Hearing loss in DJing is no laughing matter. The career of a DJ is filled with towered speakers, blown monitors, and over compensated headphones. If DJ’s don’t take care of their ears out in the field, they can be at risk of losing a vital body function that you need to DJ. That is why it is always important to practice preservation techniques to save your hearing. (Check out Ean’s tips to prevent tinnitus.)
The Australian government launched a new website recently that gives a pretty good gauge to test your hearing and evaluate your risk when it comes to hearing loss. Read more below about Know Your Noise and how it can teach you about your own hearing abilities.
Noise Risk Calculator
Being a DJ, typically, puts one into a high risk environment for hearing loss. Know Your Noise has two parts to understand one’s hearing abilities. The first part is a Noise Risk Calculator which looks at leisure and work activities to determine one’s risk of hearing damage from noise exposure. This is a comprehensive survey that takes about 8-10 minutes and goes into pretty much every aspect of one’s life.
Taking the test is really easy to understand and I had no problem getting in each part of my life. The results also show how each part of your life contributes to your overall hearing score. Here is a sample of my results below to show the extensiveness of the Noise Risk Calculator.
What is admirable about this Noise Risk Calculator is that it displays the leading categories of hearing loss while offering resources on how to prevent hearing loss. A big thing that I need to start doing more is wearing my ear plugs while DJing and going to concerts. Ear plugs may be the saving grace when it comes to developing hearing loss. Check out the DJTT store for your own pair of ear plugs made for music.
Know Your Noise Hearing Test
The Know Your Noise Hearing Test is the second part when it comes to understanding one’s hearing abilities. This test is meant to assess whether or not one’s hearing is damaged and if it is similar to other people’s results in their own age group. If people are having trouble hearing, they often report that they have trouble hearing in noisy environments. To assess this problem, the Hearing Test measures how well one can hear given a noisy environment.
The objective is to repeat the numbers given as they are played along with what sounds like an electronic jack hammer. I took the test and I could hear a difference in the difficulty as the test progressed. I tested the hearing test without headphones so it became a little hard to hear but Know Your Noise does recommend using headphones while taking this test.
Obviously this doesn’t replace a clinical test administered by an audiologist or ENT specialist however, if you are concerned about your hearing this test can be used as an estimate on your hearing abilities.
Know Your Noise And Play Safe
Know Your Noise is a great non-commercial tool for people, especially DJs, looking to assess their hearing abilities. People only have two ear drums and those do not repair themselves. For DJ’s it is very important to your hearing. Whether that means turning down the volume on ear buds when casually listening to music or wearing ear plugs when playing a gig, it is important that you take the time to protect your hearing. Know Your Noise has been created by the National Acoustic Laboratories (NAL) and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health.
Use Know Your Noise to learn more about your hearing abilities.
How do you protect your ears? Let us know in the comments below!
Please take care your ears ! ( a Dj with two years sufering tinnitus at 6000 HZ )
Definitely agree with this article about hearing loss. I still remember our first gig and not wearing ear buds. It took quite a while afterwards to get our years back to normal. Strongly suggest o wear ear buds! And reading the OSHA standards that typically come on the user manual for speakers.
Tucson DJ
http://www.luxentertainmentaz.com
I DJ with ANC headphones and carry acoustic ear plugs whenever I go out. I’m a mix engineer by day, so if I don’t I can’t work the next day, so I can’t pay the bills. I’m kind of lucky that I have an inherent obsessive need to protect my ears, I believe it will save my hearing in the long run. Good job DJTT for bringing up this subject. ??????
So odd. After taking the test, I scored about 20% better hearing than average for my age, but my risk is 7.5. which is about 6 times higher than average. Fun.
[…] Hearing loss in DJing is no laughing matter. The career of a DJ is filled with towered speakers, blown monitors, and over compensated headphones. If DJ’s don’t take care of their ears out in the field, they can be at risk of losing a vital body function that you need to DJ. That is why it is always important to practice preservation techniques to save your hearing. To read on ways to prevent this checkout djtechtools.com […]
[…] Hearing loss in DJing is no laughing matter. The career of a DJ is filled with towered speakers, blown monitors, and over compensated headphones. If DJ’s don’t take care of their ears out in the field, they can be at risk of losing a vital body function that you need to DJ. That is why it is always important to practice preservation techniques to save your hearing. To read on ways to prevent this checkout djtechtools.com […]
After taking the test, I`d say it provides a good indicator of your ability to discern specific audio content in noisy environments. However, I feel that I have gotten some answers through logic deduction instead of pure hearing ability, e.g. not hearing the number clearly but eliminating what the number cannot be based on how it is pronounced.
Thumbs up for Djtechtools for promoting hearing loss awareness!
yeah i also feel like my good headphones and deduction played a big factor in me scoring highter than average even after taking the test twice. I guess that’s a good thing because my risk test factor was at 9.2 plus before djing i was a drummer. I guess I’m not doing as bad as i thought.
Definitely going to try this out when I get a chance.
DJTT pushes hearing loss awareness pretty heavily but with good cause. I listened to an older guy talk about his wife’s battle with tinnitus and all of the treatments she had tried to get rid of it. Even said she had considered suicide and that pretty much blew me away. Had no idea how miserable this disease could make some people.
I don’t need any test to know that I certainly have trouble hearing in noisy places. I have certainly picked up hearing damage, and not even from djing. I did it by clubbing, riding motorcycles, going to car and bike races and through diving. It’s not just djing. Even before I started djing I began to wear earplugs.
Why isn’t there any outrage about this? We’re destroying the lives of an entire generation. There was a study recently that said 1.1 billion (not million, BILLION) people are at risk of going deaf worldwide and there was not one politician as far as I know that said anything about making stricter rules. What the fuck is wrong with people?
I cannot emphasis enough the importance of DJ’s taking care of their hearing at not exposing themselves to prolonged loud music over years.
As a 48 year-old DJ with over 30 years spent spinning in clubs I am now speaking as someone who suffers from some hearing loss which isn’t great. The effects can be wide-ranging including tinnitus (which I do not suffer from, but I think I read hear that Ean Golden has suffered with this) and also gradual overall hearing loss, which is what I suffer from. I have trouble picking up different sounds especially if there is an underlying noise. I have terrible trouble hearing conversations in bars because the ambient noise seem the same as those speaking to me which makes picking out sounds difficult, mostly impossible it’s all the same dull volume to me – It’s no fun keep saying ‘pardon’ or ‘could you say that again’ all night and I tend to avoid those places now because of this.
So it is a life-changing condition that will only ever get worse and I can only endorse any article that highlights this for any younger DJ’s who can take preventive measures before it’s too late. My own message to those young DJ’s is take care of your hearing and please don’t abuse it, otherwise the effects will creep up on you in time and the damage is permanent….Fact!!
used know your noise to find out that my hearing was far above average during the hearing test
That’s great Elijah! Protect those healthy ears! 🙂