Headphones and hearing damage?

I find that I can't use headphones without making my ears ring. Whenever I record (I play bass), I use a pair of DT150's but I do use earplugs at the same time. Not the foam kind, but a type that is flogged to us musos for about £10 a pair...they still take out too much, but I find they work ok.

Do you think that my ears would not object to headphones if I were to use a really good headphone amp? Is the discomfort primarily caused by crappy amps, or is it simply the fact that my ears don't like headphones?

Bjorn

Bjorn;
I think you are bothered by IM and crossover distortion
in cheap HP driver IC's. For a test get you a small older tube amp less than 20 watts. Connect the headphones in series with about 50 ohms.
load the tube amp (they do not like no loads) with 30 to 50 ohms.
So if you disconnect the headphones nothing bad will happen.
Try this you may have hiss and hum but forget that for now. If is that solves your problem. Then you need to build the many DIY HiFi tube headphone amps or single ended low power 1 to 5 watts amps out there.
A friend did this and he is pleased. 2A3's SE through Lundahl iron and
it is sweet, all transformer coupled. 5687, 6BX7 type tubes will work well.
Or use the DUT triodes like the 2A3 which the cheap imports sound rather good.

With the new low power connect the headphones directly to the transformer windings. If you build the custom amp you can taylor the sound to suit you.

[quote author="Bjorn Zetterlund"]I find that I can't use headphones without making my ears ring. Whenever I record (I play bass), I use a pair of DT150's but I do use earplugs at the same time. Not the foam kind, but a type that is flogged to us musos for about £10 a pair...they still take out too much, but I find they work ok.[/quote]
So you're turning up the cans quite loud then? I'm not suprised you don't like the sound. Played at that level, unless you're driving some very high output headphones with a very high quality headphone amp, you're likely driving them well past their limits into heavy distortion.

A few questions:

Are you cranking the ^$&*@# out of the headphones for a reason other than the fact you have earplugs in?

Can you afford a pair of decent IEMs with custom molds? They'll work so much better than your cans/plugs solution.

Do you regularly record in a situation where things are so loud in the room that you find you need earplugs?

Describing your situation in greater detail will help us come to a more helpful conclusion.

<soapbox>
As a recordist and fellow bass player, my prescription for folks with ringing ears is always this:
Turn it down.
Get IEMs.
One or the other, preferably both, in that order. It's only my $0.02US, but it's made a world of difference to me and my ears.
<soapbox>

-dave

Thanks, guys!

When I record, I find that if I'm in the same room as a drummer (and all the drummers I play with are loud bastards), then even with totally closed DT150's I end up having to turn them up too loud (without earplugs) just to get a decent mix. The plugs are simply to bring that overall mix down to a level that my ears are comfortable with. I don't actually think that they are cranked anymore than they would be for a 'normal' musician recording in a similar situation.

I stopped using headphones for pleasure many years ago now, as I found that even when they were not turned up loud, they would still always cause ringing and discomfort. For recreational use, I've never used a top-notch headphone amp, so if I get the chance I would like to put together a valve box at some point to see what they're like (thanks Adrian :thumb: ). I may just start with the very simple op-amp types from headwize, though, as it is likely it will be some time before I have the chance to get something more elaborate together. A portable headphone amp box, even if the quality is not superb, would still be a handy toy for me to have.

Bjorn

bjorn-

I used to work in a studio that didnt have a control room, I learned some lessons. The only kind of headphones I have found that really do a job of reducing background ambience are tthe type that pilots wear and they cost a fortune. I would guess that the problem that you are having is not related to the amp so much as you've got to get your mix up above the level of the background ambience in your recording space (namely the drummer). I have used the earplugs and headphones route as well to no avail. My first reccomendation would be finding a cheap pair of ear buds, the type that they give you with a ipod, that will fit inside your ear. Next, go to home depot and get a pair of ear muffs that the landscapers wear when they cut your lawn. By putting the big ear muffs over the ear buds, you get an air cavity between the driver and the headphone that isnt present in a design where the driver is mounted inside the muff. This will help cut the background ambience and you'll be able to monitor at way lower levels. If this works for you, you can then go and invest in a pair of good high quality ear bud types as mentioned before. The only big drag is that the process of putting on and removing headphones is now just that, a process, but its a good compromise to make in the name of keeping your hearing...

dave

At AES last year spent 1/2 day listening to headphones for the studio.
Not an easy apples to apples comparsion as each booth
had different phones, amps and source material.
Hifi friend of mine likes the Sennheiser 600 phones with the SE 2A3 amp I discussed above. On that amp they sound good but those phones let in too much leakage from the outside. Goal to find under $100USD phones that sounded good. Well did not meet that goal all the cheap phones sounded bad or leaked too much. We did find the AKG 171 for $159.00 and the AKG 271 for $179.00 that sounded very good and they were damn quiet. They kept out a lot of the leakage from the room. I plan to buy 6 pairs of the 171's but I will buy one and listen at the studio to ensure I am making the correct choice. before I make the plunge on 5 more.

Get better phones to reduce the drummers noise.
Get in a different room, yea I know you miss the groove.
Buy a thumper seat some drummer use it it has a vibrating speaker device
that does not make much acoustic noise but vibrates a lot. Feed the drummer signal into power amp and into the thumper.
You can be in another room and still feel the acoustic impact
which will allow you to groove too.
Quit playing bass no scratch that one.

I've been wrestling with that issue for many years. I've found that being picky about headphones is a no-win proposition. For some reason, most studio owners don't grasp the fact that musicians play better when things sound good to them. Some of the best studios in the world have dreadful headphone systems. Low return on investment, I guess.

I think the answer is to figure out what it is you need to hear in order to be able to play - some register or top or bottom or whatever and try to get that into the phones at the lowest level you can. I've found that the most exhausting thing about playing sessions can be concentrating hard enough to draw what you need from lousy headphone mixes. Turning them up is usually not the answer. I guess what I'm saying is, everyone's hearing is different, what they can tolerate, what they like, etc... You need to learn how to draw from the headphone sound what you need, despite what the overall mix is. It's rarely going to be perfect, so you have to learn to play well with whatever you get. You have to adapt, and protect your hearing. I've played sessions where I never heard a note I played. It's unlikely you'll get any sympathy from anyone, particularly the producer. You try to get the engineer to give you something you can live with (forget about something you like) and then you just have to deal with it. Once you develop that skill, picking out what you need, it gets easier.

:guinness: :sam:

Wise words, Seth! That slightly brings in a different issue, but I agree with your view, both studio and live. You do have to develop the ability to try and 'extract' what you need from the environment that you are in, as a lot of the time you are simply stuck with it. Maybe that changes to some degree if you get into the 'I'm super rich and famous and I get what I want' category, but I'm not likely to get there!

Bjorn

This is all so simple.

Sure, IEM could be a good thing but something I did very early on when I started recording was to use the same theories as used in the Crown 300 and Auratone idea.
Voltage swing leads to headroom, which = clean
You don't need the current and therefore the power in watts is not the issue but obviously you have enough for multiple units.
I'm not going to try to explain it again as I did that at the old place and got laughed at. :roll:

A large diaphram fully enclosed set of isolation headphones and feed them with an AMP :shock: ... and not just a 15 volt chip.
simple dist box at my site

Maybe that changes to some degree if you get into the 'I'm super rich and famous and I get what I want' category, but I'm not likely to get there!

Click to expand...

Bjorn,

I'm not sure there's a there there. :green:

That's true live, I think. There have been really profound changes in stage monitors with the advent of in-ears, and it seems to me as shows have gotten more technologically complex everyone realizes that you have to hear or it's a train wreck. I haven't noticed any big changes in the studio world, not for the better anyway. As everyone, even the "super rich and famous" get their own studios the quality of headphone monitoring hasn't improved. The only widespread change is low-cost mix-it-yourself headphone stations are in more studios these days. They don't necessarily sound better, but at least you can lose anyone who's bugging you. I'm often listening to just click, drums, myself and enough vocal to know where I am in the song and nothing else. But in most cases it's about extracting, as you say, what you need and not being distracted by what sounds bad. It's a discipline - you have to get yourself to the point where your performance, and certainly your health, is not at the mercy of every crappy headphone system or engineer you come across.

Kev, you're absolutely right from the studio standpoint. The problem from the player's point of view is, how do you accomodate the tremendous variety of monitoring systems you encounter and still play consistently well? That's an attitude issue.

As I am in the middle of planning my new studio out, (super excited like a kid about that) one of the things that I am asking myself is what kind of Headphone cue system should I use?

Some friends are telling me to use the now popular "self mixers" where the musicians do their own final headphone mix. I'm not sure I agree with that method so I am passing and going with what I used in the past. As a musician myself I want to play not mix when I am on the otehr side of the glass.

A power amp feeding an array of boxes I made with switches for mono left and right as well as wirewound pots (I forget the type) for volume. It always worked well and the musician could get a variety of mixes. This time I will have up to a possible 8 mono mixes in the cue system with probably 4 mono to start with to see if that is enough. I don't want to be mixing for headphones all day! However if I remember well there were only 2 headphones per channel at the most on that old system of mine. I am worried about increasing the number of headphones. I do remember that it sounded very good. Much better than the Behringer headphone amp that I have now (will probably get rid of it) which I have to crank up to almost full to drive the headphones to a "normal" level (I don't believe in loud cue mixes unless one insists on it more than I insist on the opposite).

Now I forgot some of what I did! Duh! I know I was using a solid state amp of about 15 or 30 watts. (My first venture into recording I remember I used an old Leak tube amp to power headphones! That one was great! I wish I still had it.)

How can I safely plug in 4 to 5 headphones in the same channel without loading the amp or changing the sound of the headphones? I guess what I am asking here is how do I use a Power Amp to power several headphones without it affecting the way the headphones respond or blowing up my amp. Is a tube amp better than a solid state one for this purpose? Am I worried for nothing?

Jim

Bjorn,

Maybe these???

http://www.drumperfect.com/extreme_headphones.asp

good luck

Hmmm, I'm no physician, (and I don't play one on tv) :green: but, if you've got ringing, that means one thing: IT'S TOO LOUD! Tinnitus is the medical term for it; do a web search. Your ears can only take so much spl, and then that's it! Actually, I think tinnitus might be a permanent thing, meaning a constant ringing all the time, so be careful!
As far as the home depot type phones, they are the best and most effective hearing protectors. Trust me! One of my other jobs, was at a sawmill, and it was over 90 dB every day, so those were a requirement. The best ones will reduce the sound by @ 26 dB. I'm not too sure about putting drivers inside of them, though; seems like it defeats the purpose. But, I guess if you eliminate the main problem, and don't crank the drivers too bad, it'd be ok, as long as you don't exceed the allowable exposure to the spl in the allotted time period.
Back when I was at that place, I worked at a studio at night, and, after awhile, I noticed pressure in my left ear. The combination of the nearfield monitors, plus the 8 hours of saw crap, was just too much!

As a great engineer once told me, "Your ears are your career, so take care of them." Once they go, say goodbye to audio! :twisted: (That's the closest thing to a smiley with headphones!) :green: :sam:

I responded to a similar thread like this a few days ago on another forum.

The best solution is good isolation as Soundguy said.

Bass frequencies obviously are the hardest to isolate because bass frequencies resonate in your skull and ear canal once the loudness gets past a certain level. That's also influenced by whatever acoustic weaknesses the room may have--the bass frequencies could get reinforced. Even earplugs made out of lead wouldn't help in that case.

Having said that. I have used these:

http://www.remoteaudio.com/hn7506.htm

A television network I work for bought a set for a show that I work on that is done in the lobby of Madison Square Garden. The show looks really nice on television but the audio environment is about as horrible as it gets. These headphones actually do the job though.

$285 is a lot to pay for headphones, but then again, how much are your ears worth to you?

Bringing this into the realm of DIY, those headphones do look like something we could build ourselves if we found a source for the earmuffs. Sony 7506 drivers are easy enough to get .....

Those earmuffs look like standard type equipment operator ear muffs...where are the drivers to be had?diy diy diy
:grin:

-jay

To be honest, I don't think it matters what headphones you use from those lifted from a transatlantic jet (awful quality) to Bose top of the range - if you have the volume too loud, your ears ring, and too much of that can cause, I believe, tinitus (however you spell it).

What?

:grin:

I've always thought that the reason cans can potentially cause hearing damage is the fact that IMO many people use the physical sensation from sub to judge subjective level, therefore they simply don't realise the amount of spl due to the lack of physical sensation when wearing cans. I would think that the AEs around here have sensitive hearing towards mid and top spl, but from sitting on the tube I'm not sure the average Joe Schmoe has, or maybe certain players that are not acoustically minded.

I'd also agree that many headphone amps are woefully underspecified, particularly if the cans have a low impedance such as 30 Ohms. Chip amps can sound v. harsh into low loads in my experience, a nice tube or discrete amp as suggested could well be a good investment.

J

> if I'm in the same room as a drummer

That's the problem. Not the phones.

Modern percussion sets are TOO DAMN LOUD.

cjenrick - see here:

http://www.tinnitus.org.uk/information/what_is_tinnitus.htm

Stephen