Ear fatigue is one of those problems like overloading the mix bus or buying another 1176-clone plug-in. It’s an occupational hazard of mixing, and an easy trap to fall into when you’re having fun.  

It can come from listening for too long, or too loud, or both. There is sometimes a physical symptom of a slight aching sensation inside the ear, but this isn’t always the case. What you do always get though, is a loss of perspective and a perception shift that means you are likely to be making your mix worse rather than better.

I always notice I’ve gone too far when I’m playing back a mix that I’ve been working on for a while, and has been coming together nicely, and it suddenly sounds like a complete mess. If I’ve only been tweaking one thing then it hasn’t all fallen apart - what’s happened is I’ve had a major shift in perspective, and I can confidently say that judgment has gone out of the window. Time to take a break. To be honest, if I’ve reached that point, it was actually time to take a break a couple of hours ago, and then another one an hour after that, but there we are. We all get carried away sometimes. And this is what it comes down to. The ‘flow state’ that you can hit when mixing can be really important in getting deep work done, but if it’s not managed then it can come at a cost - wasted time, and work that needs to be unpicked and rebuilt.

So, what can we do to prevent ear fatigue from kicking in? Well, fortunately, there are a few things.

Let’s Talk About Volume

Loud music is exciting. Gigs are loud, and we ended up with ‘loudness wars’ in mastering studios. It is also why you often find yourself turning the volume up when you’re enjoying the music you’re working on. The problem for mixers is twofold. Firstly, prolonged listening at loud volumes leads to ear fatigue, then tinnitus, then hearing loss (not all on the same day, to be clear, this is over the course of years of ear abuse, but it is a very real risk and has happened to professionals that I know). Secondly, if your mix already sounds exciting to you because you are listening nice and loud, you won’t be trying to inject that excitement into the mix through other means (balance, compression etc). If you’re listening quietly all day and you’ve got your mix sounding dynamic and exciting, then it’s only going to be more so when people turn it up. I’ve read in a few places that 85dB is a level where human earing is likely to have the most linear frequency response - which suggests this is the ideal volume at which to mix. I downloaded a decibel meter app to check this - not the most accurate of test equipment but it gives you a reasonable idea if you’re not needing to be incredibly accurate. What I discovered was that I generally mix at about 70dB, and that there’s no way I’d mix at 85dB. I would very quickly suffer from ear fatigue at that sort of volume. In fact, the British Tinnitus Association warns that “85dB and above is the level at which noise becomes unsafe without the use of hearing protection.” So, if you are wanting to check your mix at 85dB, make sure you do so only for very short periods of time, and then turn down to a level that you can sustain.

Also, if you catch yourself turning the volume up then this can be a classic sign that you’re starting to get fatigued. As your ability to pick out details in your mix fades, you tend to compensate with volume. This is a great cue to take a break.

Take Breaks

This is a big one for me, and it comes down to the balancing act I mentioned earlier between getting into a flow state and pushing on in that state for too long. I have a cunning solution these days though. It’s a small desktop timer and it cost me very little from a Well Known Online Delivery Store. I hit the ‘start’ button when I start working, and it sits there, showing me how long I’ve been going at it since I last hit ‘pause’. Once I get to an hour, I take a quick break. Importantly, I’ve discovered that I recover better if my break involves moving, and (ideally) leaving the room. It’s not enough to just flick the screen from ProTools to Facebook and spend five minutes laughing at memes / shouting about politics. I now make sure to move around a bit and go outside or move to the other end of my room which doesn’t have the acoustically treated sound that I have in my listening position. I come back to that position fresher if I do this and feel like I have renewed perspective. In my purely non-peer-reviewed and un-scientific opinion, ears recover more effectively in a different acoustic environment to the one that you’re working in. Try it for yourself anyway and see if it makes a difference to you too.

Some Monitors Are More Equal Than Others

There are some types of monitors that are more fatiguing than others. It’s worth being aware of your own set-up in this respect (if you are fortunate enough to have more than one set of speakers/headphones) and managing your listening accordingly. For example, I have a set of Yamaha NS10s in my studio which I find very useful for balancing mid-range elements of a mix, but which I also know to be quite fatiguing. I listen to them for short periods of time, not very loud, and just to do the job that I know them to be best at. Then I move back to one of my other options. I also use open-backed headphones when I mix as I discovered that not only do I prefer the sound, but I find this design less fatiguing than closed-back too. Your mileage may vary, as the saying goes, but being aware of the fatigue factor of your equipment will enable you to manage it well, and hopefully avoid falling into that trap. This will not only help the mix you are working on but ensure the long-lasting health of your hearing. 

More Recording Resources From Dom Morley

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