Dashboard system to track cumulative exposure to sound levels during live music instruction

Abstract

During music rehearsals, students and teachers are regularly exposed to unsafe sound levels; hearing loss is a major concern among musicians. By providing real time feedback to music instructors, we can persuade them to modify their teaching methods to achieve safe listening conditions. To accomplish this, we created a user-friendly dashboard that displays the cumulative sound energy being collected in real-time. Since there are few standards for limiting music exposure, we used NIOSH standards for industrial noise exposure as the permissible exposure limit (PEL). Circular dials on the dashboard were programmed to display the amount of exposure relative to the PEL. To aid in identifying the type of exposure, each dial represents the amount of sound accumulation in a band of frequencies relative to typical human speech: below (15Hz–85 Hz), at (85Hz–252 Hz), and above (242Hz–24 675 Hz). The dashboard also displays an equalizer representing the instantaneous microphone input. After each session, the cumulative exposure data can be sent out in email format. Inexpensive and convenient to use, this dashboard will enable music instructors to make informed decisions on how to best modify their teaching approaches to reduce the risk of hearing loss.