Common Sense and the Big Beat
I've been talking a lot about
subwoofers lately, so I suppose it behooves me to state the obvious: Bass, like everything
else, is best when used with a bit of common sense.
As I said -- obvious. Or so you'd think.
The problem is that there's no real standard of what the
"right" amount of bass is. You and I might disagree. I'm willing to forgo a
certain amount of bass authority in exchange for natural timbre in the midrange and high
frequencies, whereas many of my friends think I'm crazy to trade away the "foundation
of music" for, well, any reason.
On the other hand, my wife thinks I want too much
bass, and generally tend to listen too loud, to boot. (Although this may simply be one of
those male/female translation problems -- she might mean that my system has too much
distortion for her more sensitive ears.)
However, while we don't have any concrete standard of how
much bass is just right and how much is too much, I think we can all agree on one thing:
If your music causes physical damage to your body (or to property, for that matter), you
have a problem.
Oh, come on -- physical damage?
Sounds outrageous doesn't it? However, according to the
medical journal Thorax, excessive bass consumption has caused internal organic
injuries in some people. The article, by Dr. Marc Noppen of the Academic Hospital in
Brussels, Belgium, describes four cases in which young men developed a type of lung
collapse, called spontaneous pneumothorax, by indulging in bass-heavy music played at high
SPLs.
A pneumothorax is a small rupture in one of the lungs that
collapses it by allowing air to leak into the area between the lungs and the chest wall.
It is characterized by breathlessness and localized chest pain. A small pneumothorax may
resolve itself without treatment, but more severe cases require the insertion of a chest
tube to bleed the air from the chest cavity. In most cases, the condition is caused by
lung disease or chest injury, but "primary spontaneous pneumothorax" can occur
in the absence of disease, especially in tall, thin, male smokers -- and, according to Dr.
Noppen, to unwary music lovers. Three of the patients described in Noppen's article were
standing in front of club or concert PA systems; the fourth was listening in his specially
rigged "boom car."
Noppen's theory is that loud music can damage the lungs by
causing them to vibrate sympathetically (i.e., at the same frequency) with the bass, thus
causing ruptures. That would [ahem] resonate with anyone who has experienced the
"chest-slamming" sensation of a truly powerful PA system.
How likely is this theory? While there’s not a lot of
literature to support it, Noppen argues that that may be because doctors have not been
looking for a link between loud, bass-heavy music and pneumothorax. Since the publication
of his article, doctors in several other countries have reported similar cases with
similar probable causes. Noppen suspects that even more would come to light if doctors
routinely asked their pneumothorax patients about their exposure to slamming music.
So think about that the next time you feel your trousers
flapping -- or your chest contracting -- with that big, beefy beat. You just might want to
back up a few feet -- or back off on that volume knob. But you probably already suspected
that. Now, you have an excuse from a doctor.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
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