Video gamers worldwide may be risking irreversible hearing loss and/or tinnitus—persistent ringing/buzzing in the ears—finds a systematic review of the available evidence, published in the open access journal BMJ Public Health.
What evidence there is suggests that the sound levels reported in studies of more than 50,000 people often near, or exceed, permissible safe limits, conclude the researchers.
And given the popularity of these games, greater public health efforts are needed to raise awareness of the potential risks, they urge.
While headphones, earbuds, and music venues have been recognized as sources of potentially unsafe sound levels, relatively little attention has been paid to the effects of video games, including e-sports, on hearing loss, say the researchers.
CounterStrike and all it’s variations was always nuts with this to me, ‘I have the voltume up to hear the footsteps bro’ -KACHOW- “BUT THE HOUSE IS SHAKING” ‘yeah this noob has an AWP, so of course I also have an mmhph’ -THE AUDIENCE IS NOW DEEEF-
As it should be #DynamicRangeIsLife
The first HL had surprisingly good sound with great dunamic range. HL2 felt wimpy, guns never had the same oomph to them.
One of the reasons I stopped playing, does 2 have a loudness range option? Once I discovered that option on my tv I never got jumpscared by an explosion ever again just because I had the volume up to listen to a conversation.
Windows has a compression mode called Loudness Equalization built in
It would be nice if there was a pre-game audio slider like some games have brightness sliders.
Like volume mixer in windows?
WHAT!?
BOOM HEADSHOT.
Ohh fuckin hacks mate.
Often they are just terribly mixed for headphones too.
Especially shooters where the sfx of the guns are just way too loud for how often they are repeated and in comparison to everything else.
I’d almost like to see a shooter game where everyone has silencers on just for the improved acoustics and not destroying ears without messing with settings (and you don’t want to lower footstep sfx even if you want to lower gunshot sfx and they are rarely separate sliders).
Glad there’s attention on this.
Another area that would probably be wise to study is increased resistance in haptics and possible arthritis or repeated strain injuries long term.
Yeah, gunshots really loud, footsteps really quiet is common.
Footsteps very soft you might even say.
Noise cancelling headphones give me tinnitus but it’s totally worth it to live without noise.
Volume sliders never sound linear to me. I also keep them fairly low. This means that each individual step is surprisingly large in volume difference. I don’t get people who go to max volume-- doesn’t it hurt your ears? My laptop stays on 10-20% and some applications are turned down from that even further (TF2 is comically low).
Are you using Bluetooth headphones?
If so, you might want to look into turning off bluetooth absolute volume. It’s supposed to keep volume syncronised between your bluetooth device and your phone/laptop/etc, but some headphones don’t seem to support it, wich can end up with them setting their internal volume to max.
Volume sliders never sound linear to me
Ironically that is because (with very few exceptions) every application from OS-s to streaming service webapps to games to mediaplayers uses linear volume slider. Human hearing is logarithmic.
The way typical volume slider works is multiplying the audio sample values with a coefficient that is ≤1. Ie, if you set volume to 50% the input is multiplied by 0.5 and as a result the signal voltage level on the analog output to your headphone or loudspeaker drivers is halved. The kicker—halving the voltage is just 6 dB less volume. This is why if you have sensitive headphones (or big, powerful speakers) you find that you have to keep the volume slider in your OS at 10% or even lower to not blast your ears off. And why the upper half of volume sliders is completely useless.
I have an unconventional speaker setup that makes classical analog volume control completely impractical. Since said setup has the maximum sound pressure level output of around 110 dB at full scale digital input, I have to keep the OS volume slider at 30% and in-app volume sliders at around 20%, resulting the total multiplier of 0.06 (or about -26dB full scale) to have comfortable volume levels. Only exception is Elite: Dangerous; with sound set to full dynamic range I can keep the main volume slider at maximum and enjoy glorious dynamics. Youtube is also surprisingly reasonable, probably because they normalize to -14dB LUTS or something similar.
HUH, WHAT DID YOU SAY?
I’ve had tinnitus for decades, and it SUCKS. I’ve always been careful for my hearing, but after a concussion it arrived and never went away.
I play games with most sounds off. I can’t use headphones, wearing them gives me a migraine no matter the volume.
I’ve had hearing tests, seen a specialist. I have no hearing loss, but I do have misaphonia and tinnitus. The combination is pure hell, there is no respite.
I can’t distinguish voices in chats well enough to follow what’s being said if more than one person is talking. It’s even worse online when I can’t lip read to decode what’s being said.
Project your earholes.
Sorry to hear that
Can you drown out the tinnitus with more volume?
Not as a rule, no. I end up with a bigger headache and more ringing.
I have Windows volume mixer open all the time. I have developed a habit of pulling the volume down to 10-15% on every new window/app that I open because I hate sudden unstoppable loudness.
Mate i just mute and make the sounds in my head
Check an app called ear trumpet. It gives you way finer control over the volume of everything
Imagine if you could do it for the entire system!
Airpod type devices should be looked at as well, lots of people are gonna have fucked ears for a long time.
You mean earbuds?
computer sounds are way too loud
i have my pc volume set to 50% and still consistently need to turn the master volume for every new game i buy down to 50%, or at least 75%, just so it stops causing physical pain in my ears
I think most people’s setup is windows at 100% and control the volume directly on the headset.
Yeah there’s a lot of variables for audio depending on peoples setups, but having the volume default to 100% is not the correct thing for applications to do, ever.
What is the correct thing to do?
Implementing proper logarithmic volume controls and defaulting them to -20 dB(FS) would be great. But the math involved is slightly more complicated* than the simplistic “multiply everything with a coefficient between 0 and 1” so devs won’t bother (if they even know about logarithmic volume controls at all).
*I did logarithmic volume slider in Jscript for foobar2000 using a Jscript GUI plugin and it was not too difficult, but not straightforward either. Getting the button states and scaling to work correctly was more difficult and I never solved some annoying bugs. That was the first and the only “programming” I’ve ever done in my life.
Hmm, shouldn’t that be a driver level task?
No, it isn’t. OS and app volume controls are not implemented on driver level, but in each application individually, or you wouldn’t be able to change OS volume and in-app volume independent of each other. It’s simple math, multiplying audio sample values with a coefficient, best done in 32 bit floating point.
The question is not whether to do the math at driver level or in the userspace. The question is: if the user sets their volume slider to the middle, what value that coefficient should be? Most apps use simple linear correlation (middle point halves values which is 6 dB of attenuation or -6 dB(FS)) which is not how human hearing works. Log volume control would have the middle point at, eg, -40 dB(FS) and zero point at -80 dB(FS), giving psychoacoustically useful range in both halves of the bar. This is how analog volume controls on amplifiers work (not exactly so, but pretty close).
Driver level volume control can be done, but then you’d need to open your sound card control app and set it there. It would be an addition to OS and app volume controls. It would not be tied to OS or in-app volume controls or affected by standard multimedia keys on your keyboard. And if you decide to do OS volume control at driver level, in-app volume controls would still need to exist and be at the mercy of the app devs competency at implementing it.
Yeah, that all makes sense.
Defaulting to 50% volume would be a good start, might be too quiet for some, might still be too loud for others. But at least it’s not guaranteed to blow most peoples ears out.
What I don’t understand in this thread is most people seem don’t seem to be mentioning that you shouldn’t have your master volume turned all the way up, especially if you have issues with loud volumes. It would be odd to me for a program to default to 50% for its volume. Since no others do, it would sound very quiet compared to all else and then I’d have to adjust it to undo that weird difference. Do people really not turn their master volumes down? I don’t get why not, I do literally constantly.
If I turn my Windows volume or my amp down any more then other applications become too quiet while they are at 100% volume.
The point is 100% shouldn’t be a target aimed for. If my system is at 50% master volume, 100% on applications should still be too loud, you need headroom both up and down for different scenarios. If I play with friends and need speaker audio, then I need the volume louder for them.I can adjust my PC volume on the fly with a knob, but adjusting the whole volume everytime throws everything out of whack, now my YouTube will be too quiet, other games I start up will need their volumes adjusting again etc.
So realistically its better if you keep your volume at a set level and then adjust the apps to get it perfect, the problem is apps defaulting to max volume for that moment of ear rape.
adjusting the whole volume everytime throws everything out of whack
Interesting POV – that statement would be exactly my experience if you replaced “whole volume” with “app-specific volume”
If for no other reason than “I can instantly adjust my master volume with my keyboard but the app specific volume is going to take several clicks to adjust”
I want to adjust my app volume and be done with it, I dont want to adjust my master volume everytime. Besides if I turn down my master volume, now my music is quieter, I have to adjust that, people I am talking to are quieter and I have to adjust that.
In my setup I have a volume knob for each of these on a macropad, but I just turn down the desktop audio knob when starting a new game up, then reset the volume back after I adjust the in-game setting. So I personally have worked around it, but 99.9% of people wont have this so they have to use the OS volume control, which makes this a bigger annoyance.
If apps just didnt start at 100% it wouldnt be an issue, too quiet for some or too loud for some is better than max volume for everyone, which is guaranteed to ear rape some people.
Same. It was a shock to me reading all the replies of people not just turning down the master volume. Usually there is a button on you keyboard specifically for that!
Yeah exactly! I love that modern OSes and apps have individual volume sliders in case I need them, but in reality the way it plays out is the more volumes I adjust, the more confusing it is. I turn my PC speakers or headphones up to a level that basically caps the volume so it never blasts me too badly, then I just adjust my master volume on my keyboard and/or media PC remote. It tends to work well. Very rarely is something loud enough in this context to be alarming. Every now and then, I have to turn down a volume slider within a game/app, usually the music slider. If apps set their default volumes to 50% that would be annoying for me. Although I will say that the idea someone in the thread had – to display a volume slider with a test sound on first launch of a game – is a good idea.
Turn your volume down, bros.
I SAID TURN THE VOLUME DOWN.
I would if you would stop making that non-stop ringing sound.
(I didn’t realize I had tinnitus until I learned that not everyone hears a high pitch whine 24/7. My brain will tune it out naturally unless it’s really quiet or someone mentions it. Like, now.)
If you don’t notice it every time it’s not tininitus just the normal background noise of the ears functioning.
Maybe a more mild case but nope, definitely still tinnitus.
I have sensitive hearing towards higher frequency sounds (10khz+) and I’ve always listened at pretty low volumes (like 10-20% on windows for most headphones, even less on my easier-to-drive earbuds). Unfortunately for me I still ended up getting tinnitus but it’s only noticeable when I actively think about it or when I’m trying to sleep.
Seriously though, tinnitus is awful, it makes sleeping so much harder.
I see, thanks for the information!
Well, its a pitch that never really stops and does overlap with some frequencies enough to be annoying.
It’s not that I stop hearing it. It’s just that I have had this for so long my brain comprehends it as “normal” and it doesn’t hold my attention. Part of the psychology(?) is that I grew up around technology. Hearing PC fans or capacitor whine most of the time was normal for me as long as he pitch is steady. The pitch I hear is almost exactly like an old CRT, actually.
That’s a fun way of thinking about it but nope. It’s Tinnitus.
I’ve had a minor tinnitus since I was a kid, which I tend to be able to ignore most of the time because I’m preoccupied with other stuff, but the talks about tinnitus in the Escape From Tarkov community reminded me of the phenomenon, and I’ve been aware of my own tinnitus ever since.
Same as you now - won’t hear it unless I remember about it and can’t turn my mind to something else.
How did you get tinnitus, if you want to share?
I think I have always had it to some degree? I began to realize something was off when I was in the Navy and they discovered I was missing some of my high range hearing in weird spots. My work on a flight deck didn’t help either, I am sure. If you haven’t stood close to a turbofan engines at full power, it’s an interesting experience. And loud.
I have always liked extremely loud music and hard hitting bass. That likely contributed as well.
Tinnitus sucks ass… seriously take care of your hearing.
Can confirm. Like… guys… it’s bad. You can definitely end up having dark thoughts. Don’t fuck around. Use ear protection where needed, and check your volume settings!
Huh, What?!
-Artillery men, Rock/Metal bands
Every time I open a new game, the volume is set to the absolute max, which is orders of magnitude louder than any other sound on my computer. When I go to change the sound settings, I usually have to put the slider comically low before it gets to an acceptable volume range. At that point fine tuning it becomes kind of difficult.
Seriously, why can’t most games get volume right?
Weird, I don’t have this problem. Probably some bullshit manufacturers “gaming mode elite” software package setting.
Some games I play I do find I have to crank dialog up and effects/music down.
Because it’s not what people want. They want loud, because louder is considered better in social consciousness. That has been the trend for decades.
Yeah I hate this, even with windows at like 25% most games are still defaulting to too loud
Best game ever for sounds (in this context), imho, is dysmantle. People have described the sound track as “hikers listening to birds”. Music only happens in specific places, it’s mostly very relaxing/peaceful, and other than that it’s just listening to occasional zombies/turrets, environmental sounds, audio recordings, and breaking stuff.
I always turn the music and sfx way down (voice stays pretty high, sfx about 20% lower, and music very low) so I legit didn’t notice the lack of music for 22 hours of actual play time (out of the about 100 I put into it). But I didn’t change the sound settings at all for it, it was perfect.
Fuckin great game.
Most games get it right, didbyou try lowering the global system volume down? Mines only at 20%.
Yeah. I usually have my system volume sub 20%. Things like videos, system sounds, voice calls, etc all sound reasonable at that volume. It’s just a lot of games that end up way too loud relatively to that.
My system volume is consistently at 8-20% on windows (~30-40% on Linux because it’s a bit quieter usually) but every time I open a game I can’t hear myself think. I always have to turn the volume way lower (~30-50% game volume?) to be a volume I’m comfortable playing at.
On my last pair of headphones I had to set windows to like 2% until I eventually downloaded equalizer apo and set it to make everything like -20db
Just laziness or ignorance, I made a game and set the volume to 30% by default (it was a bit quiet for my setup), there were no loud splash screens, just some music on the menu - why that is so difficult for developers to do, I don’t understand.
It’s also an extra crime when they force an unskippable cutscene on you or start a tutorial before you can even access the options screen. The very first screen you should get, should be the fucking options.
GeminiTay streamed Stardew Valley and this was one of her main complaints. The menu never lets you adjust the sound and the game starts with an unskippable scene.
Yup its stupid af. I can adjust my game volume on the fly with the setup I have, so it’s always nice to turn that shit down or mute it when I start up a game, but the fact I have to is insane.
You could prep volume mixer too, and tab out when the game launches to turn it down. Or developers could just not put loud splash/logo screens at max volume.
Agreed. The funny thing is some games go the other way around but still kind of get it wrong: Games where the options are a part of a launcher, so you don’t actually get to experience your changes as you make them. I guess that’s still better than just throwing you into a loud cutscene on startup though.
But seriously. When the game loads, I want the sound to be set to as low as possible, then just give me a slider that plays a sample sound that I can increase until it’s right.
