How exactly does one become "fatigued" listening to music?

[Currawong]

I'm seriously wishing my 701's were as comfortable as my Quarts, as I have to say that the heavy clamping of AKG's and Senn's as well as the awful leather headband of my 701's ruin things for me after an hour of listening.

 

[greydragon]

Feeling fatigue from prolonged listening sessions from overly 'sharp' and/or 'bright' headphones is normal. From what I remember from my old anthropology class, was that humans naturally tune in, become more alert, to sharp/piercing (even loud) sounds because of an instinctual response to possible predators lurking about. So we are hard-coded to feel that fight or flight, heart thumping reaction.

So that's why at first, we think we're enjoying the detail highs, some to the point of being called piercing, because we're instinctual attuned to it. But when you're body's in that alert mode for extended periods due to extended headphoning, you'll physically feel that fatigue because your body is in a continual heightened alert mode.

Some don't have the physical response to the 'bright' sounds, and can stand to enjoy it more, and for longer periods.

 

[Kikuji]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rickio /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you haven't experienced ear fattigue your lucky but as you read most people agree any bright headphone will do it and even as Andrew_Wot said bass heavy also. Low end Grados and Ultrasones have all given me ear fatigue. The MS1 and SR225 were not not fatiguing to me as was the SR60 and the HFI 780 was also fatiguing but mostly because I got excited and listened to loudly hehehe.

I totally agree about low end Grados. I need to upgrade to the SR226 soon.

 

[jamato8]

What does it for me is playing air guitar really, really hard and smacking down onto the floor, man does that hurt my knees but anyway, after a while I start getting really tired, you know fatigued when listening this way but for a while it's fun but man one day I hit a note and threw my hand back and hit the wall, hot damn did that hurt, geez I thought I crushed some bones and the pain made me fatigued but I guess that is secondary fatigue to the music but it's all related if you know what I mean.

 

[edstrelow]

Try Googling this. This is a technical term from acoustic research.

Auditory Fatigue
Loss of sensitivity to sounds as a result of auditory stimulation, manifesting as a temporary shift in auditory threshold. The temporary threshold shift, TTS, is expressed in decibels.


We are not generally able to do our own threshlod measurement but you can probably bet when you listen to any system with a markedly unbalanced frequncey response you will end up with the above-mentioned threshold shift from being over stimulated by some band of frequnecies.

I recall an early speaker system of mine which after a period of listening time left my ears feeling numb because of a boomy bass and a treble deficiency.

 

[onlysleeping]

To me, fatiguing means I don't want to listen to a complete song, or I'm searching for something to change the sound. The SR80s were very fatiguing at first - way too bright, even after about 50 hours of burn in. I put the radioshack pads under the bowls to take care of that.

 

[thedauntlessone]

Ringing doesn't mean anything to me because I like to destroy my ear drums.

Usually when your ears feel tired/some pain and don't want to listen to any more music for awhile means you're "fatigued."