Hearing Test
After spinning music for over 12 years now I was curious what effect playing in clubs and festivals has on my ears. You don’t have to be a scientist to know that damage to your ears from clubbing or concerts is a fact. Here in the Netherlands almost 20.000 young people every year get permanent hearing loss due to clubbing every week..Last year I went to the hospital for a hearing test and the result hit me right in the face. That beep in my ears is there, that I had noticed already but when I saw the test result on paper it seriously made me ask myself if I should keep on playing every weekend next to, most of the times HORRIBLE monitors and damage my ears even further.
I have a moderate to moderately severe hearing loss at 4000 Hz..that means that the sound level, in my case, needs to be at at least 40dB on that frequency (4K Hz) for me to hear it. Also the low end at around 250 Hz to 500 Hz has a mild loss.
Keep in mind that I wear earplugs for a couple of years now when I go out to a club or festival. I protect my ears.
When I perform I don’t wear them cause it simply doesn’t work for me. For most other dj’s it doesn’t work either and I tell you why: because they are wearing earplugs and the audience is not, the sound is even louder and higher then it normally should be cause they try to make up for the frequencies that are blocked by the earplugs by turning the high and midknobs on the mixer sometimes more than a quarter above ‘0′ (DJ’s will understand what I’m saying .
Why am I writing things what you peeps already know, cause you ALL got that high beep in the ears when you leave a club!
3 things:
1. Partypeeps: Please go the a local store that sells custom made earplugs and get them! Seriously, when you damage your ears every week by going to the disco or concert, your ears simply don’t have the power to restore all of the little hairs in your inner ear that move for you to hear sounds. If they are down, they are down and your loss is permanent. Think about that… you need to use your ears for a couple of decades..If you don’t have the money for it, buy the yellow rubber ones.
2. Club owners: please get some really good technicians who know what they are doing! It doesn’t make sense if you put a massive soundsystem in your club that can go over 120 dB if you can’t even make it sound clean by people who have a proper education for it..Same with those old freaking monitors we as dj’s have to put up with time and time again. Proper equipment and placement (last time I checked, my ears were still on each side of my head, not on my damn ankles!) makes it sooooo much easier for us to hear, we don’t need to put the monitors on level 10 if they work on level 3 as long it’s a clean sound and the monitor is checked by a professional!
3. I got scared man! I’m producing music in my studio besides playing in clubs and I don’t want that to stop just because I fuck up my ears in a club. I hear this high noise all the time and it’s making me tired…
In the Apple App Store I found an application called uHear.
It’s free and gives you a proper hearing test that for me tested the same as the one in the hospital. I’ll attach my hearing test so you can place your results next to mine. And believe me, I’m one of the few dj’s that plays always around ‘0′ on the high, mid and low, i wear earplugs when I go out myself and my monitors aren’t even that loud if you for example stand in the djbooth with Benny Rodrigues, Roog, Ryan Marciano & Sunnery James to name a few. Not to diss them but it makes you wonder how fast hearing loss can occur…
