Can MP3s damage your ear?

Pretty stuffy article. From what I get, listening to MP3s (for long periods of time) will eventually make your ear hear things (i.e. the high pitch sound or the ringing sound in your ears) because of the way MP3s are originally encoded. MP3s save space by getting rid of "unwanted frequencies" that the ear and brain generally don't notice. What the writer is saying is that those unwanted frequencies are actually important because it lets the ear callibrate sounds properly. So without those frequencies you result from impaired and distorted hearing. MP3, WMA, MPEG, ATTRAC and the new digital mediums for TV and radio would apply. With growing popularity of digital encoding, this needs more research...

http://www.informatik.fh-hamburg.de/~windle_c/Logologie/MP3-Gefahr/MP3-risk.html

Here's an exerpt:

Data reduction and DRM - a hazard for aural acuity?

The human hearing is an extremely finely co-ordinated cybernetic system, which is in many respects superior in its efficiency to electronic noise recognition systems - so it e.g. can successfully listen to a single voice among background noises and many simultaneous discussions, which even the most advanced manmade machines still can't compete. Like most biological systems it depends however for this on perpetual calibration by external signals (exactly like our speech ability, which as well known after deafness degenerates horribly fast into hardly understandable mumbling). Also the compensation circuits against the resonance interferences of the cochlea therefore require most likely for correct function continual calibration by a variety of naturally built up noises.

From the view of neuronomy it is therefore to classify, although not as acutely dangerous, at least as very precarious that a wider and wider spreading audio transmission technology for data reduction just systematically removes those spectral sound portions at the auditory threshold, on those normally the hearing processor fields of our brain decide whether they shall be perceived or filtered out, because so the signal for their self calibration is missing, whereby at longer term a maladjustment of the hearing processor fields can threaten. Possible consequences of intensive consumption of datareduced audio material could therefore include ear noises (tinitus), a general degradation of the perception of quiet sounds, as well as a worsened timbre perception (a so-called "tin ear"), which would make the human of the cyberage even more insensitive than he already yet has become by the continuous mass media infotrash bombardment he is exposed to. Actually it is still unclear whether the consequences of such maladjustments are only temporary (similarly like seeing the world in green/ red discoloured after taking off red/ green 3D glasses) or if the continuous consumption of neuroacoustically datareduced sounds can lead to long lasting or even permanent damage.

A possible advantage of the data reduction characteristic to remove all sound portions classified as "inaudible" could however even be that one could clean with it supposingly contaminated audio material (as for instance propaganda from dictatorships) from so-called subliminals (i.e. hidden hypnotic suggestion messages those are intended to get into the brain without getting into conscious awareness) before listening. The sound carrier industry plans however with their DRM campaign (digital rights management) to mix into any commercially distributed audio recordings so-called "digital watermarks", those as an artificial and likewise allegedly not consciously audible sound portion shall contain digitally readable copyright information those besides copying onto analogue cassettes shall even survive the mentioned neuroacoustic data reduction. How a so persistent, artificial signal that repeats over the entire length of an recording affects brain and hearing is very uncertain, and I expect that at least the sound quality will degrade from it (much like with those artificial press faults on some "copy protected" audio CDs, those actually violate the "Red Book" standard for CDs and already therefore don't belong into commerce since these constitute defective products declared as audio CDs).

I personally own mainly cheap CDs and phono records, but almost no downloaded MP3 musics. I have however some computer games with MP3 music, but I don't excessively play them. Despite I listen to music only quietly, I have repeatedly tinitus (and thus I also suspect the data reduction in radio and TV broadcasts as a cause). Nevertheless I try here in no way to demonize MP3 in the name of the sound carrier industry, because most music CDs are definitely 2 to 4 times overpriced and everybody who practices by downloading private "self law" against the sound carrier industry has my solidarity. In principle I find the possibilities of data reduction even very good, because it makes the system of music publishing more democratic, since by the internet now also hobby musicians so finally get a chance to spread their works world- wide. Even myself however would by my current knowledge still dare to publish sometime composed music pieces by me on the internet using MP3 or Vorbis/ Ogg data reduction (but with a warning hint not to listen to them excessively). In spite of this I consider the negligently increasing spread of neuroacoustic data reduction critical, since nobody has yet analyzed the health consequences, and of all by the nationally planned introduction as new TV and radio broadcast standards a future avoidance will become almost impossible. Also the more and more increasing rate of hearing damages with young people could not only originate by the volume, but partly also by the data reduction employed in the musics they consume.