Safe sound level estimation for iPod playback

My 11-year old nephew tends to play his iPod Nano too loud, IMO. He understands the dangers, but he has trouble actually estimating the loudness. Does anybody know of a simple, portable (read cool) method so the volume can be objectively estimated? For example, a readout of the power delivered to the headphones would be perfect.

Thanks, Joe

Buy a device that does not put out as much power.

Or use ear buds or headphones with a volume control slider, and add a "calibration resistor" in-line once you have determined what value it needs to be to limit/trim the power to your needs.

The problem is that some songs are recorded at higher levels than others, so we need an indication of the actual power delivered to the headphones - a fixed attenuator won't work.

Maybe I'll move him up to an iPod Touch - there's probably an App for that too.

-- Joe

My 11-year old nephew tends to play his iPod Nano too loud, IMO. He

Back in my days of hanging around clubs I stuffed toilet paper in my ears so I could sit with my friends right in front of the amps on the stage. Definitely not cool, but for nerds the long term view is just second nature :)

-- Joe

He should use a decent mp3 player instead of the trash that apple produces.

Real final power out to the audio channels? I doubt it. Seriously.

There's the dream of an app for that.

True. Distorted higher power is far worse than a better quality, lower power device.

"J.A. Legris" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@19g2000yql.googlegroups.com...

Don't worry too much, as it has been found out that damage to hearing is much less than first expected. What really damages the ears are short bursts of very high pressure levels like gunshots in the army or fireworks nearby. Even in Rock-concerts where much higher levels are encountered than an Ipod can produce, only a TTS (temporary threshold shift) is encountered, after a sufficiant quiet time the full potential recovers. Just make shure he not continuously goes with that Ipod, but then Xmas was just a month ago. ciao Ban

Granted Apple ipods/phones are cheap crap, but are there any MP3 portable players that aren't cheap crap? Anytime you need to be portable, power is serious part of the design mix, and quality usually goes out the door.

[I use a Logitech Squeezebox Classic and FLAC., but this isn't portable]

The iTunes software has a feature that allows a "hard-limit" volume threshold to be placed on an iPod that syncs with it. The selection is made at the bottom of the "Summary" tab of the "Devices" menu that comes up in iTunes when an iPod is synced with the software (iTunes version

9), and then the iPod firmware implements the limit after the iPod is disconnected. There's also a password-protected "Parental Lock" so the setting can't be changed. Of course the nephew might not be too cool with having complete control of the volume being taken away from him, but it is an option to be aware of.

The problem is that the stock earbuds on the iPod are garbage, they don't fit very well and have lousy bass response unless you cram them deep into your ear canals. Anyone could end up cranking the volume up in search of a beat. A nice gift for someone with an iPod would be a decent pair of earbuds or standard headphones - Shure makes in-ear monitor earbuds that aren't total crap. Unfortunately an easy after-market replacement is not available for the 3rd generation iPod Nano, as Apple's engineers made the playback and volume controls an integral part of the earbuds, and without them the iPod can only play continually in shuffle mode forever. The technically inclined, however, can of course strip the old buds off the stock wire and solder the new ones on...:)

I knew that when iPUD came out that Apple would be bending over its customers... again.

You all get whatever you deserve for pounding your PUD.

There are plenty of good players out there. The best ones play FLAC tunes, and there are plenty of storage bits these days, so do not piss and moan about FLAC file size being larger. The SOUND is better. That should be all a real music lover cares about.

But NO, they all wanted to jump on the "everybody has got one" iPUD bandwagon.

FLAC is way better, and the FLAC capable players are better too, generally.

My 11-year old nephew tends to play his iPod Nano too loud, IMO. He

That's funny!

wer

,

While at my desk, I will occasionally listen to my iPod nano through a set of AKG K240 headphones. I may look like a Cyberman, but the sound is exceptional.

Of course, in my mid-40's, I suspect I can no longer hear over about

14 kHz or so. And it's a given that after many years of repairing pagers & other radio recievers, 1000 Hz is completely notched out. :)

Link: In case anyone's looking for a recommendation on a good pair of (pricey) headphones.

He's 11 years old, it doesn't matter what you make it won't change things. Either give up, or take away that MP3 player.

He's cooperating. As I mentioned above, he just has trouble actually estimating the loudness.

I'm looking into the iPod Touch route. Evidently you can get Apps that make the thing into a low-bandwidth oscilloscope and signal generator, so the audio data stream appears to be available to the programmer's interface.

-- Joe

THere is no safe level for that age group, the louder the better, the more shacking the better and so on.

Do you really expect to get cooperation?

I own an IPod Classic and it has a password protected lock where you can set the maximum volume.

Shaun

Already got it. He's my nephew, not my son, which carries a completely different set of dynamics.

He's also following this thread.

-- Joe