Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions What is listening fatigue?

Is listening fatigue from too much loud music/movies for too long or is it more complicated that that? If that is the case, it would affect all speakers yes? How long does it take to experience and how long does one need to be away from the speakers for their ears/brain to reset?

Greg

I think listening fatigue arises from some kind of aberration in the reproduction of sound by the speakers. An unnaturalness of the sound frequencies, or something like that. Can physically make your ears hurt. Happened to me when I had some Klipsch speakers. Although I did like the speakers I couldn't listen to them for more than an hour or so. Movies made me cringe during the loud bits.

Hm???

I was watching The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones yesterday. I watched about 100 minutes of TPM withouth issue and then had to break and run an errand. About four hours later I watched the rest of TPM and the first hour of AOTC. My right ear, and only my right ear, began bugging me about 20 minutes before I stopped watching. Assuming both ears hear about the same, and mine do, wouldn't one expect fatigue to be about the same in each ear? My HK AVR65 receiver @ 65 watts per channel was set to -18db and it goes from about -60 to +7. Those with HK receivers know that sound level doesn't build a whole lot from -60until about -40 and rarely do I ever watch anything at less than -25. Typically my friends and male family members like it louder than even -18 so I don't think it was at an unreasonable level.

My right ear is really bothering me this morning. My left is fine. It could be a conicidental ear infection as I get those all the time but won't know until I get to a doctor in the next week .

Assuming a person gets listening fatigue, would the affected ear still be bothered 12 hours later?

Greg

Dangit, I knew I should've gone to medical school. . .

Greg, I don't know what to tell you. I'm trying to think back to when I got listening fatigue, but I can't remember if the discomfort was equal in both ears. Maybe from the room layout, there is a reflection of sound heavier on one side that causes your one ear to have fatigue.

Are you running Axiom speakers? I'm just curious. After my Klipsch speakers I went with Monitor Audio for HT and my ears haven't bothered me.

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Assuming a person gets listening fatigue, would the affected ear still be bothered 12 hours later?

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Not a doctor, but have had a LOT of experience with listening fatigue (was a soundman for a LOUD country rock band). If you're still having trouble 12 hours after the fact, I seriously doubt it is caused by listening fatigue.

It is what I experience within 2 minutes of listening to my Mother-In-Law ...

Ajax,

I just got done with AOTC and part of ROTS. My right ear hurts pretty bad, left is fine. I went almost 20 hours between listenting sessions with no improvement. I am off to the ear doctor tomorrow. My speakers (brand new axioms but I don't want to blame them lest a nasty rumor get started) are not to blame I am sure.

Greg

Ouch ! ... Definitely see a Doctor.

That sure doesn't sound like listening fatigue to me. Definitely get it checked out...

Now... in my university days, my favorite local band (FM) was playing just down the road (at the Gasworks, for anyone in TO) and we used to hang out every evening in front of a big Altec horn tweeter (with neatly printed graffiti on the diffraction lens) drinking beer and doing our homework.

If I remember correctly, that was the stack handling the MiniMoog, Elka String Synth, and Nash's electric mandolin. I remember going over to the sound guy a couple of times and asking him to drop the levels a bit because "our" amp was clipping on the loud parts.

Four hours of THAT every night... NOW you're talking listening fatigue

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It is what I experience within 2 minutes of listening to my Mother-In-Law ...

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Amen!

LOL!

Distortion in the sound can cause listening fatigue. An ear's sensitivity (or over sensitivity) to certain frequencies can cause listening fatigue if for that person, the frequency needs to be attenuated down to a level that is best for that particular listener. Everyone's ears are different. Further to that each person's ear is different, much like their eyes. Nobody is perfectly symmetrical. One ear will hear differently than another especially if you have had ear infections in the past.

The pain in the ear that you are describing could be a result of an infection. Usually listening fatigue is more asscoiated with headaches and not necessarily earaches.

GregM,

Listening fatigue is usually associated with some type of distortion in the reproduced sound, especially in the midrange and treble. It can certainly result from loudspeakers with a "peaky" response in the midrange (lots of peaks and dips), which can add an irritating "edge" or "stridency" to mid and treble instruments or vocals. Horn-loaded loudspeakers are especially prone to this because of the distortion of the mid and upper spectrum that the horn introduces.

Amplifiers driven to near their limits may have dramatically rising distortion of several kinds (IM and THD--Intermodulation distortion and Total Harmonic Distortion) which can be fatiguing over relatively brief listening sessions. Using music or soundtracks as test material, the distortion has to rise to fairly gross levels--past 1% or more--before our ears start to complain. With test signals, it's possible to detect distortion at a fraction of 1%.

Badly EQ'd sound, whether on the source recording or in live performance, can also induce listening fatigue. As a matter of fact, I attended an off-broadway musical yesterday with a friend. The show featured three women with excellent voices singing in tight harmony, and the women's vocals were horribly EQ'd so they sounded really nasal and irritating. Adding to that, the sound operator was running the system at absurdly loud levels (the theater wasn't large, seating about 400). Certainly overly loud music that has gross response anomalies like this will induce listening fatigue really fast--and it did!

My friend and I lasted 40 minutes. I was getting a headache and she agreed it was way too loud so we snuck out during a blackout between songs. (There was no intermission, so we had to escape.) I'm thinking of sending the sound designer a letter of complaint. I've heard superb sound reinforcement in New York shows as well as really awful work and this show numbers among the worst I've heard.

I've also found that mood shifts, alcohol (other substances as well) lack of sleep and other influences may influence the onset and duration of listening fatigue.

During years of serving on the listening panel at the National Research Council in Ottawa, we generally found that about six 20-minute sessions (listening to four different speakers each session) spread over a work day were about the limit. That was because the sessions required intense concentration with the same sequence of music selections repeated each session.

Regards,

'Listening Fatigue, Distortion, Pain, Peaky, Edgy, Loud...Alcohol Induced'

Yep, I do believe Craig is on to something regarding that mother-in-law connection and listening fatigue. I really do.

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I've also found that mood shifts, alcohol (other substances as well) lack of sleep and other influences may influence the onset and duration of listening fatigue.

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I can attest to this.

Many a time back in the day, I would, ummm, be under the influence of "another substance" while listening to music and would nod off, only to wake hours later centered in a circle of Twinkie wrappers and (empty) bags of Chips Ahoy, while my Pioneeer 518 TT/ Shure M97 played the clicks on the lead-out of some Pink Floyd album.

Aaahhh. Good Times.

Fatigue, indeed, Dude!

Mark, I'm glad you stepped up to the plate. I wasn't gonna touch that one...

Alan and others,

Thanks for the response. I head to the Dr. tomorrow for what I know must be an eary infection that hit at the same time my new speakers arrived. Let anyone think I am not satisfied with my VP150 and M22Ti's I posted my first impression at the HT board.

Greg

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Many a time back in the day, I would, ummm, be under the influence of "another substance" while listening to music and would nod off, only to wake hours later centered in a circle of Twinkie wrappers and (empty) bags of Chips Ahoy, while my Pioneeer 518 TT/ Shure M97 played the clicks on the lead-out of some Pink Floyd album.

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This sounds like my weekend. You gotta love Analog!

I attended a Sweet Honey in the Rock performance Saturday night at Symphony Hall in Boston. The performance was absolutely amazing, but I was surprised at the poor sound. I haven't heard a concert at Symphony Hall in years, so I don't have a comparison, but I was shocked that such a fine hall known for its good acoustics couldn't manage more neutral sound. Sweet Honey of course brings its own sound person, so maybe it was all his doing, but I doubt it. Is this kind of problem normal in large, major concert halls?

I attended a concert Sunday night here in Nashville at the Ryman Auditorium. I've been to many shows there, and the sound is almost always stellar. Sunday night wasn't quite up to par, though. Part of the reason (I believe) is that the overall level was unnecessarily loud. But I started digging around and I found this. While it focuses on the Ryman, it's a pretty informative article on the challenges faced by any live sound crew.