Ear Fatigue: An Audio Engineers biggest enemy
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- Опубліковано 7 гру 2017
- / garagebandandbeyond
Ear fatigue is something that every audio engineer deals with, but not something every engineer thinks about.
In this lesson I discuss ways to identify the early stages of ear fatigue and ways to keep your ears working properly over a long mixing session.
I didn't know ear fatigue was a thing. Then again, I get eye fatigue after video editing for too long. This is good to know since I will be attempting to mix and adjust a short film's audio. These are good tips.
Glad you like it!
Luckily, my other hobby is drawing and painting. So I just take a break and draw a little picture to the sound of nothing but the soft wind and birds chirping. It's really therapeutic.
G-R-E-A-T video! Never thought of some of these things. You're making me want to get a decibel meter for my phone to make sure things don't get loud outside and fatigue my ears LOL. Seriously, you covered an overlooked subject very well. Unfortunately, I already have some Tinnitus - so I have a small obstacle. Gonna take your tips and run with them!
I know it's a 1-year old comment, but I really want to set one thing straight: mobile apps for sound measurement are not a replacement for a dedicated sound meter. There's even been research on this topic and unsurprisingly, mobile apps are quite inaccurate. For one, microphones used in phones aren't even calibrated to measure sound levels. Imagine trying to write a universal app for every phone out there that will take each microphone's characteristics into consideration!
You can get some really cheap A-weighted sound meters that will be good enough for setting up a baseline listening level. You can also pay a little bit more for switchable A/C weighting and even USB logging.
I, for one, have a bottom-of-the-barrel A-weighted sound meter and it turned out that my usual listening levels with my 5-inch studio monitors fall in the range of 55-60 dB(A) (1 sec slow mode). It also helped me confirm my (probably lifelong) mild hyperacusis - I don't tolerate noises above 70 dB(A) very well, with 85 dB(A) being uncomfortable enough for me to wear earplugs.
@@piotrgraniszewski8544 Thanks for the tip, I got your point 👍
I'm always mixing right after recording.
My ears are mostly already tired from monitoring the recordings.
K need to separate ear task more frequently. For the brain, recording, game staging, eq are all different new tasks, for the ears it all the same and tiring
Thank you for this!
You’re welcome!
This was very helpful, it's been a problem for me as I've spent more and more time in front of my monitors. Do you have a recommendation for a monitor switch box? Something where I can take my interface's main out and be able to switch between a bigger and smaller pair of monitors?
Yeah, check out the Presonus Monitor station. I found one used on Ebay a while back and I LOVE IT!!
And yes, I have made a video about it: ua-cam.com/video/uNn7bCUjXCc/v-deo.html
Thank god i just learned about ear fatigue, it happened just a few minutes ago.
I realized my ears are getting way too tired and head starts to hurt, it felt like i couldn't do this anymore.
I was just listening to my guitar recordings and there was way too many frequencies blasting.
How the hell do people make metal guitars still sound heavy yet they are soft to ears and okay for ears to listen to?
When I EQ, everything turns into shit no matter how much i try.
Should you stop making music for a week?
thanks
It is similar to youtube fatigue.
Ha seriously!!!
Im the 666 viewer
poorly designed audio equipement some speaker headphones dac also high end can by plagued by this problem not your ears i have experience with this symptoms identify where are the problems in your audio chain and remove it immediatly, healty ears hear is more importent tha expensive crap so be carefull