Ever wondered how loud a rock concert really is? – PINK?

[Pyroay]

Ever wondered how loud a rock concert really is? – PINK?

Ever wondered how loud a rock concert is?
Should you listen at high levels for extended periods?
Should you wear hearing protection?


I had the pleasure of attending PINK in Melbourne on Tuesday night and I took the liberty of taking along a few instruments with me to examine the sound set-up.
For those of you who are conversant with lighting I also took the liberty of noting the lighting arrangement as well.

My Equipment
1 x Phonic handheld real time analyzer with peak hold + avg function etc…
1 x DBX precision flat response measurements condenser microphone
(looks strikingly similar to the F1 Status Alpine mic, I would even hazard that DBX supplied Alpine with them)
1 x pair ears
1 x pair eyes

Stage Equipment
Audio
Mixer = looked like a Yamaha PM1D (nice little $130,000 desk)
2 x front arrays consisting of 14 mid boxes (2 x 12s ea I think) + 12 high boxes
2 x half side fill arrays consisting of 7 mid boxes + 6 high boxes
?? x subs (you could definitely hear them, although to their credit they were pretty balanced)

Lighting
70 x Martin MAC2000W
38 x Martin MAC2000S
10 x Atomic 3000 Strobes
20 x ACL Beacons RED
18 x 4 way moles with DWE
All controlled by my favorite 1 x Whole Hog II.

For those who don’t know lighting that’s a lot of moving yoke lights, well over $1.5m AUD @ RRP


Position
I was sitting off to one side of the stage in the first tier about half way back so a nice middle position.

Measurements
The first thing that stood out to me was that the sound was very even across all frequency’s. There was the obvious high end roll off form 16k but other than that the sound level was pretty flat. I had expected to see a hole in the midrange and then a massive bump in the sub bass but that was not apparent and I found the balance overall to be very good.

There also seemed to be 2 distinct levels during the concert.

The quieter / slower songs were consistently around 100db – 102db never dropping below 100db. Audience applause and screaming at the end of songs was around the 104db mark.

The faster louder songs (most of her hit songs) were around 110 – 113db.
The maximum measured for the night was 115.4db.

The Concert lasted approx 90minutes although I did not time it exactly.
Below is a table showing noise levels and recommended exposure levels before haring loss can start to occur.

As you can see at 100db 2hrs is the maximum time while at 110db it drops to

OSHA Daily Permissible Noise Level Exposure
8hrs - 90dB
6hrs - 92dB
4hrs - 95dB
3hrs - 97dB
2hrs - 100dB
1.5hrs - 102dB
1hr - 105dB
.5hr - 110dB
.25hr - 115dB

To give some perspective I listened to PINK on CD in my car and found 95db to be a good loud listening level.


Some interesting points to note.:
• One-third of the total power of a 75-piece orchestra comes from the bass drum.
• High frequency sounds of 2-4,000 Hz are the most damaging. The uppermost octave of the piccolo is 2,048-4,096 Hz.
• Aging causes gradual hearing loss, mostly in the high frequencies.
• Speech reception is not seriously impaired until there is about 30 dB loss; by that time severe damage may have occurred.
• Hypertension and various psychological difficulties can be related to noise exposure.
• The incidence of hearing loss in classical musicians has been estimated at 4-43%, in rock musicians 13-30%.

Obviously individual hearing is different and the choice of weather to wear hearing protection is up to each individual; I know I wore it for most of the night but on my favorite songs it got the better of me and off they came.

One thing I would say is if your going to wear some form of hearing protection as a musician (or concert lover and I am both as I am a drummer) I found it is a worthy investment to get protection that simulates the human hearing curve, that is most sensitive at 4k and tapering off either side of that.

That way you still hear all frequencies the way the sound engineer intended (or instrument) but simply at a lower level.

It is a bit like turning down the volume on a home stereo as opposed to putting a blanket in front to f the speakers. Sure both quieten the sound but the blanket affects different frequencies differently whereas the volume should attenuate all frequencies to the same degree.