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

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.

In reply to:

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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

In reply to:

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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.