Apple's AirPods Pro hearing health features

Went to see an artist (DJ) I liked and forgot my filters. Remembered that I had my AirPods Pro and used them in transparency mode and after only 10 minutes completely forgot I had them even in. I was surprised how good they worked as hearing protection!

Now when I’m at festivals and I have friends without earplugs, I usually recommend them to just use their AirPods Pro (if they have some) instead of buying cheap plugs

I've done that. At some point I felt like they weren't doing anything and pulled them out only to discover what a good job they had been doing. They lower the volume while keeping the sound pretty much the same. It's incredible.

This comment confuses me, but makes sense. Concerts are for consuming sound, people wear ear plugs??? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose? Like a blindfold in a theater?

Earplugs lower the volume, they do not cut the sound completely.

Good earplugs (I use Etymotics myself) can do this without affecting the sound quality, making concerts enjoyable and safe.

The main reason is that it's tough to have a uniform sound pressure distribution on a stage. That means the people at the front usually have very high sound levels, while those at the back have way lower. Technicians then make the tradeoff of having too high pressures at the front (where you must have earplugs) to afford to have medium levels at the back.

Weirdly, earplugs can make it easier to hear certain detail, despite the reduction in volume. I wear earplugs at concerts and I can hear all the instruments, despite them somehow reducing the intensity of crowd noises. It’s also a lot easier to hear people talking to you, as long as they’re speaking in the direction of your ears.

The music at many concerts and nightclubs is unfortunately loud enough to cause permanent hearing loss.

Ear plugs reduce the volume to a level where you can still hear the music, but the risk of long term damage is reduced. (You can get "musician's ear plugs" which attenuate all frequencies equally, so they don't make the music sound weird.)

I know several people who have permanent hearing damage as a result of loud clubs in their 20s. Gotta look after your hearing when listening to love music.

Bands, DJs, clubs, concert venues, festivals (almost) all insist on playing music much louder than needed for reasons I'll never understand. The choice between "play music on a decent level for everyone to enjoy without causing hearing loss" and "play music too loud, requiring everyone to either wear ear protection or suffer hearing loss" has somehow been decided in favor of the latter. It's ridiculous.

For some kinds of music it is more or less ingrained in the culture -- think of the "It goes up to 11" in Spinal Tap. But in fact it's worse than that; almost all music is played way too loud.

During the Covid period I attended a number of smaller scale events, that for some reason used a lower sound volume. It Was So Much Better. Those events proved what I already heavily suspected: you do no need those high sound volumes to fully enjoy music.

I grabbed a pair of Eymotics several years ago and never looked back. For a while I didn't believe they worked and kept having to take them out, only to realize that they were in fact dampening the volume even though the music sounded the same.

Right. I didn't consider this as a possible option. It seems odd, but makes a lot of sense if you work at some place loud.

That's horrible. It sounds odd to me because I wear earplugs to sleep or do loud things. To not hear things seems the opposite of a concert.

There's like... two of us. For the life of me I am unable to understand[1] why all musical playback devices must have their volume turned up well past the point of distortion. I really don't want to hear some poor over-stressed subwoofer making chuff-chuff noises as it struggles to play back what must be a square wave because of clipping.

[1] Sigh, actually, I am able to understand but it's just sad instead of funny: the experienced professional musicians have all partially lost their hearing from years of too-loud music. They don't trust the juniors to set up the equipment, so they tune it to their deafness level. This then damages the hearing of the juniors, so by the time they get to be senior enough to be trusted with the volume knob, they're half-deaf themselves.

I went to a drum'n'bass party the other week, and if I didn't have earplugs I'm positive I would've had permanent hearing damage from it. I didn't have a decibel meter with me, but if I did I imagine it would simply say "Holy shit". Even with my good earplugs, it was still overwhelmingly loud depending on where I was standing, but with them off no matter where I was it was overwhelming.

Maybe I'm just more cognizant of it these days, but I don't remember festivals and parties in the past turning things up quite so loud as seems to be the case these days.