Video gamers worldwide may be risking irreversible hearing loss and/or tinnitus—persistent ringing/buzzing in the ears—finds a systematic review of the available evidence, published in the open access journal BMJ Public Health.
What evidence there is suggests that the sound levels reported in studies of more than 50,000 people often near, or exceed, permissible safe limits, conclude the researchers.
And given the popularity of these games, greater public health efforts are needed to raise awareness of the potential risks, they urge.
While headphones, earbuds, and music venues have been recognized as sources of potentially unsafe sound levels, relatively little attention has been paid to the effects of video games, including e-sports, on hearing loss, say the researchers.
computer sounds are way too loud
i have my pc volume set to 50% and still consistently need to turn the master volume for every new game i buy down to 50%, or at least 75%, just so it stops causing physical pain in my ears
Yeah there’s a lot of variables for audio depending on peoples setups, but having the volume default to 100% is not the correct thing for applications to do, ever.
What is the correct thing to do?
Implementing proper logarithmic volume controls and defaulting them to -20 dB(FS) would be great. But the math involved is slightly more complicated* than the simplistic “multiply everything with a coefficient between 0 and 1” so devs won’t bother (if they even know about logarithmic volume controls at all).
*I did logarithmic volume slider in Jscript for foobar2000 using a Jscript GUI plugin and it was not too difficult, but not straightforward either. Getting the button states and scaling to work correctly was more difficult and I never solved some annoying bugs. That was the first and the only “programming” I’ve ever done in my life.
Hmm, shouldn’t that be a driver level task?
No, it isn’t. OS and app volume controls are not implemented on driver level, but in each application individually, or you wouldn’t be able to change OS volume and in-app volume independent of each other. It’s simple math, multiplying audio sample values with a coefficient, best done in 32 bit floating point.
The question is not whether to do the math at driver level or in the userspace. The question is: if the user sets their volume slider to the middle, what value that coefficient should be? Most apps use simple linear correlation (middle point halves values which is 6 dB of attenuation or -6 dB(FS)) which is not how human hearing works. Log volume control would have the middle point at, eg, -40 dB(FS) and zero point at -80 dB(FS), giving psychoacoustically useful range in both halves of the bar. This is how analog volume controls on amplifiers work (not exactly so, but pretty close).
Driver level volume control can be done, but then you’d need to open your sound card control app and set it there. It would be an addition to OS and app volume controls. It would not be tied to OS or in-app volume controls or affected by standard multimedia keys on your keyboard. And if you decide to do OS volume control at driver level, in-app volume controls would still need to exist and be at the mercy of the app devs competency at implementing it.
Yeah, that all makes sense.
Defaulting to 50% volume would be a good start, might be too quiet for some, might still be too loud for others. But at least it’s not guaranteed to blow most peoples ears out.
What I don’t understand in this thread is most people seem don’t seem to be mentioning that you shouldn’t have your master volume turned all the way up, especially if you have issues with loud volumes. It would be odd to me for a program to default to 50% for its volume. Since no others do, it would sound very quiet compared to all else and then I’d have to adjust it to undo that weird difference. Do people really not turn their master volumes down? I don’t get why not, I do literally constantly.
Same. It was a shock to me reading all the replies of people not just turning down the master volume. Usually there is a button on you keyboard specifically for that!
Yeah exactly! I love that modern OSes and apps have individual volume sliders in case I need them, but in reality the way it plays out is the more volumes I adjust, the more confusing it is. I turn my PC speakers or headphones up to a level that basically caps the volume so it never blasts me too badly, then I just adjust my master volume on my keyboard and/or media PC remote. It tends to work well. Very rarely is something loud enough in this context to be alarming. Every now and then, I have to turn down a volume slider within a game/app, usually the music slider. If apps set their default volumes to 50% that would be annoying for me. Although I will say that the idea someone in the thread had – to display a volume slider with a test sound on first launch of a game – is a good idea.
If I turn my Windows volume or my amp down any more then other applications become too quiet while they are at 100% volume.
The point is 100% shouldn’t be a target aimed for. If my system is at 50% master volume, 100% on applications should still be too loud, you need headroom both up and down for different scenarios. If I play with friends and need speaker audio, then I need the volume louder for them.I can adjust my PC volume on the fly with a knob, but adjusting the whole volume everytime throws everything out of whack, now my YouTube will be too quiet, other games I start up will need their volumes adjusting again etc.
So realistically its better if you keep your volume at a set level and then adjust the apps to get it perfect, the problem is apps defaulting to max volume for that moment of ear rape.
adjusting the whole volume everytime throws everything out of whack
Interesting POV – that statement would be exactly my experience if you replaced “whole volume” with “app-specific volume”
If for no other reason than “I can instantly adjust my master volume with my keyboard but the app specific volume is going to take several clicks to adjust”
I want to adjust my app volume and be done with it, I dont want to adjust my master volume everytime. Besides if I turn down my master volume, now my music is quieter, I have to adjust that, people I am talking to are quieter and I have to adjust that.
In my setup I have a volume knob for each of these on a macropad, but I just turn down the desktop audio knob when starting a new game up, then reset the volume back after I adjust the in-game setting. So I personally have worked around it, but 99.9% of people wont have this so they have to use the OS volume control, which makes this a bigger annoyance.
If apps just didnt start at 100% it wouldnt be an issue, too quiet for some or too loud for some is better than max volume for everyone, which is guaranteed to ear rape some people.
Jokes on them! I don’t even need to worry about video games doing it to me. I’ve already got some minor hearing loss in one ear from a history of childhood ear infections. That, and my other ear is probably gonna end up with hearing loss from how loud I listen to music. Games ain’t got nothing on my music listening habit!
HUH, WHAT DID YOU SAY?
CounterStrike and all it’s variations was always nuts with this to me, ‘I have the voltume up to hear the footsteps bro’ -KACHOW- “BUT THE HOUSE IS SHAKING” ‘yeah this noob has an AWP, so of course I also have an mmhph’ -THE AUDIENCE IS NOW DEEEF-
It would be nice if there was a pre-game audio slider like some games have brightness sliders.
I have Windows volume mixer open all the time. I have developed a habit of pulling the volume down to 10-15% on every new window/app that I open because I hate sudden unstoppable loudness.
Imagine if you could do it for the entire system!
I’ve had tinnitus since my earliest memories. Will I get tinnitus on my tinnitus? Tinnitus squared?
WHAT!?
What a dumbass click bait headline.
Has less to do with video games, and more to do with how loudly people are listening to them.
Why is this receiving such hate? I’m one of those affected, and it would make sense that video games were a huge reason why I have such bad ringing in my ears. It should absolutely be taught that playing video games runs the same risks as going to a concert, ear buds, headphones.
I’m confident we have all went to play a game, and not realized that our headset volume had been set to max. Definitely a personal feeling, but I wish someone had said maybe pay better attention before playing video games.
Because the issue isn’t the video games fault. Any gamer in danger of damaging their hearing from playing games, is likely in danger of the same damage from listening to music or talking on the phone at high volume, also.
Reasonable people can already figure out that listening to anything too loud is bad for their hearing. This article is a nothing burger, and the title uses fear-mongering/hate bait to get you to read it.
I am glad it is so obvious to you, however I am still thankful that articles like these get a chance to reach those who are unaware.
Because its not a fear monger, it is simply true for anyone unaware.
I can’t even begin to imagine how a person that is capable of reading and comprehending the article as well as hearing sounds would be unaware that LOUD SOUNDS HURT EARS.
Maybe read the actual article then. I say this in a dickish tone, because it is not “simply loud noises” and it makes everyone else sound like an idiot in comparison to you.
I have read the article. It doesn’t suggest that the games themselves are using sounds too loud, only that many gamers listen to them at higher than safe volumes.
Yes, exactly because it is not obvious that this will cause damage to their ears. I’m sorry, im hungry, but what are you trying to argue if you just agreed with me? It is not a hate/fear mongering article if its point is to bring attention to those unaware.
I’m not sure if the original was edited, or if im absolutely bonkers but I swore you used the words hate/fearmongering and not dumbass.
