Music gets everybody up and dancing, we all love listening to our favourite band or artist’s music on earbuds to experience an uninterrupted music experience.  With the new noise-cancelling headphones and earbuds in the market, you can now take your music experience to the next level. These earbuds allow us to experience music at its finest state even in crowded environments. However, listening to music at louder volumes constantly can lead to various complications in the ear. Even Harvard in one of their articles highlights the importance of safe headphone use. In this blog, let us discuss how to use earbuds or headphones without damaging the ears. 

Let us understand how earbuds work.

At the core, earbuds are smaller versions of speakers that use electrical and mechanical components to transform electrical signals into music, the sound waves that you can hear. 

• When the electric signals pass through the diaphragm in earbuds, the magnetic voice coil generates sound waves from these signals.
• The Bluetooth receiver inside the earbuds will pick up the transmitted signal from the device and play it back into your ears. 
• This involves a series of steps including an antenna, computer chip, amplifier, and speaker drivers combined to deliver a stereo sound experience. 
• It uses a microphone during the calls to transmit sound over the phone. 

All the mechanical and electrical components work together to deliver this exceptional musical experience. However, this closed circuit combined with various other factors can lead to damage in the ear. 

Potential risks and how they can lead to damage

• Volume and duration: Listening to music at excess volume can indeed damage the internal structure of the ear. The risk lies in how we use and how long we use, extended listening hours of music at higher volumes can significantly affect the quality of hearing in the long run. 
• Hair cell damage: As discussed, earbuds deliver the converted sound directly into the inner channels of the ear to amplify the sound intensity. Prolonged exposure to music can damage the delicate hair cells present in these channels. It can lead to permanent hearing loss as the damaged hair cells cannot be regenerated. 
• Inner ear sensitivity: Chronic exposure to louder music with or without your earbuds, can lead to permanent hearing loss. As it negatively impacts the inner ear drum by causing interference. 

Now that you have understood the damage these earbuds can cause upon continuously listening to music at louder volumes. We recommend you use earbuds with precaution, now let us understand how to precautionarily use earbuds that can reduce the impact of these situations. 

Steps to enjoy your music without damaging your ears

Various steps in the surrounding area can lead to hearing loss if experienced for longer durations of time. Here are various steps:

Healthy usage: Listening to music all day long through the earbuds especially at high volumes can cause permanent damage to the hair cells inside the ears. When these hair cells are damaged, they interfere with the sound transmission. 

• Earbuds can deliver maximum volume upto 105 - 110 dB, however sound levels above 85dB can damage the internal structure of the ear, when music is consumes for long time. 
• Duration of the music you are listening decides the damage it does on the ear, listening to louder sounds for extended periods of time can cause potential damage. 
• It is recommended that not to hear sound levels of 85dB or above for more than 4 hours straight.  It can be risky, take frequent breaks at regular intervals to protect the sensitivity of the years.

Conclusion 

All in all, listening to music is a big thing for many people, it can transcend you to new world, forget the circumstances, and enjoy in your own little world. People listen to music for various reasons with joy, with sorrow, with every kind of emotion. Whatever the emotion is, it truly intensifies and allows you to get lost for a moment, but it is important to follow these etiquettes to protect yourself from getting permanent ear loss, while enjoying the music with your earbuds.