Health & Safety
Sound Levels
Increasingly, producers and engineers who are working regularly in studios
throughout the world have insisted that during most of their working time
they monitor sound at low levels.
This state of affairs came into existence after a number of working engineers
- some of whom were employed by studios as house engineers - noticed discrepancies
developing in their hearing In addition, such luminaries of our profession
such as Phil Ramone and Alan Parsons have recently been quoted as regretting
some of the excesses of their early careers (I think they were talking about
very high sound pressure levels 'required' when recording loud rock bands?).
In his address at the 1995 TEC Awards in New York (an annual event which
benefits hearing charities in the U.S.) Phil Ramone reminded the audience
that those of us who have been working in studios for some years should
feel it our duty to try to persuade those who are relatively new to the
studio to treasure their most valuable asset - hearing. Hence the slogan
Hearing is Precious - H.I.P. has become a familiar call in music and other
audio circles.
In a recent Re-Pro Forum, a leading hearing expert reported that noise induced hearing damage can be caused by very short exposures to high level sound
and that once the damage is done, good hearing is impossible to retrieve.
In the UK, Health and Safety regulations govern the length of time over
which various sound pressure levels are regarded as safe levels of sound
- most of these regulations were set up with factory noise in mind but,
as was pointed out at the Forum, sound level is sound level and is not dependent
upon the nature of the sound - a sweet acoustic guitar turned up too loud
is just as dangerous as an over-driven, distorted electric guitar sound.
Near-field monitoring has been popular since the 80's and most producers
and engineers now spend most of their working time monitoring through small,
low level systems, only reverting to the 'big' speakers to check specific
audio detail. This is a policy that all prudent studio producers and engineers
should follow if they have ambitions of a long studio career.
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