Today my Amazon order arrived. I had a feeling it would and had taken the day off so I could receive it. The postman appreciated it because it was a small box taken out of his bag then and made it a little easier to carry. It is a pair of ear muffs. I said I'd get them, and I have. They snugly fit over my ears and pin my ears against my head, but my expectations of what they do are probably a little high. I can still hear stuff with them on. What they do achieve is a reduction in the level of external noises but I can still hear the keys depress on the keyboard as I type. However, I can barely hear the TV on downstairs. They are better than nothing. The idea is to help concentration a bit more. What I would really like is a set of ear muffs which give nearly full sound dampening. The sort which would equate to being profoundly deaf. But I don't think they exist. I am now wearing two sets of ear dampening items. Some soft inner ear foam plugs and these larger ear muffs. This gives a double auditory shield. Maybe I am hyper sensitive to sound, maybe there is a name for it as well? I'm special. Yep, I can hear Sparkling now calling me a Spesh, as Rock Chick already has. It's odd how people are judged. Mind we all do it.
In a quest to try and find out about dampening materials and sound I did a little search on the Internet, to understand the phenomenon a little more. If I can understand something then I can understand the ways to deal with it.
Firstly the human ear is very sensitive to sound, sound travels through the ear canal, then hits the outer ear and then is converted by the inner ear into electrical signals the brain can interpret. By plugging a piece of foam inside the canal this it will automatically interrupt the path sound has to take. But because the ear is a delicate thing you have to be pretty careful what you stuff down it. This goes without saying. Not just physical objects but also from sounds made outside. Ears apparently wear out over time, like shoe leather, even though most shoes nowadays have rubber soles. Essentially your greatest ability to hear is as a child and not so good the older you get, depending on noise exposure over a lifetime. Not just booms and bangs, even music will do it, loud music for instance. Every time I have been to a concert I've walked out with my ears ringing. The audience seem to take this as a natural event. But it isn't natural to have two days of ringing ears after a gig. Your ears have been damaged, as small hair like follicles in your inner ear have died. You might as well sit down and pay someone to explode fireworks next to your head. Hoping they don't ignite your and the furniture in the process. It makes me wonder how all those concert organisers have not been taken to court for the hearing damage they have inflicted on millions of people over time. Because you pay for a ticket it shouldn't mean you also sign up for auditory torture. Well, I certainly haven't been to many concerts in my life which is an advantage. Except for the occasional tinnitus which I can't explain at all. So the ear is sensitive and is one of our five senses, once lost it's gone forever, bloody daunting when you think about it. In my work environment the most annoying sound is of other people around me when they are talking and I need to concentrate. If they talked in a language I could not understand it may not be so bad. I'll have to try that, concentrating while Swedish is being spoken all around me. All I need is a dozen Swedes and I'm not talking about the vegetable.
Going on. Sound is measured in two ways noise and frequency (variety). Loudness is measured in decibels (dB). A whisper is 15 dB whilst the sound of a voice is 60 dB, and a rock concert in the region of 120 plus dB. The frequencies of sound or the different varieties of sound are measured in hertz (Hz). Simply sound is the air vibrating and the frequency of these vibrations is measured by Hz. The human voice has a range between 60 and 7000 Hz or 7 kHz whilst the human ear is able to detect the range of about 10 Hz to 20 kHz. This is pretty incredible. The sensitivity to sound is three times greater than which the vocal range can create it. Ear muffs are designed to reduce these levels. But as I said there is no 100 percent way to stop all sound. There are two ways to reduce sound. One is to dampen it the other is to reduce it at source. Dampening involves the use of materials which absorb sound and do not allow it to reflect. To reduce noise levels you have to turn the radio or TV down, to dampen you put as many layers as materials between the ear and the outside world. Or live in a vacuum. Which would be OK if an astronaut, but not so good at sea level. I certainly wouldn't be too happy being 100 miles up in the air, I mean vacuum, it's too far down. I'd get dizzy.
There is probably a third way, which is not so much mentioned. This is by psychologically changing your perception of sound. Which we all do, just go to sleep. I've done it in front of the TV and barely heard what was happening. However, in a workplace, snoring might be frowned upon.
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