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Video gamers worldwide may be risking irreversible hearing loss and/or tinnitus (medicalxpress.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Video gamers worldwide may be risking irreversible hearing loss and/or tinnitus—persistent ringing/buzzing in the ears—finds a systematic review of the available evidence, published in the open access journal BMJ Public Health.

What evidence there is suggests that the sound levels reported in studies of more than 50,000 people often near, or exceed, permissible safe limits, conclude the researchers.

And given the popularity of these games, greater public health efforts are needed to raise awareness of the potential risks, they urge.

While headphones, earbuds, and music venues have been recognized as sources of potentially unsafe sound levels, relatively little attention has been paid to the effects of video games, including e-sports, on hearing loss, say the researchers.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Every time I open a new game, the volume is set to the absolute max, which is orders of magnitude louder than any other sound on my computer. When I go to change the sound settings, I usually have to put the slider comically low before it gets to an acceptable volume range. At that point fine tuning it becomes kind of difficult.

Seriously, why can’t most games get volume right?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Just laziness or ignorance, I made a game and set the volume to 30% by default (it was a bit quiet for my setup), there were no loud splash screens, just some music on the menu - why that is so difficult for developers to do, I don't understand.

It's also an extra crime when they force an unskippable cutscene on you or start a tutorial before you can even access the options screen. The very first screen you should get, should be the fucking options.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

GeminiTay streamed Stardew Valley and this was one of her main complaints. The menu never lets you adjust the sound and the game starts with an unskippable scene.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yup its stupid af. I can adjust my game volume on the fly with the setup I have, so it's always nice to turn that shit down or mute it when I start up a game, but the fact I have to is insane.

You could prep volume mixer too, and tab out when the game launches to turn it down. Or developers could just not put loud splash/logo screens at max volume.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Agreed. The funny thing is some games go the other way around but still kind of get it wrong: Games where the options are a part of a launcher, so you don't actually get to experience your changes as you make them. I guess that's still better than just throwing you into a loud cutscene on startup though.

But seriously. When the game loads, I want the sound to be set to as low as possible, then just give me a slider that plays a sample sound that I can increase until it's right.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Best game ever for sounds (in this context), imho, is dysmantle. People have described the sound track as “hikers listening to birds”. Music only happens in specific places, it’s mostly very relaxing/peaceful, and other than that it’s just listening to occasional zombies/turrets, environmental sounds, audio recordings, and breaking stuff.

I always turn the music and sfx way down (voice stays pretty high, sfx about 20% lower, and music very low) so I legit didn’t notice the lack of music for 22 hours of actual play time (out of the about 100 I put into it). But I didn’t change the sound settings at all for it, it was perfect.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Fuckin great game.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Most games get it right, didbyou try lowering the global system volume down? Mines only at 20%.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah. I usually have my system volume sub 20%. Things like videos, system sounds, voice calls, etc all sound reasonable at that volume. It’s just a lot of games that end up way too loud relatively to that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

My system volume is consistently at 8-20% on windows (~30-40% on Linux because it's a bit quieter usually) but every time I open a game I can't hear myself think. I always have to turn the volume way lower (~30-50% game volume?) to be a volume I'm comfortable playing at.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Weird, I don't have this problem. Probably some bullshit manufacturers "gaming mode elite" software package setting.

Some games I play I do find I have to crank dialog up and effects/music down.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

On my last pair of headphones I had to set windows to like 2% until I eventually downloaded equalizer apo and set it to make everything like -20db

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Because it's not what people want. They want loud, because louder is considered better in social consciousness. That has been the trend for decades.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Yeah I hate this, even with windows at like 25% most games are still defaulting to too loud