Too loud? Why hearing damage is an issue for musicians and audiences alike

Numerous musicians have gone public about their hearing issues — including Dave Grohl, Will.i.am, and Sting — and more punters at festivals and other events seem to be seeking protection with ear defenders.

Anusha Mohan is a postdoctoral researcher into tinnitus based in Trinity College Dublin. Originally from Chennai in southern India, she is a trained classical dancer and herself suffers from intermittent, stress-induced tinnitus.

With a BA in biomedical engineering and a PhD in auditory neuroscience from the University of Texas, she received a postdoctoral award from the Irish Research Council in 2019 to continue her research into how tinnitus is generated.

Tinnitus is, she explained, a “chronic phantom perception” rather than an illusion. It can sound like ringing or whooshing sounds, or in some, more rhythmic noises akin to waves on a shore or a heartbeat.

The condition affects between 10% and 15% of the population. Of this, about two thirds report that the condition is manageable but for a small number of people, it has very serious impacts on their mental health and quality of life.

Received wisdom is that tinnitus happens because the hair cells that receive sound waves in your ear are dying or damaged, and this is true of the temporary ringing gig-goers can experience. But in long-term chronic sufferers, it’s more complex than that, Mohan explains.

About 90% of tinnitus is in people with hearing loss, but the remaining 10% is in people with no hearing loss. This is because two neural networks are involved in tinnitus perception: the first involves the sound itself, but the second involves the annoyance caused by the sound: quite literally, how distressing its presence is.

“This annoyance is not something you see only in people with tinnitus, but also in people suffering chronic pain conditions, for example,” she says. “It’s this common distress network that becomes more active in people with tinnitus.”

 Because of this psychological element to the condition, Mohan really wants to break down taboos and discuss the experience of tinnitus, which many sufferers say is an incredibly isolating one: they are subject to a constant, exhausting, invisible force not being experienced by others around them.

The ear has an ingenious inbuilt protection mechanism. When exposed to harmful noise levels over time, muscles and tendons connected to the ear drum tighten, reducing the force to the oval window in the inner ear.

But this has serious consequences for people attending multi-day festivals or listening to music through headphones for long periods of time, Mohan points out: as the ear adapts, music is perceived as less loud, prompting listeners to move closer to the source or to pump up the volume on their headphones.

“When you’ve been exposed to 80 decibels, for example, for a prolonged amount of time, it’s not experienced as so loud. But we want the full experience of each instrument while listening, and we think, ‘I can’t hear this as well,’ and then bump it up by 5 decibels and then build tolerance.”

 It’s an oversimplification to talk about noise levels purely in terms of decibels, because there are some frequencies that are more audible – and therefore more potentially harmful – to human ears. A measure called dba, decibels adjusted for human hearing, is frequently used. Also, time of exposure is very important when it comes to how serious and how permanent the hearing loss will be.

But in simple terms, according to the UK’s Royal National Institute for the Deaf, any sound above 85 decibels (db) is likely to cause hearing damage, while at 120db, it will take under two minutes for lasting damage to occur. For vulnerable groups including infants and older people, levels above 70db are not recommended.

Gig-goers frequently experience 100db and above. Many bands have taken pride in performing at volumes well above this: Leftfield’s 1996 UK tour was a notorious example, reaching volumes of 137db. Of course, rock and metal are the genres that compete for volume, giving rise to This Is Spinal Tap’s famous “turn it up to 11” parody, so most of the rest of the Guinness Book of Records spots for loudest gigs are in those genres, going to bands including Gallows, Kiss and Manowar.

While audience members can leave if they find a gig too loud, for the musicians themselves, noise levels and hearing protection are a workplace safety issue.

Dublin drummer Paul Moran sued Riverdance’s production company, Abhann Productions, in 2008, claiming that the three years he spent touring with Riverdance in the late nineties were the cause of his life-altering hearing damage induced tinnitus.

There is surprisingly little legislation into noise levels and what exists is mostly framed in terms of noise pollution and nuisance rather than health.

There is one piece of EU workplace safety legislation that says workers likely to be exposed to volumes of above 85db need to be notified for their safety.

Each year, Laois County Council grants Electric Picnic, Ireland’s biggest music festival, a three day licence on the basis that their volume will not exceed 65dba at nearby houses….but their online documents contain no conditions as to what noise level festival-goers will experience at different stages.

Mohan believes it’s time for this to change at both a policy and organiser level.

“We should also be taking into account how long the festival or concert is,” she points out. “We need to ask what the risks of exposure are for different amounts of time. I think it’s a responsibility from the government’s side, and the organisers, to actually measure that. I think we need a culture change, a system change.”

 DJ Greg Dowling: 'In DJ boxes, the volume is very, very loud'

DJ Greg Dowling, one half of acclaimed house duo Fish Go Deep and originator of famed dance nights at Sir Henrys in Cork, made the difficult decision to step back from live DJing two years ago, to protect the remainder of his hearing.

He’s by no means hung up his headphones, though, and is still recording and producing: he and Fish Go Deep partner in crime Shane Johnson have a fourth album, What I Mean By Beautiful, due out in late November.

Having first had tinnitus symptoms after a Big Audio Dynamite gig in Sir Henry’s 35 years ago, Dowling found his, a whooshing noise, worsen during the Covid lockdowns, culminating in his decision to stop doing live sets.

“Look, I´m going to hang on to what I have,” he says, with a sigh that sounds like the auditory equivalent of a shrug. “Not being able to DJ, what can I do about it, really? I can still work in studio, I can still jam.” 

Dowling thinks DJs are particularly vulnerable to hearing damage. “Particularly with electronic music, it could be a four-hour set and it’s constant,” he says. “In DJ boxes, the volume is very, very loud, and there’s often speakers right by your head.” 

He says there’s a bit of a taboo about discussing tinnitus and hearing loss because musicians’ performing careers are connected to their ability to hear.

“It’s a bit of a problem that a lot of people in the industry don’t want to talk about it,” he says. “Particularly in music. I think they’re worried people will think they won’t be able to do their job properly, won’t be able to mix a record. I think that’s one of the reasons that people generally don’t talk about it. But also they may feel like they’ve let themselves down because they got it in the first place.”

 Dowling has done some cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and he finds that helpful, as well as listening to soothing music at a low volume. With CBT, “you focus on your body” he says. 

“I'm very much a person who’s in my head a lot and if I can get away from that, I can feel it fade away.” 

“I think it often relates to the way you’re feeling. I know if I get a bit stressed out, it’s definitely worse. But you have to try to remember that it can’t hurt you. It can’t do any harm to you per se: it´s just there.” 

He now uses an in-ear monitor called the Ambrose Diaphonic Ear Lens, developed by Stephen Ambrose, the same person who invented in-ear monitors in the 1970s and 1980s: diaphonic ear lenses act as a second ear drum, allowing you to hear music very clearly at a low volume.

In terms of gig-goers, Dowling says there’s a growing awareness of ear protection at live events. “I’ve been to some gigs where a lot of people are wearing a form of protection,” he says. “When you drink alcohol, that lowers your resistance to the high end of it, so definitely in terms of venues there should be more awareness of it.” 

 Dave Hynes, guitarist: 'It was probably uncool to even talk about it'

 Guitarist Dave Hynes plays with Cork ska act Pontius Pilate and the Naildrivers and with recently reformed Metal act Perish the Thought. His tinnitus started with one memorable, excruciating moment.

It was 12 years ago, during a sound check for a Christmas gig in a popular Cork hotel: “I had two monitors in front of me, and there was this huge feedback explosion from the singer’s mic into the monitors. I just remember going, ‘ok that’s not normal.’ I did the gig but the next night, the ringing was still there.

“I said to myself, ‘I´ll give it the day now, see how it goes.’ And it just kept going: a week, a month, a year. It was permanent.” Hynes’ tinnitus manifests as three constant tones of different pitches. For the first year, he says he felt extremely isolated and struggled to cope with the constancy of it. Googling didn’t help: what he found was a depressing prognosis and little hope of anything approaching a cure, apart from masking techniques and cognitive behavioural therapy.

“Some nights you couldn’t sleep; it was hard to cope with and it would get worse, you’d have tinnitus spikes from time to time,” he says.

Over time, though, he adapted and has become so adept at tuning it out that these days, he barely notices it.

“To be honest, I just said to myself, I’m going to habituate myself to it, see if I can train my brain to not hear it,” he says. “That’s done me all these years: I haven’t needed to go to counselling.” 

It doesn’t affect his playing or his ability to hear or enjoy music. Having experimented with different ear plugs to protect the remainder of his hearing, he now uses moulded ear plugs that stop him experiencing tinnitus spikes after gigs.

Hynes went to an audiologist, who told him that he has hearing loss in the same frequency occupied by a drum kit’s snare. Despite his dramatic tinnitus onset, he admits that throughout his early gigging years, in rock and metal bands in the 1990s, he was certainly damaging his hearing.

“There was a lot of rehearsing in really confined spaces and there was absolutely no awareness about wearing ear plugs and it was probably uncool to even talk about it,” he says.

But he has noticed a recent change in awareness, citing a gig he was at by drone metal band Sunn O))) where the venue offered gig-goers free ear plugs. 

“I thought it was really good that the venue did that and I think other venues should follow suit,” he says. “Maybe they could have signs too, just to raise awareness.” 

But for Hynes, when it comes to workplace safety for musicians, the responsibility rests firmly on the shoulders of the performers themselves. Although music schools do have a role to play, he believes, in “teaching up and coming musicians that ear plugs are a must.” Apart from that, the only cure for his own tinnitus is the impossible: a time machine.

“At the end of the day, it’s there and it’s not going away and you can’t get rid of it,” he says. “Which is horrible. I just wish I could go back to myself in my twenties and just say, ‘here, wear these and don’t worry about looking cool.’”

Tips to protect your hearing

If you find yourself at a gig or festival that you worry is damaging your hearing, here’s what you can do:

Bring and wear your own earplugs or over-ear protectors. As well as the standard ones you’ll find in chemists or hardware stores, several companies also make specialised models for musicians and other music lovers. These claim to lower the decibel level, without affecting the sound quality.

Ask venues if they have earplugs: they might not this time, but they might think about it for future gigs.

You can download sound level meter apps for both Android and iPhone but these vary in reliability and are only for reference.

Believe your ears: listen to your own intuition and your own comfort levels and remember that alcohol and other substances can lower your inhibitions.

Step back. Decibel levels decrease by orders of magnitude the further you are from the source so if you find you’re at a loud gig with no hearing protection, move to the back of the venue.