Auditory Fatigue and Predicted Permanent Hearing Defects from Rock-and-Roll Music

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Abstract
Recordings of music played by a typical rock band in a discotheque for young adults showed that sound-pressure levels in the octaves most damaging to hearing were of the order of 105 decibels (db). Tape loops of this sound were then presented by earphone to 15 young men with normal hearing at levels of 100 and 110 db for five to 120 minutes. With the use of temporary hearing threshold shifts of 40 db (after two minutes of recovery) as a damage-risk criterion, the data indicated that, after listening for two hours to such music at 100 db, two persons in 100 would recover far too slowly, whereas at 110-db, 16 percent would be adversely and probably permanently affected.

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