Your ear is the most precious recording studio equipment. Without your ear, you cannot mix, master or finish your audio production projects. Sometimes when you are unaware, too excited to sit down and mix the track, you have a tendency to overuse your time which in turn stresses your ears too much.
A stressed ear cannot properly listen very well. This means impairing your judgment and hurting your ear. Ear is sensitive to certain frequencies, such as 20Hz to 20000Hz which are the only frequencies, our ears can listen. Again, ear is very nonlinear. Instead, it is more sensitive to what is called “voice frequencies” which is around 300 Hz to 3000Hz. This is the bandwidth of the telephone as well.
However when doing a serious audio mixing work, you are expected to listen very well from 50 Hz all the way up to 15, 000Hz. There are some exercises for engineers that can drastically improve your listening skills.
If your ear is now very tired, it cannot listen properly the entire frequency range and thus you cannot make correct audio mixing decisions. Or even if you are always abusing your ear , like listening to a louder volume always, you will lose your high frequency reception earlier than what it is normal. It is why, old people cannot properly listen to high frequencies because their ear cells are already old or damage.
So how can you take care of your EAR?
1. Listen to at most 3 to 5 hours total per day at moderate volume. 5 hours can be stressful to others, but I consider this as my personal maximum limit.
Moderate volume is between 70dB to 80dB SPL (Sound pressure level). You can measure this by bringing a SPL level meter on the listening position. These devices are indispensable studio equipments that can help preserve your hearing. A good and inexpensive is the Neewer USB Digital SPL meter.
For very long term listening, listen at lower end of the SPL limit like 70dB SPL. I prefer listening at louder volumes like 85 dB SPL.
2. Listen only at loud volume in mixing when necessary. These are typically at 85dB but only for a short period. See the chart below:
Most people will listen to produced/commercial music at even low volumes, so you should not be mixing in a very loud volume. It looks unrealistic, at the same time , damaging your ear.
3. After doing mix, rest your ear by taking a nap or avoid loud sounds.
4. Clean your ear always with cotton buds.
5. Avoid ear infection and do not mix when you have colds.
6. When you are listening to music, limit or avoid the use of headphones.
7. Wear earplug in a loud environment. This may be either a public or working environment.
8. If you are fun of swimming in sea, avoid doing deep dives. Pressure can hurt your ear. Of course, you are a sound mixer not a scuba diver.
9. When taking a bath, avoid having some water to get inside your ear canal. This can lead to an infection.
10. When taking medicines, ask the doctor if this can have some side effects to your ear. Avoid taking medicines with such side effect to your ear.
11. Avoid someone blows your ear. This is painful.
12. When you are contacted with cold infection, cure it as early as possible to avoid running nose and other complications to go to your ear parts.
13. If you are mixing daily, I suggest you will not expose your ear more than 3 hours per day. This is for your protection.
Do you know some other tips that can help save your ear? Share it by commenting on this post. Thanks.
Content last updated on July 4, 2012
4 Responses
Yes of course. You will get used to your monitor sound characteristics as well as the room where you will doing the mix. Start by listening professionally produced/mixed CDs, those albums with the sound you love. Do it at least 15 minutes to 30 minutes a day (when you have time) at moderate volume. You will be surprised that once you start mixing your own projects, you will know easily if sounds good or bad based on the reference CDs you’ve listen. This helps a lot in improving your listening skills.
I think you already have some decent gears, spend some time with it..You should try recording some of your projects using mics, that’s an important skill to learn. Its a good strategy to start it slowly, absorbing the basics and do some experimentation in your own studio. This is where most creative projects should start. Good luck 🙂
Great, I’d never thought about it. Since I’m kinda new in the mixing/monitoring jobs I think I should start doing that as soon as possible.
Would you recommend casual listening (CDs, Vinyls, Mp3) on my reference monitors to get used to the sound?
So far I’m only doing basic mixing of tracks that I made with a MIDI keyboard and a DAW (Ableton Live), I don’t record anything with mics still; I’m learning slowly but progressively (I think).
My monitors: Yorkville YSM1 + Hafler TA1100 power amp.
Hi Ramon, thanks for reading the blog. Yes, I do agree. As a personal note; I tend to preserve my hearing as best as I could and train my ear to listen to the environment suitable for accurate studio monitoring. Listening to headphones for a long period of time makes your ears adapt to a different kind of listening environment than the environment of a typical control room in your studio where you should be monitoring.
Of course, I do use headphones when confirming a mix or a master, but I always avoid it during the entire audio mixing/recording process or listening for long periods of time when not mixing. I notice that this discipline helps me in improving my overall listening skills 🙂 Cheers.
>6. When you are listening to music, limit or avoid the use of headphones.
Care to explain your personal reason for this?
I can understand all this points are subjective, but why you don’t listen music with headphones?
A lot of over-the-ear headphones with large driver (~40mm) and decent amount of impedance (~50 ohms) doesn’t need to be driven with amplifiers or turning the volume knob more than 50%.
So if you agree with this(I’m sure you do), are you talking only about in-the-ear headphones and just for another stuff not related to dBs, SPL and things like that but for healthiness implications?
Cheers.
You have an amazing blog, I have like 3 hours reading your posts.