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The University of Southampton
Engineering

HOW loud? Hearing risks from contemporary smart devices Seminar

Time:
16:00 - 17:00
Date:
31 October 2017
Venue:
Building 13 Room 3017

Event details

In recent decades, noise induced hearing loss from leisure activities has become one of the leading health concerns worldwide.

In 2015 the WHO issue a report suggesting that 1.1 billion young people worldwide were putting themselves at risk from hearing damage. Of particular interest is music listening, and the use of personal music players.  Music is consumed on a wide range of devices, and a key development in recent years has been the move away from the traditional music player towards smart devices such as tablets and mobile phones. There has been a simultaneous move towards viewing other forms of media on smart devices – for instance TV, films and video games.  These are much more powerful devices than their predecessors, and their internal amplification is often designed to power an internal loudspeaker to a point at which the sound can be clearly heard across a room. As many of these devices do not come shipped with headphones, at the same time there has been a move towards using a wider range of headphone types with devices. The presentation looks at research by Dr Barlow into music listening levels, and the potential output levels that smart devices are capable of presenting to the ear. This is also linked into other areas of music listening such as noise exposure from attending music events, and the overall potential for the combination of listening/viewing/gaming to present serious noise risks to young people.

Speaker information

Chris Barlow, Solent. Chris Barlow studied Music at the University of Sheffield and Music Technology at the University of York. He then worked in the recording industry as a recording engineer specialising in classical music. Chris then returned to academia, moving into acoustics to study for his PhD at the University of York, specialising in voice and speech analysis. He completed in 2003 to work in a postdoctoral research fellowship in Music Technology at Leeds College of Music. He then moved to Southampton Solent University in 2004 as a Lecturer in audio engineering, was made Reader in 2009, Associate Professor in 2012 and Professor in 2016. He is currently Head of Solent Acoustics - the university's acoustic consultancy and training business, and also teaches on a range of courses in Acoustics, Audio Engineering, Broadcast Engineering and Computing. Particular research interests include hearing conservation and hearing loss in the music industry. He also has research interests in spatial audio, learning technology and sound for video games, with recent projects focusing on sound for virtual reality in technical training and engineering diagnostics applications. Chris is Chair of the South of England group of the Audio Engineering Society, sits on the Southern Branch committee of the Institute of Acoustics, and also on the UK National Executive of the Audio Engineering Society. He also the chair of the International Conference on ICT in Education.

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