Q: What is it about loud rock music that makes your ears ring after several hours at a concert or club? Does loud classical music have the same effect?
A: 鈥� er, pardon?
A: Ringing in the ears is called tinnitus. In the circumstances described above it can often be accompanied by a temporary loss of hearing known as temporary threshold shift and indicates damage to the nerves of the inner ear caused by excessive noise exposure.
Advertisement
The criterion is not the type of music listened to but the sound energy involved. Rock music, being prone to electric amplification, can generate high noise levels. This tends not to be the case with classical music, with the possible exception of Wagner.
Repeated exposure to high noise levels can lead to permanent and irreversible hearing damage and because of this, noise in the workplace is subject to legislation 鈥� the maximum permitted exposure level being 90 dB(A) over an eight hour shift.
Damage of this nature tends to affect hearing mainly at a frequency of about 4 kilohertz and presents a characteristic profile on an audiogram.
This loss is insidious and may not be noticeable to the sufferer until natural hearing loss through ageing (presbycusis) begins to occur. At this point, hearing function may start to drop off sharply and it is, unfortunately, far too late to do anything about it.
It is best not to expose one鈥檚 hearing to very high noise levels, but if it does occur, it is important to allow full recovery (16 hours) before re-exposure to the sound. You may wonder if rock musicians suffer from this form of deafness 鈥� they do.