What would you do if tomorrow you find out that you couldn’t hear anything anymore? For gamers like us, this means no more sound of the footsteps of the enemies, no sound of the dialogue of your favorite cutscene suddenly, no more goosebumps soundtrack from your favorite game … That would be a nightmare that doesn’t end.
Sadly, that is what the millions of gamers suffering right now: hearing impairment. This condition is torturing 466 million people all over the world, although nearly 60 percent of all ears' issues can be prevented before too late.
This is why we have Hearing Awareness Week. This is a program from World Health Organisation and it is usually on the first week of March each year. Every year, the World Health Organisation picks a theme and partners around the world to participate in the Hearing Awareness Week to raise awareness, help prevent hearing problems and improve hearing capability.
This year, the World Health Organisation chooses quite a simply theme for the Hearing Awareness Week: can you get a hearing test done. It sounds simple, but most people may discover their problems while taking the test. Since a normal person with a hearing issue averagely takes six years before they do anything about the issue. In the UK, a study showed that only 20 percent of people who have a ears's issue address it. That means 80% of people who have hearing problems don’t fix them on time. Waiting six years, in many cases, means it is already too late to do anything about the problem.
So why gamers like us has any connection with this? The most common form of ears' issues comes from noise. The recommended listening time for a device that is at 85 decibels of sound is 8 hours. Turn that volume up to 100 and the recommended listening time drops dramatically to 15 minutes. Most computers and personal devices range from 75db up to even 136 db. So turning your headphones at maximum volume to hear the footsteps from the enemies is definitely doing more harm than good.
For gamers who have comfortable budget, we recommend Audeara. This website has developed a technology to directly tackle this problem. Audeara’s technology is a program that tests your' capability for you and design a custom profile so that you can hear anything the way it suits best for you. This technology will analyze your ears' capability and then builds an audio profile. This profile will be synced with your Audeara headphones to allow you to hear at the most suitable volume for your ears.
However, this technology only works on Audeara’s headphone, and this device is not cheap.
If you are gaming on a tight budget, we recommend you to put the volume of your device lower. Most hearing device now have a warning level. If you turn your volume too high, the device will push a notification to tell you to turn the volume down to protect your ears. Try not to ignore this warning notification.
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