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.
WHAT!?
BOOM HEADSHOT.
Ohh fuckin hacks mate.
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?
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!
Jokes on them! I don’t even need to worry about video games doing it to me. I’ve already got some minor hearing loss in one ear from a history of childhood ear infections. That, and my other ear is probably gonna end up with hearing loss from how loud I listen to music. Games ain’t got nothing on my music listening habit!
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).
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.
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.
Shit man I’ve been suffering from hearing loss for like 20 years (partially due to infections and the rest is listening to music with headphones at high volumes), and tinnitus for at least 12.
I’m ahead of the curve. 😎
Airpod type devices should be looked at as well, lots of people are gonna have fucked ears for a long time.
You mean earbuds?
No worries for me, I’ve had tinnitus for over 40 years, pretty sure it’s neurological for me, not hearing related.
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.
Check an app called ear trumpet. It gives you way finer control over the volume of everything
Mate i just mute and make the sounds in my head
Imagine if you could do it for the entire system!
HUH, WHAT DID YOU SAY?
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.
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?
Yeah I hate this, even with windows at like 25% most games are still defaulting to too loud
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
Most games get it right, didbyou try lowering the global system volume down? Mines only at 20%.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Huh, What?!
-Artillery men, Rock/Metal bands
