Thursday, October 26, 2006

The Micro-Pundit:  iPod Volume

File this one in the “Well, Duh!” pile:

The New York Times reports that it’s not how long you listen to your iPod, but how loud you listen.  No shit, Sherlock!  If you listen to music at 11 all the time, you’re going to blow your ears apart far faster than if you listen to your music at 4.  And if you listen to your iPod in a noisy environment, you’ll turn up the volume so you can still hear the music over the noise.  Which is why I’m so interested in the new Sony Walkman MP3 players with noise-cancellation built right in.

Now, I admit that this article had an intersting bit of information that I didn’t figure on, namely that it didn’t matter if you used earbuds or full-ear headphones.  I always figured that full-ear headphones blocked out noise a little better than earbuds, so you wouldn’t have to turn up the volume quite so much.  But I guess not.  Ultimately, though, loud is loud, and loud hurts your ears.

Until someone shows me a pair of earbuds that have the same dynamic range of a pair of Grado audiophile headphones, I’ll stick with my Grados, at least for working where the noise isn’t all that bad in the first place.