Music when riding - Page 4

If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? Sound is a wave traveling through the air that enters the ear and vibrates the eardrum (the tympanic membrane). The wave is there when the tree falls, whether the eardrum is there or not.

Alienator, you are correct that listening to music while riding can serve to distract the bicyclist. Listening to music while driving can distract a motorist. I am not certain that I would put it in the same category as talking on a cell phone. Music can exist in the background and not require the same level of attention as maintaining a conversation on a phone.

Your description of the workings of the ear is essentially correct. The sound wave vibrates the eardrum. On the inside side of the ear drum there is a chamber filled with fluid and three very small bones, the ossicles. For those of you interested in evolution, they were the second, third, and fourth gill slits in our very primitive ancestors. The ossicles transmit the vibrations from the eardrum to the cochlea. The fluid that is contained within the middle ear has a somewhat high inertia, and would not transmit the vibrations as well.

The face plate of the third bone, the stapes, rests against the cochlea. The vibrations of the stapes creates a pressure wave within the cochlea and the frequency of that wave will correspond to the resonant frequency of some of the hair cells, causing them to vibrate and sending nerve impulses telling the brain the frequency and intensity of the sound wave. Repeated exposure to loud noise will somewhat deaden the hair cell responding to the frequency of that noise, resulting in temporary or permanent hearing loss in that frequency. There are other types of hearing loss. I personally suffer from a conductive hearing loss. There is a problem with my ossicles that prevents them from conducting sound as efficiently as a normal person's. I am basically hard of hearing at all frequencies.

The outer circumference of the cochlea's face is anchored to the skull. A vibration in the skull bone will vibrate the cochlea and stimulate the corresponding hair cells. Bone conduction hearing aids and headphones are not magic. They operate by bypassing the eardrum and ossicles and transmitting the sound vibration directly to the cochlea via the skull.

Although it is possible that my listening to music while riding may distract me, my use of bone conduction headphones allows me to hear traffic noises as well as I would be able to hear them if I was not listening to music.

I am currently retiring after twenty years of working on Navy nuclear power plants and I am a Nationally Registered Radiation Protection Technologist. I already know a lot of words that are bigger and more impressive than douchebag. I have been called several of them.

I wasn't worried about wind noise, I was worried about tinnitis - as in bone conduction is an INTERNAL method of transmitting music to the cochlear fluid, as opposed to an EXTERNAL method, which I was under the impression is more damaging the cilia (note: you have said nothing to indicate that this impression is mistaken).

As far as the debate about music being distracting, not being able to hear things around you, etc - that is not even an issue I am concerned with in this thread. I'm of the opinion that by the time you hear the car that hits you from behind, earphones or no earphones, you'll either be bouncing off the hood (lucky) or crunched under the wheels (not so lucky). I'm worth more to my wife dead, anyway.

And one last thing - condescending is a bigger word than douchebag in terms of both syllables and letters. I'm already on that path.

Of course, I say I'm worried about potential hearing loss with earbuds and I'm about to walk out the door to see Queens of the Stone Age - no earplugs, so I suppose everyone can take my concern with a grain of salt.

Well considering that the cilia are downstream of the ear drum and the ossicles, they're still subject to large amplitude vibrations off the cochlear membrane. You've assumed some mistaken ideas.

Well, it's those that don't pay attention that don't hear the cars coming behind them. Your excuse certainly is a ripe to use to justify your lack of awareness of your surroundings.

I'm sure everyone is impressed with your intellectual prowess. You very nearly show rudimentary critical thinking skills. Very nearly, but not quite.

That doesn't explain, however, how you're subsequently able to hear traffic noises with bone conducting headphones. It is the music signal that is being input to your skull by the headphones, not the road sounds. the road sounds still have to come from the traditional route, and the net signal is still the same once the vibrations pass to the fluid in the inner ear, from the road and from the bone conducting headphones, the cochlear membrane, and the cilia.

That's good because douchebag is far from impressive. I'm not contradicting you to be contrary, but rather I'm trying to be sure that I see your argument correctly. From a physics point of view, it's not adding up.

The arguments that is usually made against listening to music while riding is that the headphones will act to block out background noise. It is true that if you are wearing normal headphones, even if you are listening to your music at a reasonable volume, you will not be able to hear much. Years ago I used to ride wearing vertical in ear style headphones and I could hear cars that were close to me, but not well.

The advantage of the bone conduction headphones is that they do not impede airborne sound from reaching the ear. The net effect is much the same as having background music playing in the room while you are involved in other tasks or having music playing at a moderate volume in your car while driving. The sound is there, but it does not drown out other sounds. I am able to hear traffic noises as well as I would normally be able to. I suppose that if the music were loud enough it would drown out some background noises, but I have never tried to get my music that loud and I don't know if my current set-up would be able to do it.

Acoustic inputs (headphones) and bone conduction phones do not stimulate the same parts of the membrane. Here is an abstract from a 2005 article from the PROCEEDINGS of the HUMAN FACTORS AND ERGONOMICS SOCIETY 49th ANNUAL MEETING (easily googleable [ real word??])

"Standard audio headphones are useful in many applications, but they cover the ears of the listener and thus may impair the perception of ambient sounds. Bone-conduction headphones offer a possible alternative, but traditionally their use has been limited to monaural applications due to the high propagation speed of sound in the human skull. Here we show that stereo bone-conduction headsets can be used to provide a limited amount of interaural isolation in a dichotic speech perception task. (empahisis mine). The results suggest that reliable spatial separation is possible with bone-conduction headsets, but that they probably cannot be used to lateralize signals to extreme left or right apparent locations."

Also, with bone conduction the "human skull boosts low frequencies and cuts high frequencies" (ESTIMATING TRANSFER FUNCTION FROM AIR TO BONE CONDUCTION USING SINGING VOICE, Won & Berger ) which is different than acoustic signals from headphones and ambient environment signals. Thus differing in auditory stimulation forms.

The point I want to make here is that you can have bone conduction hearing not interfere with other common environmental sounds (i.e., vehicles, horns, etc) because it does not provide easy spatial localization (important for noting position of potential dangers) nor does it interfere with detecting higher frequency sounds.

Again, please note I am not advocating or endorsing listening to music while biking (I personally do when on biking trails but not on city streets) but I am trying to clarify some of the arguement/questions you raised in your comments.

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You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation - KMFDM Dogma

Actually, I keep my head pretty well on a swivel (due to realization that when car meets bicycle, bicycle loses). And unless someone is going to turn and eyeball every car that they hear coming up behind them, they aren't immune to getting hit from behind.

Add to that I also see plenty of people sans headphones riding around completely oblivious to everything.

Music while riding is probably not the greatest idea, but how bad it may or may not be I'd be willing to hazard depends on the rider.

I ride with music most of the time, and I don't think it's a problem if the rider is responsible. It's not because cycling is boring or anything. On the contrary, I love riding. But it can get hard to do anything, even if you love it, for 3 or 4 hours at a time. Besides, the feeling of your favorite workout song playing (Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by Daft Punk, or maybe Wonderful Night by Fatboy Slim) when you hit a rhythm on a big hill is simply amazing. As for safety... I have the luxury of parks and scarcely traveled roads, but even in traffic, I see with my eyes, not my ears. I avoid changing lanes, and regularly check behind me. I am guilty of not riding with a mirror, as I think anyone who prefers music should, but I am thinking about getting one for my handlebars.

i agree with the daft punk sentiment!