Musicians

Professional musicians are nearly four times as likely to develop noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) as the general public. They are also more likely to experience tinnitus, or ringing in the ears. Hearing damage can affect everyone in the music industry, including backstage crew, front of the house staff, as well as bartenders, waiters, and other staff at bars, nightclubs, and restaurants—anywhere where music may be played loud.

Hearing loss can develop from the repeated exposure to loud sounds, according to the British Medical Journal. Over time, loud sound will irreparably damage the sensory hair cells of the inner ear that send sound information to the brain to interpret. There is also evidence that loud sound also disrupts how cells transmit information via synapses, leading to what is termed hidden hearing loss because it’s not easily detected by traditional hearing tests. NIHL from sudden loud sounds, such as gunfire or fireworks, can also occur.

NIHL is permanent and most common cause of hearing loss resulting from prolonged exposure to high levels of noise. It is also the only fully preventable cause of hearing loss, which is why protecting our ears and hearing is so important.

Research by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that nearly one in four adults exhibits signs of NIHL. Evidence suggests that noisy leisure activities plus the increased use of personal listening devices with headphones contribute to what the World Health Organization has warned is a global public health emergency, with 1.1 billion young people potentially at risk for NIHL.

Learn more from HHF’s Keep Listening prevention campaign.

Tips for Musicians

Get a hearing test. Annually.

Baseline hearing levels are important to obtain for anybody exposed to loud music on a regular or even semiregular basis. Ask to be tested on a range of 125 to 20,000 hertz, as the very high frequencies often show a loss first. If you’ve had ringing in your ears, consider including a tinnitus assessment. Yearly testing is recommended, but go see a hearing care provider immediately if you are experiencing a sudden change or pain.

Know your range.

If you are mixing in the studio, use in-ear monitors and the equalizer to adjust for any frequency bands you may be missing. You can also use equalizer controls to adjust the sound to offer some sound cues that you may not be otherwise getting because of a hearing loss.

Use in-ear monitors.

In-ear monitors allow musicians to hear the music mix directly in their ears. Work closely with your audiologist to choose in-ear monitors appropriate for your needs, and learn to use them properly for maximum protection.

Musician’s earplugs do more than protect hearing.

You can hear your own voice or your own instrument more clearly when wearing musician’s earplugs. This helps you better hit notes without straining.

Source: Melissa Heche, Au.D., New York Speech and Hearing

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Listening to Music When You Have a Hearing Loss

Gear for Musicians

Musicians (and fans!) can significantly lessen their risks of hearing loss and tinnitus through the use of protective measures that preserve the sounds and harmony of the music. A hearing specialist can recommend custom musicians earplugs or in-ear monitors to protect your hearing without compromising your musical performance or experience.

Some reasons to consider custom-made earplugs: Typical foam earplugs mute speech and music, and by lessening noise primarily in the high-frequency range, rather than in the mid- to low-frequency range, music and voices can sound unnatural and unclear. Custom-fit earplugs lower sound more smoothly across frequencies, while also reducing decibel levels, thereby maintaining the all-natural quality of speech and music.

In addition, with foam earplugs, the user will hear a hollowed out sound in their speech when speaking, singing, or playing a musical instrument. This unnatural, muffled sound is referred to as the “occlusion effect.” Custom-fit earplugs are molded to the ear, producing a seal that helps prevent this distracting sound.

For more tips from music enthusiasts with hearing loss, see Music Gear From the Pros.

Source: South Shore Hearing Center

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Musicians (Overview)
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Listening to Music When You Have a Hearing Loss

Listening to Music When You Have a Hearing Loss

Music and Hearing Loss

For a person with hearing loss, music sounds much softer, especially in the range where people sing and where most instruments are heard. Not only does music sound muffled and dull, but it loses a great deal of its excitement.

Lost is the general texture of music, such as the way a particular instrument or combination of instruments sound. It can be hard to pick out a specific instrument or singer from the background; some people lose the ability to hear musical pitch properly, making it hard to sing or even recognize a melody.

A hearing loss also creates a serious problem with loudness, or the subjective impression of the intensity of sounds. Many people with hearing loss simply hear nothing at all if the sounds are not intense enough; sounds that would be at a comfortable volume for people with typical hearing are barely audible.

However, as sound levels increase, sounds are heard as becoming louder at a rate much faster than they do with typical hearing. The change in intensity between “barely audible” and “unbearably loud” is reduced.

Problems with pitch, texture, and loudness perception are not really separate problems. Because hearing loss is often greatest over the frequency range where most instruments sound, that is also the area where the greatest problems with loudness occur. For people with hearing loss, this messy interaction can make listening to music—let alone playing music—very challenging.

Hearing Aids and Music

A 2016 report from British hearing researcher Brian Moore, Ph.D., titled “Effects of Sound-Induced Hearing Loss and Hearing Aids on the Perception of Music,” implies that while modern hearing aids can help to some extent, there is much that needs to be learned to improve their musical effectiveness. Everyone’s hearing is different, of course, and some will get more benefit from hearing aids than others. But there are some problems that no technology has yet been able to correct.

Hearing aid technology that improves speech understanding and loudness perception does not work so well when it comes to music. For instance, low frequency sounds are not amplified at the same level as high frequency sounds, so a tuba or cello sounds soft and tinny and lacks the impact it should have. Music also gets distorted when heard through hearing aids designed to improve understanding speech in noise.

Many hearing aids provide specific presets for live music listening, but Moore’s research confirms my own experience that they are often not that helpful. And when streaming recorded music into a hearing aid via Bluetooth, the sound, to me at least, resembles an old transistor radio rather than a high-fidelity system.

While there are speech-centric techniques that could transpose, for example, high flute notes, to a lower range, Moore reports that in practice this produces mixed results. Electronically transposing music significantly distorts both the content and texture, making it sound increasingly distorted, robotic, and unpleasant with greater amounts of transposition. As for those hearing losses where musical melody becomes unrecognizable, unfortunately, there is no current technology that can correct such a problem.

Source: How Does Hearing Loss Affect the Perception of Music? by Richard Einhorn.

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Musicians (Overview)
Tips for Musicians
Gear for Musicians
Listening to Music When You Have a Hearing Loss