Db Levels

[jhatpro]

Anyone know what the decibel range is likely to be in an adult brass band for a player sitting in the middle of the cornet section?
_________________
Jim Hatfield

"The notes are there - find them.� Mingus

2021 Martinus Geelan Custom
2005 Bach 180-72R
1965 Getzen Eterna Severinsen
1946 Conn Victor
1998 Scodwell flugel
1986 Bach 181 cornet
1954 Conn 80A cornet
2002 Getzen bugle

[pitchlevel]

If you have a smartphone, you can download a free decibel meter app. I've got one that I tested while using my actual decibel meter (which I got for $30 I think from Amazon) and it was pretty close as far as accuracy goes.

[jhatpro]

Thanks!
_________________
Jim Hatfield

"The notes are there - find them.� Mingus

2021 Martinus Geelan Custom
2005 Bach 180-72R
1965 Getzen Eterna Severinsen
1946 Conn Victor
1998 Scodwell flugel
1986 Bach 181 cornet
1954 Conn 80A cornet
2002 Getzen bugle

[John Mohan]

Hey Jim and everybody,

Great advice above - I just downloaded "Decibel 10th" for my iPhone - and now I've blown out my lip for the next few hours by seeing how loud I can peg the meter on it, mainly on F's above High C with various mouthpieces. I'm such a trumpet player...

Interestingly, while it has always sounded to me like notes in the G on top the staff range were my loudest, this turns out not to be the case. Where as I could get the meter to around 98-99 dB on a G on top the staff, on the F above High C I could get it to touch 100dB at times (this with the trumpet's bell about a meter away from my iPhone).

Second interesting result was, that while I've always thought I sounded strongest and loudest on a Reeves 43C in the F above High C range, in actuality, the results were identical between all three of the mouthpieces I tried it with. On a Reeves 42C, Reeves 43C and my copy of Arturo Sandoval's Mt Vernon 3C, I got the same results in the Upper Register (solid 99dB with peaks to 100dB). On lower notes, the MV3C proved to be the loudest, staying a few dB above the others (in the mid to upper 90dB range).

The max dB level at some point was 102dB (the App memorizes and displays the Max level achieved). I don't know when I hit 102dB, but it's possible that the horn's Bell was just closer to the iPhone for a moment.

I've got a GREAT idea: Given what usually transpires at the Annual Chicago Trumpet Hangs (everybody trying to play louder and higher than everybody else for four hours while a few slightly less insane individuals seek refuge (or refuse...) in the kitchen eating chips and salsa and watching the games on TV), why don't we set up a "Higher and Louder" competition?! We could each chip in a buck at the door and let the winners collect from the pool. I propose the following categories and prize amounts:

• Loudest Double Pedal C

• Loudest Pedal C (in tune and with open valves)

• Loudest F# below Low C

• Loudest Low C

• Loudest middle F#

• Loudest Middle C

• Loudest F# above Middle C

• Loudest High C

• Loudest F# above High C

• Loudest Double C

• Winners in each of the first nine categories would get 1/11th of the collected pool. The winner of the Loudest Double C category would get 2/11ths of the pool (hey, it's a Double High C).

• If anybody can obtain 90+ dB on a Triple High C, all other winners forfeit their winnings to that individual (meaning we're all screwed if Arturo shows up).

What do y'all think?

Best wishes,

John Mohan

[royjohn]

Hi Jim,

You should be able to find an app, but there is also an old Radio Shack meter which you may be able to find used cheaply, too. Common sense is also a good guide. An idling bulldozer is rated at 85dB and can cause hearing loss in only one day's exposure. I would guess that playing in any brass group would exceed that, so I'd make sound level reducing ear plugs required equipment. OSHA requires hearing protection in industry at 85 dB.

Be aware that it is better to be conservative and safe than sorry. The level that causes hearing damage does not cause pain. If the sound is painful it is well over the level that causes long term damage and probably is damaging even in small doses. As we age, high frequency loss sets in for most, so we really don't have a lot of extra capacity to squander.

You can do stupid stuff without thinking. I love to hear what's going on and my audiologist hit the ceiling when he found out I was mowing the lawn with my gas mower with the hearing aides on.

The following are all rated at 85 dB:
lawn mower (doh!); motor bus; garbage disposal; telephone dial tone; auditorium applause. A french horn is rated at 100 dB and an orchestra at 105 dB. Beware!
_________________
royjohn
Trumpets: 1928 Holton Llewellyn Model, 1957 Holton 51LB, 2010 Custom C by Bill Jones, 2011 Custom D/Eb by Bill Jones
Flugels: 1975 Olds Superstar, 1970's Elkhardt, 1970's Getzen 4 valve
Cornet: 1970's Yamaha YCR-233S . . . and others . . .

[jhatpro]

Good advice, RJ. One of the guys in our band wears custom Etymotics.
_________________
Jim Hatfield

"The notes are there - find them.� Mingus

2021 Martinus Geelan Custom
2005 Bach 180-72R
1965 Getzen Eterna Severinsen
1946 Conn Victor
1998 Scodwell flugel
1986 Bach 181 cornet
1954 Conn 80A cornet
2002 Getzen bugle

[amzi]

Remember that volume is only one factor in sound--there are all those intangibles like timbre that determine perceived volume. That 85db rumbling bulldozer will sound louder than an 85db high pitched squeek (generally speaking). Anyway, just trying to say that simply playing into a decibel meter does not present the complete and complex picture of the nature of sound. Just stating the obvious, but thought I would remind everyone.
_________________
Recording Olds Trumpet
Bach Stradivarius ML 37
Bach Stradivarius CML 236
Bach Stradivarius Bass Trumpet
Holton T171 Alto Trumpet
Yamaha 610 Eb/D Trumpet
Kanstul 920 Picc.

[royjohn]

amzi,

While I think you're right, it's not a question of perceived loudness (which I tried to make clear in my posts), but of total sound energy, which I believe decibels measure. If you're at or over 85 dB, no matter how it sounds, you are at risk for damage due to long term exposure.
_________________
royjohn
Trumpets: 1928 Holton Llewellyn Model, 1957 Holton 51LB, 2010 Custom C by Bill Jones, 2011 Custom D/Eb by Bill Jones
Flugels: 1975 Olds Superstar, 1970's Elkhardt, 1970's Getzen 4 valve
Cornet: 1970's Yamaha YCR-233S . . . and others . . .

[Nonsense Eliminator]

A decibel meter is not particularly useful in determining your risk of hearing loss.

Our orchestra participated in a study of sound level exposure. I wrote an article about it for the OCSM journal -- you can read it here. You can read the study here.

The executive summary is this: the problem is not the peak levels (which is what a decibel meter measures) but the total sound exposure, which requires a dosimeter. The 85 dB figure royjohn mentioned is correct, but it's important to understand that that is a time-weighted average over a 40-hour week, 50 weeks per year, not a peak amount. That is, if you sat in a room for 40 hours every week with a consistent 85 dB sound, you would be at the threshold of risk for hearing loss. A momentary exposure to 85 dB is very unlikely to cause any problems. You'll probably see peaks well over 100 dB, but even that isn't necessarily going to cause problems if those levels are transient.

[Edit: corrected link to study]
_________________
Richard Sandals
NBO

[royjohn]

Nonsense Eliminator,

I guess your degree of cavalier-ness on this might depend on how much hearing you have left to lose . . . according to definitions of industrial deafness, I'm there already, so I will err on the conservative side. Others, including you, can do differently. Have you had your hearing checked?

While you are probably correct about misleading peak readings, one app for Android phones gives a graph of exposure levels over time, from which you can get a rough-and-ready average pretty easily. Also, as I noted, exposure to levels over about 105 dB are damaging even if they are short.

Reaching 85 dB on peak levels is one thing, but reaching higher peaks does lead one to question what the average level is . . . remember that the dB scale involves a doubling of sound energy every 3dB increment . . .

The point of my posts is not to scare people out of a room where their meter reaches 85 dB once . . . when a simple table of acoustic output rates a symphony orchestra at 105 dB, I wonder why you are indicating that the meter at 85 dB might not be any cause for alarm . . . the original post asked whether someone should worry about playing in a cornet section of a BBB (isn't that about 8+ cornets within about 10 feet of you?). Instead of pooh-poohing decibel meter readings, why not comment on that, or the level in a typical community band? Do you really think that people are putting in earplugs when they don't need them vs dangerously risking their hearing in noisey environments?

C'mon, we're talking about potentially deaf people here . . .
_________________
royjohn
Trumpets: 1928 Holton Llewellyn Model, 1957 Holton 51LB, 2010 Custom C by Bill Jones, 2011 Custom D/Eb by Bill Jones
Flugels: 1975 Olds Superstar, 1970's Elkhardt, 1970's Getzen 4 valve
Cornet: 1970's Yamaha YCR-233S . . . and others . . .

[Nonsense Eliminator]

royjohn --

I earn my living playing the trumpet. If I can't hear what's going on, I don't eat. So I can't afford to be cavalier about hearing loss, and I don't think it's reasonable to assume that anybody who cares about performing or listening to music is.

The thing is, if you're going to combat hearing loss, you need to start by understanding the facts. Caution is one thing, but if you're not reacting to problems in an informed way, there's no guarantee that the steps you're taking are actually the most effective ones -- if they're helping at all.

For the record, I very much doubt that the average output of any symphony orchestra is even close to 105 dB. In the study we did, the highest time-weighted average exposure (which happens to have occurred when the meter was attached to my back) was 94.1 dB. That's in a pit, playing a fairly loud ballet. Based on my own subjective assessment of relative sound levels, I'd say that playing in a brass band is louder than that, but still nowhere near 105 dB (which would be more than 10 times as loud).

The point is, of course a brass band is loud. We all know that. But if you're trying to quantify how loud from a standpoint of evaluating the danger to your hearing, a decibel meter is not going to be especially useful, because it doesn't measure the right thing. I -- or anybody else who clicked the links I posted -- could make a ballpark guess on what levels a brass band might achieve, and while that guess would probably be at least as good as what you'd get from a decibel meter, it's still just a guess. And as you've observed, a guess that is three decibels too low is off by 100%. So there's just not much point.

I'm not trying to be a killjoy here just for the sake of making a point. I think we'd all be better off simply researching strategies for reducing our sound exposure (in musical settings and otherwise) and implementing them.

******

Bonus link: For some reason, when the article was posted online, the wrong link was included. But it's interesting and relevant, so here it is: Link
_________________
Richard Sandals
NBO

[stumac]

When I played french horn in a community concert band, the band got so loud I could not hear myself playing. I took my professional sound level meter and measured levels on my music stand without me playing.

Most of the time the band was over 100db and peaking to 115db.

I did not stay long enough to do more extensive testing.

Regards, Stuart.

[jhatpro]

Richard, thanks for posting on this subject and including links to the study and to your very well-written article. I hope everyone, and especially those who play more than a few hours a week, takes time to read them.
_________________
Jim Hatfield

"The notes are there - find them.� Mingus

2021 Martinus Geelan Custom
2005 Bach 180-72R
1965 Getzen Eterna Severinsen
1946 Conn Victor
1998 Scodwell flugel
1986 Bach 181 cornet
1954 Conn 80A cornet
2002 Getzen bugle

[royjohn]

Richard,

Your article and the investigators' are well written and interesting. They do seem to suggest that some have been overcautious about orchestral sound expousure. On the other hand, I'm not sure what to say when 40% of the musicials always or often experience tinnitus and/or hyperacusis after rehearsals. It looks like these musicians, despite excellent health and caution with regard to sound exposure in other areas of their lives, still experience some hearing loss. Also, some of the musicians are younger and some older, so we are not getting a picture of what happens to the older musician, whose exposure would be greater. I would also note that this is one study, not a body of research. It does not focus at all on many playing situations in bands or with amplification. It seems to me common sense that folks playing in a cornet section in a brass band are exposed to much higher sound levels and that is what started this thread, I think.

I would also note that the guidelines for exposure (OSHA) are 85 dB for a 40 hour week, but reduce to 20 hours at 88dB, 10 hours at 91 dB, and 5 hours at 94 dB. You give sound levels of 94 dB for some of the orchestral workers in the study, so there could be concern for some of them even in the orchestral setting by these guidelines. There were some outliers charted in the study with higher losses than the average figures quoted. It is not clear whether these are people whose exposure is to higher sound levels or people who are older, or both or ??

I am also puzzled by what seem to be somewhat different figures. The Dangerous Decibels website sponsored by the Oregon Hearing Research Center at Oregon Health and Science University gives one example--an 85 dB bulldozer supposedly causing hearing loss within one day of exposure--that seems at variance with figures that you quote.
[url] http://www.dangerousdecibels.org/education/information-center/noise-induced-hearing-loss/[/url]
The OSHA site mentions the halving of exposure times with each increment of 3 dB and also recommends no more than 8 hours exposure at 85 dB.
http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/noisehearingconservation/#loud

I hope I am not confusing apples and oranges or quoting out of context here. My point is that there seem to be different figures in various places and also that playing environments do differ and there will be many that have higher sound levels than the ones quoted in the study to which you refer. I would also again note that one of the Android dB meter apps provides a time vs sound level curve which should allow one to easily figure overall exposure over time.

Finally, it seems almost superfluous to note yet again that one might want to err on the side of caution in this matter . . . what if the study you quoted turns out to be wrong in its conclusions?
_________________
royjohn
Trumpets: 1928 Holton Llewellyn Model, 1957 Holton 51LB, 2010 Custom C by Bill Jones, 2011 Custom D/Eb by Bill Jones
Flugels: 1975 Olds Superstar, 1970's Elkhardt, 1970's Getzen 4 valve
Cornet: 1970's Yamaha YCR-233S . . . and others . . .

[Nonsense Eliminator]

royjohn --

There are certainly some players (myself included) who were exposed to higher sound levels than the average. But a few things tend to mitigate this. While I'd love to work 52 weeks of the year, I don't. And most work weeks feature either quieter music or less work (or both) than a week of Romeo & Juliet. So while if I played 8 Romeos a week, 52 weeks of the year, I'd certainly be well into a risky range, that's not the case.

The problem with extrapolating these results to a brass band is that there are so many variables. I play in a brass band, and depending on where we're playing, what we're playing, what part I'm playing, and who's sitting near me, it is a very different experience. My normal spot is second chair solo cornet, which might just be the loudest spot in the cornet section, although fourth chair with a tenor horn blasting in your ear is pretty loud as well. Compared to that, any seat in the back row is like being in a library. The other big factor is exposure time. Somebody who (for instance) sits in a brass band for a couple of hours a week is probably at less risk of hearing loss than somebody who sits in an orchestra for twenty hours.

I think that Dangerous Decibels website is just suffering from bad writing. There's another page on the same site that seems to make it quite clear that the acceptable exposure at 85 dB is 8 hours per day. If a single 8-hour exposure to 85 dB was likely to cause hearing damage, we'd all be deaf.

I think we should all be cautious about our hearing. That's why I dropped a couple hundred bucks on custom earplugs, even though the audiologist said I have basically zero hearing loss. From what I've read, it seems to me that the most reasonable approach is to simply assume that reducing our total sound exposure is a good thing, but not to necessarily freak out about being in loud environments for short periods.
_________________
Richard Sandals
NBO

[GordonH]

I played in a venue on Sunday where I could barely hear the player sitting next to me. It was unnerving to say the least. Couldn't hear much of the rest of the band either.

On hearing loss, I developed tinnitus immediately after attending a Maynard Ferguson concert in 1989. I blame Bergeron...

Fortunately it subsided after about two years.
I am a fair bit deaf in my right ear though, borderline for needing a hearing aid.
_________________
Bb - Scherzer 8218W, Schilke S22, Bach 43, Selmer 19A Balanced
Pic - Weril
Flugel - Courtois 154
Cornet - Geneva Heritage, Conn 28A
Mouthpieces - Monette 1-5 rims and similar.

Licensed Radio Amateur - GM4SVM

[cheiden]

FWIW an audiologist I saw said said that he had measured many cases of significant hearing loss in musician who principly played in symphonies. Also I think too much is being made of the exposure needing to be prolonged or daily to be problematic. I have little doubt that a single performance lasting just a few hours could indeed do lasting harm. The OSHA requirements are only guidelines not some magical statement of the actual threshold for damage for everyone in every case.

When I sit next to a particularly loud guitar or cymbal I make a point of always having at an musician-friendly earplug in the closest ear to take the edge off.

I wish all performances would be a lively as possible but to reserve the LOUD bits for just now and then for maximum effect.

To the OP, groups I've played with vary wildly in terms of percieved volume where I'm sitting. I wouldn't even consider wearing hearing protection in many of my playing situations but I always keep an inexpensive set of plugs in case things change unexpectedly. I do like the off-the-shelf Etymotic musician's plugs I got from the music store. Friends that have sprung for the semi-custom ones from the audiologist seem to like theirs even better. Definately worth considering if you have any concerns at all.
_________________
"I'm an engineer, which means I think I know a whole bunch of stuff I really don't."
Charles J Heiden/So Cal
Bach Strad 180ML43*/43 Bb/Yamaha 731 Flugel/Benge 1X C/Kanstul 920 Picc/Conn 80A Cornet
Bach 3C rim on 1.5C underpart

[Paul.Trumpet]

I think you'll find distorted sounds and sudden transients are more likely to damage the ear drums. I wear Peltor Optime 3 ear protection at work.

Trumpet is dangerous because the overblown horn tends to force a shock wave behind the sound emission - making it propagate faster than normal. I could be in pain from a Schilke Faddis from 10mtr in front the bell but at 90 degrees to the player, 5 metres away, he's almost inaudible over the band.
For me, this is the reason no coned loudspeaker can sound like a trumpet live.

There is a major issue with the trumpet, player feedback. The horn sends a blast forward, you get the reflection back. Phase change and resonance occur. The audience absorb some of the sound to.

[GordonH]

Just on a side note: The sound pressure levels involved with the trumpet are considerable compared to vocals. Try playing into a large diaphragm condenser microphone and see the chaos that ensues on the mixing desk (thats my experience anyway)
_________________
Bb - Scherzer 8218W, Schilke S22, Bach 43, Selmer 19A Balanced
Pic - Weril
Flugel - Courtois 154
Cornet - Geneva Heritage, Conn 28A
Mouthpieces - Monette 1-5 rims and similar.

Licensed Radio Amateur - GM4SVM

[Dale Proctor]