Ear and Hearing Protection for Musicians and DJs
How Does Being a Musician Affect Your Ears
However pleasant your music is being a musician you expose yourself to potential loud exposure levels of different instruments, vocal levels and techology.
Musicians are said to be four times more likely to have a hearing loss than non musicians of the same age group.
Music Induced Hearing Loss
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Constant exposure to the loudness level of music causes damage to the inner ear hair cells especially those responsible for high frequency hearing. Noise induced hearing loss is permanent and measures should be made to reduce the occurance of it. The good news is if prevention methods are put in place this kind of hearing loss is completely preventable.
Best Ear Plugs for Musicians and DJs
Keeping Healthy Hearing and Ears as a Musician and DJ
- Look at getting specifically designed musician ear plugs which have filters to decrease sound equally across frequency range, compared to your cheap pop in ear plugs which will make the sound appear muffled as it will decrease more so the high frequencies
- If you are cello or bass player, this will be worth mentioning to your audiologist when arranging having custom made moulds as they can be vented differently as your instrument produces a low frequency sound
- Your position when playing your instrument is a key part to protecting your ears, try to direct the sound away from fellow musicians and if you are using an amplfied speaker to amplify your insturment sound you should be sat parallel to it rather than in front or behind.
- When practising your instrument look at obtaining a practice mute to decrease the sound exposure
- A plexiglass baffle can be attached to the back of a musician's chair to help deflect sound
- Get your hearing checked regularly to monitor your hearing and check your methods of hearing protection are working