painful distortion

[not]

I've written about the very loud conditions under which I now work, but the reference is probably irrelevant to anyone not having read that post. The relationship to it here, aside from the fact that I have been able to get the radios often set at a lower volume, is that I recently came to question one of my initial observations.

I have no way to know actual or relative dB levels, but a loud radio a few days ago set me thinking. This radio a cheap "mini stereo," one of those almost boom boxes with CD player, tape player, and radio. It does not have a carry-it-around handle across the top and is a little larger than the majority of boom boxes (but no so large that it isn't frequently relocated to different places in the work area). The speakers look to be about five inches in diameter.

It was thirty to forty feet away, with the speakers pointed away from me. On this occasion it was turned up until I felt pain, not intense, but seemingly real enough. Those voluntarily listening to it seem unconcerned.

I got to wondering if it is possible for such a device to put out enough sound energy to really produce pain at forty feet, especially through what are the best foam ear plugs I know about (the "noise reduction rating," based on Federal standards, is 33dB). What I felt, upon reflection, seemed somewhat like a mild tooth ache, in all my teeth (not caused by a clenched jaw). What was most apparent to me was the distortion. The "sound" of the radio station/radio is always unpleasant, but as some point as the volume is turned up, there is no longer any doubt that some species of distortion is present and fairly high.

Now I am uncertain if the radio sounds levels were ever as high I originally thought, although they are certainly too high too often. No one could seriously contend that a level that makes the lyrics plain at the opposite end of the large room, perhaps 150 feet from the source, is "low."

Is it common for people to experience audio distortion as pain? I don't know what type of distortion it is but it does not seem like heavy clipping to me.

Most people seem to have no idea about, or interest in, audio fidelity. Besides the several cheap boom box type things always present, I have been subjected to a few exceptionally bad audio reproducers.

In two places I have come across people listening to small, easily portable computer speakers plugged into their work station computers. I don't know just what the connections are. Everything has high speed internet but I wouldn't think poor reception would be possible that way. However, these people were listening to a radio station and the sound was as from very weak reception, full of static, noise, and dropouts. I might listen to such a set-up if trying to get disaster information upon which my life might depend, but they were "listening" to music.

Another time there was a small portable radio, paperback book size, powered from the mains, that sounded like a capacitive tuned radio not quite on the station. Rather retched, but the listeners seem happy. When I mentioned the condition, I got only blank stares in return.

These last few paragraphs were relevant to my question only to point to evidence that my perception could have some basis: people still listen in spite of high distortion, i.e. the distortion isn't just my imagination,. These people just seem to like high sound levels; that it is mainly noise apparently does not matter.

Is it common for people to experience audio distortion as pain?

I don't know about 'common' - but one thing that has been noted by a lot of people, and this has been known about for ages, is that you can cope better with higher levels of musical sound if it's not significantly distorted.

It may well be that some people are far more affected by this than others - and I suppose that what it amounts to is a form of synaesthesia. For myself, I don't think that I feel this as a physical pain at the levels I tend to perceive it at - but I'm fairly confident that if I listened to audio at levels where it would manifest itself as pain, then the threshold would be at a lower level if there was a lot of distortion involved.

I think you need a different job!

[not]

Is it common for people to experience audio distortion as pain?[/color] I don't know what type of distortion it is but it does not seem like heavy clipping to me.

yes

though in my experience levels, frequencies, specific interpretations, reactions are individual to 'systems'.  the system is defined by the driver (player), environment, receiver (i.e. human) and content.

lots and lots of anecdotes across a wide range of musical taste and experience, from windshield wipers to pro music friend who had to leave 'not as terrible as they could be' auditoriums when certain specific brass heavy classical compositions were featured  (couple of things by Handle come immediately to mind). . . he also, for a variety of reasons tried 25 dB in ear attenuators, but for what ever reason still claimed pain from specific compositions (no matter degree of skill with which they were performed)

while it's not my primary diagnosis your description suggestions that your reaction might, in part, be due to harmonic sympathetic resonance in dental amalgams

in early days of playing out our youthful enthusiasm adamantly asserted that louder was better.  Venue owners did not always concur.  Gradually we learned we could play much louder with, generally speaking, less distortion (of certain types) . . . better equipment, more collaborative settings, someone besides the drummers idiot younger brother running the board all translated into louder . . . since we started from the position of causing brick walls to crumble . . . reducing distortion was pretty much the only way to get perceptually louder

This is an interesting cross between perceptual acoustics, psychology, physical resonance (per Oretez' suggestion), and musicianship.  I don't suppose there's a way to separate out the implications of each of these on the given situation.  Personally I can attest to certain sounds affecting me physically because of discomfort caused by what the sound contained far sooner than the dB level would have through a purely psychoacoustical, involuntary physical response.  Yes, distortion would be a factor in this. 

A bad pair of speakers grate on the ear because they're uneven; hence, the dB level isn't enough to predict its effect on listeners, because a disproportionate amount of energy in one peaky area is annoying far sooner than when the overall dB level gets unsafe.  So yes, as Oretez was describing, it totally makes sense that cleaner = freedom to be louder.  In this case, the converse seems to be at stake.

Yep, how about a new job?  It's always better to seek one while still employed, from a position of strength.

The stuff that is passed off as music about 98% of the time, mostly from one radio station, is intrinsically unpleasant to me. I don’t want to hear it at any volume level, but at what I might consider normal listening levels, it produces more psychic distress than physical pain. Probably the mastering and radio station treatment enters into the experience. For everything, there is that unpleasant radio station sound -- for the music, for the station announcements, for advertisements, for broadcast telephone calls -- but the music itself  is the bottom of the trash pop. Louder is worse, but quietly is still a big step down from the bliss of turned off.

Loud and very loud are now less frequent. I have appealed to supervisors, to the radio twiddlers themselves (only a few people ever touch the radios, to adjust the volume or to turn them on), to the guy who runs the entire facility. I have also just walked up and turned one or another radio down at times. People get the idea, but tend to easily forget ... or something.

My view is that, as a matter of common courtesy, just simple manners, one does not force his entertainment on other people. Music should not be played into the general atmosphere, at any volume, if there is anyone present who does not want to hear it; this isn’t a party. In my more than forty years at various jobs, this is the first place that did observe that civilized behavior.

I won’t go into any details or reasons, thus depriving the inclined of specific targets for their psychological interpretations, but I think finding another job just now would be quite difficult. Also, aside from the radios, the job is not unpleasant, though not exceedingly stimulating. Also, I am engaged in a few experiments to see if I can influence certain aspects of some operations.

Eventually, if anything at all works out, I want to try to influence the matter of the radios further, even unto their demise. Eventually I will probably be back with specific observations and questions, to find out if my view of certain things is shared by anyone else -- or if I am totally alien to this culture and race.

Andy, you've posted many times and at great length about this job.  Is this job really worth all of the problems you encounter?  In these economic times, it may seem so, but if there is another opportunity for you elsewhere, would you take it? 

Yes, I would consider something else if it were not too big a step down.

Personally, before you go to a new job I think we need to take up a collection for a big ol' daddy boombox outfitted with the entire organ repertory of J.S. Bach!

Personally, before you go to a new job I think we need to take up a collection for a big ol' daddy boombox outfitted with the entire organ repertory of J.S. Bach!

this isn't intended as criticism but genuine inquiry as to whether you have lived in such a sheltered protected environment that passive aggressive retaliation has ever 'worked' for you

for it to have any positive benefit at all AndyH's work place would have to be far more homogeneous then he has described . . .  but in my experience passive aggressive retaliation not only tends to escalate tension but introduces 'unintended' consequences whose devolution tends to be apparent after events eventually shake out

but more to the AndyH point wouldn't proposed retaliation violate AndyH's stated aesthetic ethic?

While I know it’s not nice to put words into other people’s mouths, I think the Bach suggestion was tongue-in-cheek. However, it does go both ways. Not only do I don’t care what other people listen to (I just don’t want to be assaulted with it), I don’t have any desire to force my tastes on them. Any behavior modification I might want to work would be towards an appreciation of quietness.

But I do believe, from evidence on this job and in other past circumstances, that those people who think nothing of forcing their tastes on others, even in the face of requests and/or complaints, would complain bitterly should I take control of the broadcasts and treat them to selections of my musical interests, even though those be fairly varied.

I have no desire for a better musical broadcast at work, the acoustical environment is too poor to do anything but cheapen the product. Those boom boxes, and I suspect all boom boxes, sound intrinsically too bad for the music to be very enjoyable even under better circumstances.

One person, not from there, told me a conflict about music some people didn’t like, at a place she used to work, was solved by an agreement that a different, particular, radio station would be assigned to each day of the week. No one’s personal preferences cold intervene.

I agree this would be some improvement over the awful stuff that is played almost all the time, but it would still be unpleasant to me. Aside from the fact that the “radio sound” comes with most stations, I like music only when I’m in the mood for music, which is rarely when I’m doing something else. Then, beyond the time that the need is filled, which can vary markedly, continued music is just irritating noise, even if something I like quite well at the right time.

@ oretez -- I was being entirely facetious because it won't work, but would nearly certainly make things worse.  And I happen to like Bach organ music.

Also, I do not believe in retaliation.

Humor over the Internet doesn't consistently translate.

Also, I do not believe in retaliation.

Oh, I do! It's far more fun!

Humor over the Internet doesn't consistently translate.

... and so I shall leave you to work out exactly what I meant by that!