Hearing Loss Prevention

75 percent of musicians suffer hearing loss during their professional lives.
This can limit their work life, or cause them to have to stop completely.

Students, staff and faculty members can sign up at school for yearly fittings of professional earplugs. These earplugs are designed for professional musicians. They allow you to hear the full spectrum of the tone while protecting your hearing.
Contact Carlijn Kooijmans: carlijn.kooijmans@hku.nl for more information.

Here you can find links where you can READ more, LISTEN to examples, and TEST your hearing.

What happens to our ears if they are exposed to loud music or sounds?:
“Through regular exposure to damaging noise, musicians run the risk of various forms of hearing damage. Sometimes noise leads to temporary hearing problems similar to those that can occur after an evening at the disco: a ringing or tingling in the ears that impairs hearing for a while. Continued exposure to noise leads to damage to the hair cells in the cochlea (inner ear). Just as stalks of corn can snap in a hard wind, hair cells can break in the case of loud noises.”

Damage to your ears is permanent, as the hair cells cannot repair themselves!

When is it too loud?
• After a concert, or after listening to music on your earphones, do you hear a high peep or a soft hissing noise in your ear? Then the music was too loud.
• After listening to music or playing in your band or orchestra, do you have trouble following a conversation or concentrating on a television program? Then the music was too loud.
• When you are in a club, concert or rehearsal and you cannot hear someone speaking at a normal conversational level, then the music is too loud.

Above text translated and adapted from www.oorcheck.nl

READ more about hearing loss on these sites and TEST YOUR HEARING:
On www.oorcheck.nl you can read learn all about it, and test your ears with a reliable Dutch Hearing Test, a Dutch language speech recognition test.

For a test in a lot of other languages look on this site for Hearing Test for Other Languages.

Or for British English speakers try this British Hearing Test.

Jazz, Pop and rock musicians who use amplification, also take a look at www.hearnet.com

LISTEN online to what hearing damage is like:
Hearing loss doesn’t just mean that you hear less. There are several types of hearing loss, from tinnitus (constant peep in your ear) to distortion of incoming sounds.

Listen to What Different Types of Hearing Damage Sound Like.

Listen to how it sounds when hearing damage leads to what is called Tinnitus, where you hear a high tone all the time: