Noise or loud music

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There's some sense to you're enjoying your music loud, it isn't noise to you. It could well be the most annoying noise to me. I've always preferred instrumental music to vocal and I can listen to Ravel or Stravinsky at very high volume. Throw in distortion and it doesn't matter what it is. Take me to a loud bar or rock concert and I'll be looking for the door and burying my head in my knees.

I've grown so sensitive to noise that I've had to start wearing earplugs or noise canceling headphones at work when they insist on playing their music. I also need them to study if a TV is on in they house and to sleep. It's becoming a problem because I'm starting to develop a rash in my ears from the plugs which no combination of antibiotic or antifungal seems to be clearing up anymore. That sucks because I just got fired, don't have medical anymore, so the doctor and meds will be out of pocket. Oops, running off on a tangent again...

I don't like loud noises, but some certainly bother me more than others.

Even music I like I generally don't make that loud. Anything will bother me if it's loud enough.

I also have lots of other noise issues. The noise of e.g. someone filing their nails (or similar) is extremely irritating to me - painful, I guess, to the point where I have to leave the room. I also find any noise that repeats at a regular interval very unpleasant.

noise canceling headphones, how do they look like, are they the same as the ones road contructors use?

noise canceling headphones, how do they look like, are they the same as the ones road contructors use?[/quote]

I don't know about the ones that road contractors wear. I would imagine those very bulky. There are now a great variety of ones available at a range of prices. It used to be all that was available were over the ear cup types that cost several hundred dollars. Those are still the most effective I know of, but there are now a number of "on ear" foam types that work reasonably well for under $100. I picked up a pair of that variety last year for around $40. You definitely don't get pure silence, as they only mute surrounding noise, but I would expect that they'd be very effective at blocking out the world without having the volume too high if I were ever to plug them into an audio source.

I don't like people noise. i can handle loud music but not crowd noise. Even if it is just 7 or 8 people if everyone is talking at once, even at a reasonable level it makes me really really angry. I love construction type noises. I work with a bunch of very large pumps. Hearing their motors makes me very relaxed. I call it a sound hug. I sleep with an air compressor next to my bed. Sudden loud noises don't bother me much but I hate hearing people for a long time or too loudly. I turn the sound off on the t.v. and use closed captioning. It irritates me to the point of wanting to cry if people have music on just loud enough that they have to raise their voices over it and then try to talk over it. I absolutely can't stand talking over music or having two sources of noise like t.v. and radio or something like that. It overwhelms me. I like loud clubs when I'm in the mood but I cannot stand loud restaurants.

Never thought about it in terms of control before. One of the things I do for fun and/or occasional paying gig is event sound (also lights and sets and such as needed). Even in small spaces, I an constantly being reminded to bump up the volume because people can't hear. I'm at FOH right behind the audience, and I can hear it fine. But, the event producers are the ones who pay, so if they say to make it louder I make it louder.

A possibility I've thought about from time to time is that I tend to be in quieter environments - not many loud parties (okay, not many parties period), as well as a tendency to look into a situation from the outside, rather be right in the middle of it. One of my favorite things to do is hike in the national parks - nice and quiet. Getting back at least somewhat to topic, I believe that this creates a lower "noise floor" for me, where I recognize that sounds at fairly low levels are actual sounds to be listened to, and not just ambient background that can be ignored. The term "noise floor" is used a lot in communications system design as well as in sound design, but I don't think I've ever known it to be applied to people before.

Jonathan

People ask me, "Jonathan, why are you so quiet all the time?"
To which I reply, "I find that I learn a whole lot more by listening than by talking."

I don't like loud sounds but most of my music is realy loud as well. I hate firecrackers but there nice to watch same with fire works.

I am very sensitive to noise. I can stand my own music, but even that only for awhile. But all sorts of noises bother me.

There's the obvious loud music belonging to other people, it will actually cause me physical pain if the bass is too high. There's fireworks, balloons popping, kinds screaming, too many people (malls, family gatherings, etc.), video game music/sound and so many other things.

There's also the "little" noises. I had to switch bedrooms because I was living in a basement apartment and my room happened to be right beneath the kitchen of my upstairs neighbor. I could hear his refrigerator humming. And every so often it would take a "break" and I would practically cry in relief. I couldn't figure out, at first, what it was and almost went up and asked him to stop whatever the heck he was doing!

I absolutely despise it when my dad turns the tv up loud (he's hard of hearing, too much machine shops and not enough hearing protection for him). I absolutely loathe the conservative talk radio he loves blasting up load (especially since all they do is argue), I also loathe how he has to turn up his action movies to 4589789475 freaking decibels.

I'm okay with some music being blasted. Especially if it's highly melodic and not as much percussion in it as say, some harder rock.

How can you hate fireworks bangs? All the crackling, whizzing, banging... it's awesome!

Shared rooms with TV/radio aren't really suitable for people with different taste in entertainment. I always think that soft chairs and settees should be fitted with loudspeakers so that each person has a speaker close to their ear. Each speaker should have a volume control. That way, each person would be able to listen at their own ideal volume, without annoying anybody else, and it would be a lot more comfortable than making everybody wear headphones.

My dad was a bit deaf too, though he was also concerned about having the TV too loud. He always said the biggest problem was that film soundtracks have the loud bits too loud compared to the quiet bits, so if he turned up the quiet bits so he could hear the words, the explosions and the pesky advertisements would be deafeningly loud. There is a device called an audio compressor that selectively turns up the quiet bits, but I haven't seen any TV sets or DVD players that have such a feature.

I always refuse to stay in any room where there's loud entertainment going on, unless it's something I happen to be really into. Especially if it's right-wing politics or religious stuff, or some stupid in-yer-face TV program with people shouting at the audience like they're a load of small children. As for commercial channels and their advertisements, I think the TV should have a detector that kills the sound completely, but I think the advertising people have somehow stopped anybody selling a TV like that.

Fireworks always made me cringe a little, sustained siren noise irritates me, screaming children make me want to claw my own eyes out, but the worst was the constant explosions in Baghdad. I mean, most of the time it was just the EOD team blowing something up, but every once in a while we actually were under attack.

Funny story, at least to me: one night I went to sleep in my tent in Baghdad and I had taken to putting on headphones at night to block out the Blackhawk helicopters and random explosions. I had Nine Inch Nails "The Fragile" on. Not exactly soothing music, but I fell asleep with it on. Goes to the loud music vs. noise paradox. Anyway, I had a dream that I was back home in my parents' backyard with my younger brother, who was trying to slit my throat. After I woke up with a start, I decided that going to sleep to NIN wasn't the best idea and changed out to something a little lighter.

But it still beat the noise going on outside.

I agree with what folks have said about sounds you choose versus sounds you don't choose.

But there is another distinction between loud music and other loud noises. One that's probably behind choosing music but not the other sounds.

Music is a different kind of sound. Music is structured. Noise is unstructured. Turbulent. Our brains respond differently to music than to other noises.

I agree that it's the regularity of most music that tends to make it more tolerable. And music is usually designed to please. But I also think one person's "cool sounds" is another person's "bleeding racket." And modern drum and bass tracks are heavily computer-enhanced to make them sound as punchy and penetrating as humanly possible. And there's a lot of car stereos can kick out hundreds of watts of bass power. From the outside, it sounds like a battering ram on amphetamines.

Oh I understand, and my dad uses the whole example of the old movies with the soundtracks turned up load by the words being quiet... Like yours he'd crank it louder.

The commercials by nature are too much louder than the program. It's almost like they expect you to hear it from one room as you run into the bathroom or kitchen to use it or get something. And Billy Mays (dude who advertises things over the years, especially known for advertising OrangeGlo, OxiClean, Awesome Auger, Hercules Hook, and Kaboom) should have been stopped dead in his tracks a long time ago. I hate his voice. Nails.On.A.Chalkboard.

I'm hardly ever in the living room when my dad watches TV though. I'm almost always in my room.

I operate a zero tolerance policy on ads - so I just don't do live TV at all. Luckily I don't need to see everything the moment it happens, so I can just record and watch later, skipping through the ads of course. I can't undersand why there isn't more public fury about ads. It's not just the noise, it's the manipulation and the insult to the intelligence, right in the middle of the home.