This is one of the reasons I've stayed away from the iPod:

Tinnitus

Nasty stuff. I'm afraid there is an entire generation of iPod users who may have permanently damaged their hearing already.

Brings up an interesting thought, though. How many of you actually have some form of Tinnitus? When you're in a still and quiet room, do you notice any faint, high pitched noise?

More on Tinnitus.

nope.

and you don't need to avoid it for that fear as you can control the volume, Matt. my kids have an iPod. i went in and changed the maximum volume to a very medium level before i gave it to them. they cannot hear their iPod if they are in a fairly noisy environment, but it works great in their bedrooms or on long car rides.

No! Really Sean? Is there really a volume control on the iPod? My God, what'll Steve Jobs come up with next?!

Well hot damn, you are right. And to prove it, here's an overly annoying and slightly condescending snippet® from Wikipedia :



Son of a ... !! That's amazing!

I don't have an iPod, don't like loud music and do have tinnitus.

i wasn't even talking about the volume control on the device. in iTunes you can set the maximum volume to a level that is not loud at all, so even if the kids turn it all the way up they aren't going to get loud music. you noted that you were avoiding an iPod partly because of the fear of Tinnitus. i figured i'd bring you up to par on how you can potentially alleviate that particular reason . . . and you got all smart assy in response.

HAHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!


As someone whose hearing isn't what it used to be, I can attest to the need to be careful. Years of headphones, music, etc. have lessened my hearing. I did it to myself...but because youth is wasted on the young, I never gave it much thought.

With all the cell phones, iPods, rap music blaring in white suburban kids' Hondas....I think we'll be faced with a couple generations of deaf people in another 20 years.

I've developed tinnitus in the last year. Most of the time it doesn't bother me since there's so much ambient noise during the day that I don't notice it. At night it's getting harder to ignore, so I'll probably have to get a fan or something that can generate some white noise.

I've never been a big concert goer. I can only remember one concert by The Who, where my ears were ringing the next day. I did wear big headphones when I was a teenager to listen to records and earbuds/small headphones over the years when I've gone jogging and walking. And I still sometimes use small headphones when I'm on the treadmill but I'm trying to cut back on that.

Parental control setting for volume limit. Set the maximum volume allowed on the iPod and lock it with a combination. If the kids have a Shuffle, iTunes let you password lock the max volume level.

>http://support.apple.com/kb/TA38403

Heh, I remember these concerns being raised for the first time in my lifetime when the Walkman came around...so I guess you stayed away from the Walkman and portable cd players as well.

Tinnitus and hearing loss are also fairly common among veteran musicians and DJs, thanks to loud volume, with DJs especially due to having high volume in their headphones while mixing. The iPod itself shouldn't be anymore dangerous than any other device with headphones before or after it.

Yep, I do get the occasional tinnitus squeal, but I'm glad it's nothing permanent. Also, I can still pick most of the high-pitched frequencies that most of my peers can't, and they hurt my ears, especially the vacuum cleaner sound makes me physically nauseous at times unless I wear ear plugs.

I do have a slight hearing loss in my other ear thanks to military service, which the military doctors obviously denied and tested and proved to be non-existent, though, and it seems affect mostly a certain frequency region anyhow and I've learned to cope with it. Still, I sometimes miss by a mile when locating a sound source.

We're ushering in an entire generation of kids who are going to be suffering premature hearing loss / degradation. You can't tell them anything so they're gonna listen at whatever volume they d@mn well please. I should know, having played electric guitar and bass waaaay too loud back in the day.

Now that I yam older and slightly less confident of my abilities to slay the world, I never listen to the iPod with ear buds. It's just too easy to set it a titch louder than it ought to be. We just have our 60 gigger sitting in a Klipsch unit in the living room/kitchen. Heck, I don't even mix my music with my 'phones on... not if I don't have to, that is.