EU Recommends Noise Limits On MP3 Players 360
A story at the BBC notes increasing pressure from the European Commission to set standards that would limit the maximum volume on portable MP3 players. Their reasoning is that it would protect users from damaging their hearing after listening to loud music for extended periods. Quoting:
"This follows a report last year warning that up to 10m people in the EU face permanent hearing loss from listening to loud music for prolonged periods. EU experts want the default maximum setting to be 85 decibels, according to BBC One's Politics Show. Users would be able to override this setting to reach a top limit of 100 decibels. ... Some personal players examined in testing facilities have been found to reach 120 decibels, the equivalent of a jet taking off, and no safety default level currently applies, although manufacturers are obliged to print information about risks in the instruction manuals. Modern personal players are seen as more dangerous than stationary players or old-fashioned cassette or disk players because they can store hours of music and are often listened to while in traffic with the volume very high to drown out outside noise."
Wrong approach entirely (Score:5, Funny)
A technical problem requires a technical solution.
Instead of forcing media player manufacturers to implement a volume limiter, just force them to include a jamming frequency and allow third parties to sell jammers. When a person feels that someone's music is intruding on their personal space (in a bus, on a train, or anywhere that people are in close contact), a single button press could send a piercing squeal right through whatever audio the earbud guy had playing.
This has two benefits. First, if there are multiple people around and it is difficult to determine who is listening loudly, this gets all of them in one shot. Second, if a person's earbuds are so loud that the sound is invading someone else's personal space, the brief tone should be enough to put their eardrums out permanently.
EU recommends nose limits on MPs? (Score:3, Funny)
I must have heard wrong, you'll have to speak up -- I've been getting a bit deaf lately.
What next? (Score:4, Funny)
EU regs on the maximum roughness of toilet paper?
Re:Wrong approach entirely (Score:5, Funny)
You're not making any sense!
That's a much better explanation, thanks!
Re:Rock On, Dudes! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wrong approach entirely (Score:3, Funny)
I wholeheartedly agree that it's the "wrong approach entirely", but you've misunderstood the nature of the problem and the solution. It's not a technical problem. Did you even read the summary much less RTFA? Your solution is focused on something else entirely, not within the scope of what was being addressed. This proposed authoritarian restriction isn't intended to keep music from being so loud that it bothers other people: it's intended to "protect" people from their own poor judgement concerning their own bodies and eardrums.
Thus the problem here is social and informational: lack of education.
The obvious solution is not more technology, it's the addition of education (or eliminating the lack of education).
What you suggest is the Technocrat equivalent of Democrats throwing money at a problem... and it's not even the same problem at issue here.
Re:Wrong approach entirely (Score:2, Funny)
What you suggest is the Technocrat equivalent of Democrats throwing money at a problem.
Quite the opposite. I am pushing a solution which requires greater personal responsibility on the listener and encouraging a community standards-based policing effort rather than a heavy-handed regulatory action. This is a very Republican solution, actually.
Re:Wrong approach entirely (Score:3, Funny)
Even if that were true - and I'm not conceding that it is - it's not the solution to the problem being discussed here.
Can ya at least be on-topic enough to agree that yet another Big-Mother-ish law isn't the solution to either problem?
Spam (Score:3, Funny)
that sounds strangely like spam I've seen
Re:Wrong approach entirely (Score:3, Funny)
Let's add all the idiots who think it's okay to run a circular saw first thing Sunday morning because they don't know that Sunday most of us like to sleep in. And while we're at it, muzzle those stupid church bells. And a force field that crushes Jehovahs Witnesses into little blobs of degenerate matter when they ring your doorbell would be a nice addition.
Re:Wrong approach entirely (Score:1, Funny)
You're still completely missing the point here. Have you ever used the ear canal style earphones? They cannot be heard unless you insert them in your ear, even with the volume turned up pretty far. And with them inserted in someone else's ear, you definitely won't be able to hear them at all. This rule is intended to prevent the player from being turned up so loud that the listener's hearing is inadvertently damaged.
You're talking about "jammers" that allow the person sitting next to you to turn down your volume for you, but that solution isn't even applicable to this problem. That is why your post is off-topic.
Re:But how to do that? (Score:4, Funny)
> While all our governments are in a nanny-state frame of mind... ... ...[the bands] obviously consider it perfectly OK for them to obliterate
>
>
> the hearing of customers frequenting the place.
Customers who were abducted from the streets outside, dragged into the club, and chained down so that they couldn't escape.
> ... ...I hold many of these crappy bands to blame.
>
Because you couldn't possibly be responsible for your own behavior.
Re:But how to do that? (Score:2, Funny)
Not a problem (Score:3, Funny)
I trust my Ogg player will be exempt from this :)