how likely to blow speakers/hearing damage?

Eat Bass · Post by **Eat Bass** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:27 am

for some reason i have a terrible habit of using an eq or a reverb and then bypassing it to hear the difference. then i mess around with something else and then un bypass the reverb or eq with a single band boosted 24db or the reverb all the way wet and it sends a screaming sound through my headphones. i just did that and logic actually crashed as soon as the screeching sound came out. i instantly through my ultrasone pro 900s to the table. i had them only like 1/4 volume but with the 24db it was loud.

how likely are these short bursts of loud frequencies to damage my ultrasones? there expensive as fuck so if i blew them id be pissed. do you think isolated occurrences would damage the headphones or my ears.

ehbes · Post by **ehbes** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:32 am

i did this with a pair of senn's a couple months ago they seen fine now so id say your good as long as it int happening on the reg

Eat Bass · Post by **Eat Bass** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:41 am

iv only done it twice. once was a reverb i accidentally blasted the send level to 100% and it sent a feedback type sound for like 2 seconds. this is the second time and i un bypassed an eq that was boosted at about 12k 24dbs where it sent a screech for about half a second but both were pretty ear piercing. hoping i didn't do damage to the headphones or my ears.

ehbes · Post by **ehbes** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:44 am

yeah what happened to me is on reason i set the input to internal mic by accident, and it sent out a deffening screech

Eat Bass · Post by **Eat Bass** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:51 am

ehbrums1 wrote:yeah what happened to me is on reason i set the input to internal mic by accident, and it sent out a deffening screech

yeah i hate when i do retarded stuff like this lol

ehbes · Post by **ehbes** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:53 am

word man cuz like it kinda fades in the screech and your oh shit not again..

daeMTHAFKNkim · Post by **daeMTHAFKNkim** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:55 am

I got a 2-year warranty at Guitar center with these headphones

). I'd say buy warranty next time cuz headphones fall apart pretty easily especially the wiring.

Eat Bass · Post by **Eat Bass** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:02 am

daeMTHAFKNkim wrote:I got a 2-year warranty at Guitar center with these headphones ). I'd say buy warranty next time cuz headphones fall apart pretty easily especially the wiring.

my ultrasones have a removable cable and came with 2 wires. i dotn see these things breaking anytime soon. I'm talking about loud bursts of sounds at high frequencies. if it will damage the headphones and my ears. the headphones are already bought so i can't get a warranty. doesn't help.

dubesteppe · Post by **dubesteppe** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 2:05 am

it recently happened to me at 2 am. it scared the shit out of me! now i keep a limiter on my master channel until im ready to mix down a track

Eat Bass · Post by **Eat Bass** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 4:07 am

dubesteppe wrote:it recently happened to me at 2 am. it scared the shit out of me! now i keep a limiter on my master channel until im ready to mix down a track

good idea. what do you set your limiter at so it doesn't change the dynamics when your doing sound design but will still catch shit like this from happening?

ehbes · Post by **ehbes** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 4:18 am

well i know you now on logic but if your doing sound design in r6 its got a -20 db thing on the master channel in rack view that could help

nowaysj · Post by **nowaysj** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:43 am

Did this once in my newbie days on an analog board, set up a feedback loop. Blew a tweeter in my ns-10. Me and my buddy were both wearing headphones, threw that shit off like our ears were on fire, no joke, but yeah, tweeter blown, and quite possibly hearing damage. Limiter on the master is not a bad idea if you are exercising best practices in gain staging, jokes. Set the limiter to brick wall anything over 0db, and then mix a good 12 db below that. The limiter will never kick in unless you fuck up.

macc · Post by **macc** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 9:29 am

Once upon a time I hit stop on a track, went out to the pub, got pissed, came back and was unlocking the door thinking 'WTF is that noise?!'.

Turned out to be the feedback in a delay plugin... It had basically disappeared as I left, but built back up over time and ended up screaming out to all the neighbours for several hours while I got pissed

VirtualMark · Post by **VirtualMark** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 10:08 am

I'm using Cubase, and with control room you can have a separate monitor track. I have a few plugins on this track, and the good thing about it is that as its a separate output it doesn't affect the master. I use it for mono checks, spectrum analyzer(it lets me preview samples with the analyzer on), and i also have a limiter on it. With a dual monitor setup i can keep an eye on this limiter - ideally i want it to never have to limit anything as it'll change what i'm hearing. But its only there to catch these accidental loud bursts.

Another thing - how loud are you producing? I tend to produce at quite a low level, as my ears will get tired quicker if its on loud. Especially with sound design - messing around with saw waves and distortion for hours at loud volumes is one sure way to guarantee tinnitus in the next few years.

RandoRando · Post by **RandoRando** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 10:22 am

macc wrote:Once upon a time I hit stop on a track, went out to the pub, got pissed, came back and was unlocking the door thinking 'WTF is that noise?!'.

Turned out to be the feedback in a delay plugin... It had basically disappeared as I left, but built back up over time and ended up screaming out to all the neighbours for several hours while I got pissed

Ive been on this forum over a year, and i actually spent a good 2.5 seconds trying to find the "like" button on your post lol .

thats how good that post was.

Electric_Head · Post by **Electric_Head** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 10:28 am

macc wrote:Once upon a time I hit stop on a track, went out to the pub, got pissed, came back and was unlocking the door thinking 'WTF is that noise?!'.

Turned out to be the feedback in a delay plugin... It had basically disappeared as I left, but built back up over time and ended up screaming out to all the neighbours for several hours while I got pissed

classic

dublerium · Post by **dublerium** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:21 pm

macc wrote:Once upon a time I hit stop on a track, went out to the pub, got pissed, came back and was unlocking the door thinking 'WTF is that noise?!'.

Turned out to be the feedback in a delay plugin... It had basically disappeared as I left, but built back up over time and ended up screaming out to all the neighbours for several hours while I got pissed

dubesteppe · Post by **dubesteppe** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 4:50 pm

Eat Bass wrote:
dubesteppe wrote:it recently happened to me at 2 am. it scared the shit out of me! now i keep a limiter on my master channel until im ready to mix down a track
good idea. what do you set your limiter at so it doesn't change the dynamics when your doing sound design but will still catch shit like this from happening?

get a peak meter vst and put it before the limiter

blinx · Post by **blinx** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 5:12 pm

very low likely hood that "short" burst/blast will do any longterm damage. In my experience most modern active speakers actually have a some type of limiter in them that will protect against the short bursts and clipping. I have blown plenty of speakers, but never with just a short temporary blast of noise... most the time i will make my ears more mad then the speakers. This of course is just my experiences but you should be fine.

Depone · Post by **Depone** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 1:08 am

don’t want to de-rail the thread, but if you're having to add +24db of gain on an EQ then there’s something drastically wrong with the sound to start with

If you don’t want this happening again, and perhaps don't trust yourself to do it again, then add a limiter to your master for safety. Just be careful your not driving the combined signal over 0db into it (ala gain structure) Just keep a tabs of what’s going on basically.

@ Macc

Very similar thing happened to me but not anything as bad as that.

how likely to blow speakers/hearing damage?

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