I ordered a cheap chinese optical refractometer from Amazon to use for convenience instead of a traditional hydrometer. It seemed accurate enough after calibration, I don’t expect magic or lab results. Ballpark is fine by me....
I think the “people are free to believe what they want to believe” is a mistake. This is the very statement that relativitises opinions and belief systems with facts and creates the illusion that they are all equal.
Look at the “facts don’t care about feelings” crowd that believe wholeheartedly that statements pandering to their feelings are facts and disregard any actual facts as fake news. I don’t think it’s because they decided one day to pick and choose what is a fact and what is not, but they actually can’t tell that there is a difference in opinions, beliefs and facts in the first place.
People need to accept that sometimes the truth is painful, that it contradicts what you want it to be, and worst of all - that you may have been wrong.
Edit: that said, I think people are free to believe whatever they want to believe when it comes to unprovable existential esoterica like personal values, afterlife, religion, whatever. As long they accept it is a personal belief and not an universal truth.
In 2022, a Texas family filed a lawsuit against Apple for damaging their son’s hearing after an Amber Alert went off while he was wearing Airpods. According to Google, the maximum volume of phone headphones is around 105 decibels. The family are claiming that the son now requires hearing aids after his eardrum ruptured....
I think it’s very different if it is a clean digital noise. Acoustic sounds, even when loud, have a brief ramping up. Digital noise can appear like a wall from zero to 110dB in literally zero time for the ear to adjust.
The ear has tiny hairs that raise to absorb sound and protect the hearing (see comment for a correction). I know of somebody that had a digital noise cut right through them and cause permanent hearing loss. Their hairs were flattened and no longer work. I don’t know the amplitude though.
The source of the sound is the speaker element of headphone. I thought that detail was obvious. A speaker reproduces any signal fed into it as to best of it’s abilities. Acoustic recordings, sounds mimiking acoustic sounds, analogue or digital synthetic sounds, static noise… And even a digital pulse that goes from zero to maximum amplitude in one instant that is extremely rare or near impossible for even the most aggressive acoustic sounds. Acoustic or analogue noise is basically a sum of random frequencies all playing at once, while digital noise is a constant stream of random clean digital pulses.
Earbuds that aim to create a seal in order to isolate from external noise are dangerous in particular as there is nowhere for the sound waves to dissipate. Some parts are absorbed by the flesh of the ear canal but other parts become resonant waves that only add to the amplitude and hence the stress to the ear drum.
I had a pair of faulty ANC earbuds that would make digital pops. They weren’t necessarily louder than the music playing but damn they hurt like an unklefucker. It was like pure spike of treble cutting through the ear straight into the brain. The type of sound our ears have never encountered naturally in all their years of evolution.
Haha, uh oh, I will try to not take offence. I’m in no way an audiophile, though I do have a nice stereo system for listening to music rather than listening to the equipment. I did venture into doing sound based arts and installations and stuff when I was younger though so I do have some insights of how sound works. It was a “colleague” l knew back then that had the injury mentioned from an incident in a sound studio. If memory serves me right it was an accidental digital feedback loop that hit the ears like a brick wall and despite it was less than a second it was enough to cause permanent damage.
Acoustic noise is what you hear outdoors from the wind, waves, leaves, whatever. An absolute myriad of tiny impact noises and scrapes and brushes and whatnot mixed together that become a dense complex texture that can be characterized as noise, although technically it is just a massive amount of single individual sounds. Acoustic noise can be found in many frequency ranges but human ears are generally good at handling with the common organic ones. Thanks, evolution!
Digitally generated noise. A sequence of random^1^ values that plays at the frequency rate of whatever means of digital to analog conversion is used. Digitally generated white noise consists statistically^2^ of all frequencies within the range of the sample rate at all volumes reproducible by the bit depth.
Digitally generated noise^3^ is not limited by common physics for generating sound waves^4^, but can be of any frequency range at any amplitude, i.e. pressure differential, within the range of the means of digital to analogue conversion and playback. That is, potentially in a spectral distribution of sound that is straight up painful for human ears.
However, the big difference is that digital noise is not a mix of endless impact noises or brushes or whatever that each follow an envelope curve, but are rather a sequence of shifting values without transitory ramping, i.e. pulses. That is, a sequence of shifts in air pressure that is literally as fast as it can possibly be.
Note that in the case of glitching^5^, the digitally generated noise may be limited only by the physical properties of the hardware and goes beyond what amplitudes the equipment is artificially limited to for pleasant and non harmful playback of music.
Can headphones or earbuds or loudspeakers reproduce a digitally generated noise in frequencies that are painful in amplitudes that are harmful for the human hearing apparatus? Oh, I think they do.
Anyway, I trust you are correct in your other point. It seems I used the wrong medical terminology as I was silly enough to speak in vernacular as non native English speaker without medical expertise. I expected to get away with a delirious misnomer to call years of continuous tinnitus and distorted audio perception a permanent hearing damage when it is clearly not.
My apologies for causing confusion.
^1^ Since attention to details are important; Most likely pseudo random generated. I know. I know.
^2^ Details, people.
^3^ Any digital noise. Audio that has been distorted until it has a frequency distribution that can be confused as pure noise, a data stream not intended for audio playback, a software/hardware glitch that flips significant bytes rapidly enough to cause a sequence of pops in such density it is perceived as a burst of noise. Whatever, use your imagination for further examples.
^4^ In our living conditions, on planet earth, at this time.
^5^ Generally speaking, not specifically to any example mentioned in this context.
Dude, I’m not trying to speak like a acoustician. At closest I’m speaking as an engineer with some knowledge of sound and acoustics from ages ago or maybe a musician, I don’t know. If you expect random people to use professional terminology to have a conversation it’s really your own mistake. I mean it in a constructive way from my own experience of taking with people on whatever I happen to know more about than them.
The contrast of a pulse as a rapid shift of air pressure and multiple ones in rapid succession of high amplitude in the context of causing damage to the inner ear? I am honestly struggling how to explain it any clearer.
Ok, I’ll give it one more go.
As you say, it is not important what or how the pulse or burst of pulses are created, but digital to analog conversion of a signal can create impulses that are literally as rapid as can be by the laws of physics that are extremely rare organically and in particular by amplitudes that you get in headphones. A burst of such impulses, I’m avoiding the previously used terminology, of random but high frequency and amplitude is like having a tiny plunger jerking like crazy in your ear like nothing the ear has ever evolved to be able to deal with.
Not because digital vs analogue, vinyl vs CD vs mp3, gold plated monster network cables or helium cooled SPDIF connectors. No magical thinking. Only changes in air pressure. Changes in air pressure of the very fast and strong variety.
Yes, we agree on most everything and my understanding of both physics, mechanics and biology seem to agree with yours.
I guess the one main disagreement is if a pulse, either single or repeated, might potentially be more harmful than a sine wave of a single frequency. According to the teachings I’ve had, or my recollection thereof, a pulse or impulse may carry the sum (or zero sum) difference if any ramping wave, but the nature of the impulse it literally hits differently. A transition of difference in state versus a forceful immediate change. A push or a slap. Or a push and pull versus a slap and yank, should we speak of a complete cycle.
This was what I attempted to illustrate with the plunger example. If you are familiar with a plunger, you’ll know that the method of operation is not to keep a harmonious cycle, but to yank it aggressively in order to transmit a whole lot of impulse-like energy and forcefully release buildup or blockage in the pipes. My argument is that should we have two identical sinks with identical blockage and we’d manage to conduct an experiment where both plungers operate at identical frequency and amplitude, but that one plunger pumps in a harmonious cycle while the other does a pulse-like push pull, the latter would yield more successful results. Hence my conclusion is that despite the state being identical before and after, theoretically the amount of energy may be the same, there is a difference in how the energy is transferred depending on the curvature of the actuation on the plunger. Or the speaker cone. Though through air instead of water and air compress while water doesn’t. But still.
So the frequency of a repeated waveform and the shape of the waveform are not interchangeable. I’m sound the frequency carries the root tone, the shape carries the multiples. A perfect impulse (or other digitally generated waveforms) carry in theory an infinite amount of frequencies. Again, carry may be a misnomer depending on the discipline and of course the perfect is unobtainable so in practice the frequency spectrum is limited to one bandwidth and spectrum or another. Not that really had any bearing in our discussion.
Finally, I disagree with the argument of the engineering in headphones. Those limits are with respects of quality of sound reproduction. They are not a guarantee of hard limit of potential output and not intended to be. I don’t engineer speakers but it’s quite common paradigm in engineering in general that you benefit in quality and reliability should you accept a modest degree of unused overhead. Mistakes and bugs happen and it is especially vulnerable when it is reliant on hardware and software in the earpiece itself, as with my personal experience of faulty earbuds that emitted bursts of painful high frequency noise despite playback being of moderate volume. There are no intermediate steps of filtering, as with analogue gear, so should a faulty component cause a pop, it may well do so from the one extreme to the other.
I apologize for my frustration. I’ve been experiencing lately that I try to communicate one thing and the recepient keep projecting it into their own frame of reference and insist I’m talking of something that I’m not. I’m a bit touchy and I’m sorry about that.
I know it’s not popular and I’m typically against it but I was listening to a podcast and it made me think there are absolutely important communities that shouldn’t be on a centralised platform like Reddit. The contents of them are so important that it should be on the Open Social Web. I’m wondering if there is someone...
I’m not against it if it is on a server or a cluster that are separated from the regular feeds. I don’t want to be spammed with mirrored content and try to interact with bots.
Had the song It’s Raining Men stuck in my head. Got me thinking. Would my home owners insurance cover the damages to my house? And what about the clean up?
I grew up on the third floor without an elevator. Thinking of it, I’ve lived mostly without elevator most of my life. Some places on the first floor but mostly 2-3 floor. A year on a top floor penthouse apartment without elevator on the top of a hill. Last place was fourth floor with an elevator. Now I’m back to stairs only. It feels perfectly natural for me.
That’s not brain fog. You’re romanticizing a medical condition. My brain fog feels like my brain is walking through water. I know where I’m going and I know how to get there but every step on the way is slow and cumbersome and takes way more energy than it should. IDK what you are talking about. Delusional euphoria maybe.
I have no idea what you are saying. Maybe the frustration of trying to communicate but not be able to find the right words in the right order are the perfect illustration of what it feels like with brain fog. Except apply it to everything and a massive headache when trying to force it. It’s nothing to be romanticised. It’s not something anybody would want. Drunken delirium is something entirely different.
Golden retriever are the Volvo of dogs
Refractometers
I ordered a cheap chinese optical refractometer from Amazon to use for convenience instead of a traditional hydrometer. It seemed accurate enough after calibration, I don’t expect magic or lab results. Ballpark is fine by me....
Using Ubuntu may give off hipster vibes to the average PC user, but within the Linux community its has the opposite effect.
hot take?...
If somebody spends the whole day watching fox or religious propaganda, gets worked up and all he can think of is owning a liberal or converting an unbeliever, is this person a victim or just gullible?
Let me explain the question:...
Is a sound level of 105 decibels for a few seconds enough to rupture a person's eardrum?
In 2022, a Texas family filed a lawsuit against Apple for damaging their son’s hearing after an Amber Alert went off while he was wearing Airpods. According to Google, the maximum volume of phone headphones is around 105 decibels. The family are claiming that the son now requires hearing aids after his eardrum ruptured....
I'd rather be an unknown fish in my own pond
Apropos “it’s better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond”
Reddit mirrors
I know it’s not popular and I’m typically against it but I was listening to a podcast and it made me think there are absolutely important communities that shouldn’t be on a centralised platform like Reddit. The contents of them are so important that it should be on the Open Social Web. I’m wondering if there is someone...
Old ghost is old (lemmy.world)
From “The Ferryman: Legends of Nanyang”....
What's a candy that's practically crack for you?
It would be terrifying if it were to actually start raining men.
Had the song It’s Raining Men stuck in my head. Got me thinking. Would my home owners insurance cover the damages to my house? And what about the clean up?
The dudes on grindr just want to skip that step and come right to my basement (lemmy.world)
What side do you open a banana from?
People that lived in walk up apartments *with no elevator*, did you like it?
Again, with no elevator....
What does "brain fog" feel like to you?
OMG, it’s incredibly, profoundly difficult to talk about this....
The first step of gentrification is that the people that protest gentrification have moved in