to the ‘Edit’ menu, then select ‘Show Duplicate Songs’. Simple!13. Pick up a podcastA podcast is an audio clip distributed via the net and aimed at MP3 listeners. There’s a wealth of free and paid-for podcasts available on iTunes, but you can also visit www. vitalpodcasts. com and www. podcastbunker. com. For automatic updates of new content, subscribe to your favourite podcasts, and they’ll get downloaded. 14. Taking ControlTo avoid frequent switching between iTunes and whatever you’re doing on your computer at the time, try ‘iMote’. This allows you to control basic functions, such as skipping or pausing tracks, either by adding a menu item of controls to your toolbar, or by using a series of hotkeys. A floating window will also tell you the track details of the tune you’re listening to. For more information, take a look at www. mkd. cc/imote. 15. Clutter your desktopRemember the simple pleasure of rifling through your record collectio, and checking out all that glorious album art? Clutter does the same thing for iTunes: fill your desktop with album covers, then simply click on any one to start it playing in iTunes. Clever! Head for www. sprote. com/clutter for the freebie software download. 16. Share tunesMP3 needn’t be a solitary experience. Why not ditch those headphones and listen to your MP3 player though your hi-fi system? The simplest way is to use a 3. 5mm-jack-to-phono cable from the headphone connection to an input on your amplifier. The iChord from Chord Company is an brilliant interconnect, while Apple’s Universal Dock is also worthwhile. 17. Docking StationsIf you’d like to use your iPod as your primary music ‘hub’, it’s worth considering one of the myriad docks available. Sound quality can certainly vary fro dock to dock, while features such as remote control, the ability to charge your iPod, and a line-in socket are worth looking out for, too. To turn your iPod into a full-blown mini system iPod Dock18. Wireless for SoundSo, first, we had all our music stored on our computers. Then we took our tunes out on our MP3 players. Then we took off our ‘phones and shared our music collections. So what’s next? How about sending your tunes all around your house? There are now several affordable and simple to operate and install options, including Apple’s Airport Express or the Sonneteer Bard USB, which will work with any player. 19. Radio your iPodOne thing the iPod lacked compared to many rival MP3 players on the market was an FM radio. Until now, that is. The new iPod Radio Remote weighs just 15g, and acts as a link between any suitable pair of headphones and your USB connection port on your iPod. Make sure your iPod has had the v1. 1 software update, and – hey presto! a radio option will appear on your iPod, then you’re in business. 20. MP3 your motorHeaven forbid you should be without your music collection when you’re in your car! How about a simple portable adapter that uses your car’s cassette player to tap into the speaker system? Visit www. gear4. com for more information. Otherwise, maybe you fancy something a small more permanent?

I live in an apartment with two other people. I do a lot of recording and mixing in my room, but mostly through headphones to minimize complaints. I started singing to know, which means there will be some noise. I know you can not completely soundproof my room because it is a house, and can not do anything permanent. . . So the question is, what is cheap / efficient / atleast way to minimize the sound of a voice to what I can do atleast some of the song is decent hour without too many complaints? Thanks for listening, and you can give me an answer that you have to reckon. . . I am open to suggestions!