My new favorite 'phones for tracking

[bouldersoundguy]

Actually...earbuds unlike most larger, studio-style headphones provide little or no isolation, therefor most people turn them up louder...hence greater chance of hearing damage/loss.

Just Google "earbud hearing loss"....

Exactly, which is why I qualified it: "earbuds/IEMs that isolate like earplugs". That includes most professional IEMs and a few consumer earbuds.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

I hate sounding like a Mother Hen here, but I just wanted to point out one other thing. You mention that you're listening at a much lower volume with your ear buds than your previous phones...but are you measuring this based on an output level on a mixing board, etc.? This may have little relationship to the actual decibels being focused directly into your ear canal, since there is a mere inch or so to your eardrum. In addition, the fact that your ear buds are much better at isolation from outside sources also allows for greater sound pressure levels inside your ear canal. Kinda like putting a cork into your ear and letting the sound waves bounce around.

Food for thought...

-Bruce

I was referring to the output on my iPod, both subjectively and objectively. With the stock buds, I had to crank it to hear anything on the subway, and when I did it sounded like VERY loud music over a loud background noise. It was actually kind of unpleasant, and I was worried about my ears the whole time. With quality in-ear earbuds, though, I rarely had the volume much over halfway, and it sounded like comfortably loud music over a muted background.

I recorded some VERY loud guitar last night (for those of you who've played one, a Dual Rec Roadster in Channel 4 Modern, channel volume at noon, and master probably around 10 o'clock, with a Hot Plate taking off 8db - probably too loud for an apartment, to be perfectly honest, but I'm just trying to work quickly and get my rhythm tracks finished before I piss my neighbors off too much ), and ended up going with my full-sized headphones.

Honestly, my initial enthusiasm may have been a little, well, over-enthusiastic. Earbuds rule for situations where you're recording quiet instruments and you absolutely cannot have any bleed - since they're already basically inside your ears, you need so little volume that there's not much to bleed in the first place. However, for louder sources where bleed probably won't be an issue anyway, the full-sized ones are better at rejecting outside noise.

Still, I'll definitely be using both in the future, earbuds for acoustics and vocalists, regular 'phones for almost everything else.

 

[TheChikenMaster]

I use the shure slc2 for tracking mostly, i like them better when doing loud instruments like drums. But it dont get better than the hd280. had mine for 7 yeas and still goin strong.

 

[miroslav]

Exactly, which is why I qualified it: "earbuds/IEMs that isolate like earplugs". That includes most professional IEMs and a few consumer earbuds.

I get what you're saying...but the more they isolate, the more danger they can pose at higher levels because of the isolation...they basically plug the ear cavity and jam the sound waves in there.

Also...earbuds take the more external portions of the ear canal completely out of the equation, but those parts of the ear also play a role in how we hear things, which is also why when mixing, even typical headphones don't work very well because they too skew how we normally hear sounds because they clamp down on the outer ear....all those edges and ridges affect our hearing.

I guess like anything...as long as you practice safe usage, the earbuds could work OK if they feel comfortable to the user. If the sound in the room is extremely loud (like for some live gigs) the earbuds may actually protect your hearing if you keep the earbud levels reasonable.

 

[grimtraveller]

Compression, delay and halibut

The inner ear is the innermost part of the vertebrate ear.

No kidding !

The inner ear is innervated by the eighth cranial nerve in all vertebrates.

I swear it was the sixth one !!

The bony labyrinth, or osseous labyrinth, is the network of passages with bony walls lined with periosteum.

Which is precisely why beetles love to crawl into kids' ears. It's like cave exploration for the insect world......

Although many fish are capable of hearing, the lagena is, at best, a short diverticulum of the saccule, and appears to have no role in sensation of sound.

Generally speaking, most fish are only really interested in the actual recording process, not the songs themselves.

Although fish have neither an outer nor a middle ear, sound may still be transmitted to the inner ear through the bones of the skull, or by the swim bladder, parts of which often lie close by in the body.

As Miles Davies' former bass player Marcus Miller once said of certain fish "You know, black fish don't hear the bass. They feel it".