IPods listening levels on London Underground

Abstract

In the last 5 years the prevalence of the iPod/MP3 players has grown exponentially. The use of such in‐earphones under urban conditions has been reported widely in the press at the anecdotal level. This study compared listening levels under quiet conditions and that representative of a London Underground train journey. Calibrated recordings of underground trains running in tunnels were played through loudspeakers in an anechoic chamber, whilst pop music or speech podcasts were played through the iBuds. Thirty‐three participates listened to the iPod whilst a Binaural Head and Torso measured the noise levels through the in‐earphones. The participants had time to adjust the volume setting on each occasion. A small audiometric study was undertaken for those participates with particularly high and low volume settings a week after the tests were completed. Results show very high volume settings were used when speech was played with the train noise.