SORRY, WHAT?!

some broadcasters insist this warning is placed on sound equipment..

Yep, I try not to go to any night/event without earplugs in tow. I have the cheap £15 jobbies which work perfectly and attenuate the sound rather than muffle it.

However, if you’ve got the cash, go for the ER15’s

Woah, they have proper earplugs for this kind of stuff? I’ve just been using the cheap-ass Boots orange foam ones! Research time!!!

so put your fingures in your ears to stop it harming you .,.. hah :you_crazy:laugh_at:

Ear defenders are the way ahead even if its just the foam ones (pm me if you want any and you cant afford them ) will offer some degree of protection, i suffer with tinnitus (that high pitch ringing in your ears?) thanks to many years of partying to loud music , its incureable and trying to sleep with it can be unbearable .

If your regularly out partying £60 is fcuk all when compared to going deaf get some custom ones made Earplugs for Musicians, DJ’s, Travel and Sleeping from Sensorcom i got mine form here they do a massive range at various prices, these guys know their stuff.

as far as i know you should wear them when mixing as the headphones and monitor are easily loud enough to fuck your hearing up. Dont think it would effect how you mix as they sort of block out the ear damaging frequencies, but means you can still hear the tune properly. I thinkk, fuck knows how it works…:you_crazy

yeah see thats what i wanna know .. if they only stop the eardamaging frequencys? .. cos it just seems that if you got some rubber or foam or what ever stuck in your eye .. logic would say taht it would stop you hearing things properly:hopeless:

I’m really scared of going deaf, never used to be and I only used to where them to Valve, but I seem to be wearing earplugs more and more now even if it is just the ones I get free from work.

@hairygrape 269453 wrote:

Woah, they have proper earplugs for this kind of stuff? I’ve just been using the cheap-ass Boots orange foam ones! Research time!!!

Mine are Alpine (don’t know the model number). I don’t think they are the same alpine who make car audio.

I got them from ChemicalRecords.co.uk and they come with a selection of 3 different filters. I’m fairly impressed with them. They don’t have too much of a negative effect on the sound and you really notice the difference if you take them out at any point.

It’s definitely nice to come home without ringing ears, especially if standing close to a dj monitor blasting out all night (which are usually one of the worst culprits if you are a dj.

Suprisingly it also makes it easier to understand what people are saying in loud environments. It’s also a god send when you get those shouty people who love getting right up to your earhole and shouting at the top of their voice. You get that smug feeling of security, similar to laying in bed when it’s pissing it down outside.

yep the “fingers in ears” sign (one of my favourite “stick men in peril” ones :laugh_at:) is supposed to be affixed to the leads of pairs of cans or near the headphone outputs of mixers etc in BBC facilities, although some other broadcasters use it these days.

They do have to be a bit more careful at Auntie, its not uncommon for engineers to send very loud tones down audio circuits to test them and also to ensure that British Telecom don’t clear down (hang up) / reprovision (allocate to someone else) a distant audio circuit which may be travelling through one or more Telephone Exchanges along with everyone elses phone calls and broadband.

these days such a circuit (usually ISDN2) is often seized and left open some time before the remote broadcast commences… it appears to the exchange as a normal “phone call” but with many digital exchanges if you leave a telephone “off the hook” during a call and there is just silence, BT will clear the circuit after about 10-30 minutes to save peoples phone bills and release their equipment for more productive traffic (it might be needed for a 999 or 112 call!)

one common form of this signal is a pip at 1Khz, 0dB every second which most people are familiar with 😉

also a digital audio circuit where the clock has slipped will produce random noise pegged at the highest audio level. If this is fed to analogue convertors and then to the headphones or a telephone handset it will give the listener a nasty shock (actually called an “acoustic shock…”)

This is actually what happens when the timing on a digital circuit goes a bit off or the echo canceller breaks down (usually due to too much background noise or someone shouting into the phone like the Dom Joly character :laugh_at:). there is nothing sinister about it, it happens due to the way the telephone network works (or doesn’t).

The days of people splicing into phone lines and tapping them with crude analogue equipment stopped when I was about 10 or 11 years old.

nah, thats a howler and is a carefully generated noise – it is either the * and # sounds alternately (like a “nee naw” sound)- or four tones 1400 Hz, 2060 Hz, 2450 Hz, and 2600 Hz played repeatedly for 0.1s with a 0.1s gap…

(I design phone systems for a living and have to make sure this tone is generated when people in the office leave the phones off hook)

random digital noise is extremely nasty when it gets converted into analogue, it sounds like of a radio tuned to no signal but much harsher and louder.. it will either fuck up your ears or your speakers wherever it ends up…