[jimbobuk]

I was telling a musician friend of mine about my new Darth Beyers and that if he ever had the desire to work with such low bass that the DT770s were great cans.. I described my recent movie listening crazyness where i could actually feel sub bass like from a subwoofer..

He gave me a warning about infrasound toxic shock.. apparently one of his friends was mastering a bass heavy track and suffered from it, along with the singer in an old band he was in.. here's a bit of information he sent me too.

Quote:

Infrasound Toxicological Summary, November 2001 - "When male volunteers were exposed to simulated industrial infrasound of 5 and 10 Hz and levels of 100 and 135 dB for 15 minutes, feelings of fatigue, apathy, and depression, pressure in the ears, loss of concentration, drowsiness, and vibration of internal organs were reported. In addition, effects were found in the central nervous system, the cardiovascular system, and the respiratory system. Synchronization phenomena were enhanced in the left hemisphere. Visual motor responses to stimuli were prolonged, and the strength of the effect was reduced. Heart rate was increased during the initial minutes of exposure. Depression of the encephalic hemodynamics with decreased venous flow from the skull cavity was observed. Heart muscle contraction strength was reduced. Respiration rate was significantly reduced after the first minute of exposure.

I don't know whether you need speakers to really recreate most of the symptoms and problems... but it was totally new to me.. perhaps i'll be more careful with the Darth's... anyone else have any thoughts..!?

As if hearing loss wasn't enough of a worry

 

[patrox89]

brown note anyone?


/south park

 

[Buster Sword]

Yes, i feel similar symptoms using my new speakers. The bass is too strong sometimes after hours have gone by my ears feel plunged in.
With the a900, bass is just as strong, but i dont feel as fatigued.
Both are incredibly musical btw.
Thanks for the article, i am trying to save my ears til i am very old. It sucks that people like ayumi lost hearing in her left ear, and my relative with loss of hearing in his right ear (gun/law enforcement)

Its an audiophiles worst nightmare

WAIT, 135 db is extremely excessive!! 120 is already threshold of pain, of course any sound would cause tiredness and damage the ears!! DUH, if you are not deaf..at the very least exhausted.
Edit: 5 hz is like an earthquake at 135 decibels, Or its like some big football player guy coming up to you and shaking you and turning you over for your lunch money.

I believe sound you cannot hear can damage your ears/body at high decibel levels. They effect something else.

 

[South_Korean]

yeah well overly strong bass can be worse from a subwoofer. there were articles here where people died from pneumothorax or something. the vibrations caused someones lungs to collapse. similar things were supposedly happening in clubs and concerts.

 

[kin0kin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by South_Korean yeah well overly strong bass can be worse from a subwoofer. there were articles here where people died from pneumothorax or something. the vibrations caused someones lungs to collapse. similar things were supposedly happening in clubs and concerts.

wow....but I guess those are rare cases.

 

[leftright]

didn't they do some experiment along these lines on MythBusters?

 

[Thaddy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by patrox89 brown note anyone? /south park

From what I've read about the famed "brown note", it's not true. I think even Mythbusters (that television show) did a piece on it, and proved it wrong.

 

[catscratch]

135 dB for 10 minutes is enough to do some real hearing damage in addition to whatever effects the article describes. Even 100 decibels is an awful lot, and I don't think that listening to music at those levels is all that good of an idea. It would be more interesting to see studies done at 85-90 dB, which I assume is average listening level (maybe less, but come on, let's get real

). Also, it is possible that some individuals have a genetic predisposition towards being affected in this fashion by loud infrasonic frequencies, just as I'm sure some people are more genetically predisposed towards noise-induced hearing loss. I don't see any investigation into that topic either.

Anyway... interesting read.

 

[kramer5150]

135 db !!!

Thats some SERIOUS SPL. enough to blow your eardrums. I seriously doubt headphones Can even play that loud (cleanly) at 10Hz. VERY few (if any) subwoofers can even do it in an open environment (anechoic... or whatever the technical term is

)

At that SPL youre punnishing the innear ear and subjecting the auditory nervous system to all kinds of extremes. The Human nervous system is one big electrical feedback circuit, so I wouldn't doubt it can cause other nervous system problems.

I dont know about collapsing lungs... But Ive heard some DB drag cars hit over 170db... enough to blow out the window glass.

Richard Clarks bread truck hit 163 dbs at 13 Hz before the side walls imploded from the pressure. Supposedly he has this sub mounted in his basement in a brick/mortar enclosure.

Garrett

 

[Solude]

135dB isn't even possible on equipment available to home users. Assuming you had average headphones lets say 94dB/mW you would need... 16W to get there. Anyone know of a headphone amp that can produce that for 10 minutes? A headphone? No worries here I listen at an average of under 1mW or about half unity gain.

By the way you cause hearing damage at levels above 80dB, some temporary some not so much the higher you go. Above 100dB it is PAINFUL for anything more than a second.

 

[jimbobuk]

thanks guys..

I do binaural recordings as some of you perhaps know.. I need to get round to testing with my binaural mics the kind of db ratings i get with typical and louder volume settings.. i'm hoping its not higher than i thought..

Car noise can be very very loud, at very low frequencies.. my mics are good for 100db+ i think and they clip like hell when recording in moving cars.. even with bass roll off..

It got me scared but uber darth beyer bass is only done sparingly at the moment.. plus films that do sub woofer signals well are usually very sparing with loud bits and even more so with things that actually use the sub for anything really low..

 

[Fish Tank X]

If I may chime in here, the CD standard doesn't allow the recording of anything below 20Hz. The sound you listed was 5-10Hz. Thus, the limit of the lower basement of bass in CD recordings isn't even aproaching the low frequency needed to cause this.

Edit: May have been wrong and gotten somethign mixed up.

 

[South_Korean]

Quote:

PIC

Kramer LMAO that thing is massive. you could kill people with that thing.

 

[jimbobuk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Tank X If I may chime in here, the CD standard doesn't allow the recording of anything below 20Hz. The sound you listed was 5-10Hz. Thus, the limit of the lower basement of bass in CD recordings isn't even aproaching the low frequency needed to cause this.

Is this true?! My Darth Beyers and Omega IIs are both quoted with frequency responses down to 5hz... gutting to think that music wont be given them a work out..

Movie's .1 track must be in that region to give the sub woofer in typical setups something to settle on to.

I was unaware of this restriction.. what's the reason for it?

 

[patrox89]

suth_korean, thats the point. the spl at such low frequencies can **edit*possibly hurt**edit* someone.

btw i was joking about the brown noise, however, it was possibly the most hilarious south park episode ever done.

i was sitting in my friends gmc jimmy the other day and hes got 2 jl audio 10w12 subs in a custom closed sub box, with 1000w running to them (hes also got some german made door speakers which are amped, all in all it was a $4000 set up). there was no volume tracking, it went from a light thump to painful and sickening in about an 1/8 of the turn on his head unit. i wouldnt be surprised that after sitting in that car some people got sick after a prolonged period. the subs move so much air that the installers warned that he shouldnt drive with his windows up, for fear that the pressure would shatter the glass in his car.


so.... i dont think that you need a custom made sub to be able to hit 10 hz for a prolonged period of time, you just need to have an above average loud speaker set up. i highly doubt that even dt770's would be capable of doing this, simply from amp limitations.