If you have guinea pigs as pets — don’t play over-compressed music!
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Article firewall so I can’t read the article, but I will be sure not to play compressed music if I ever adopt some guinea pigs. Thanks for the heads up!
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To test whether compression can negatively affect hearing, scientists turned to Adele’s 2015 single “I Miss You”.
That’s a sure fire route to hearing damage even without compression 
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The paper mentioned is here in case anyone wants to dig beyond the news article.
“The present experiment tested awake guinea pigs, exposed to natural or over-compressed music for 4 hours at the same doses close to the legal ceiling.”
It looks like a fairly well conducted experiment. But 102 dBA is deafeningly loud for a human, let alone a guinea pig, so probably less real world concern than the Economist article might lead to believe.
Unless I am missing it, which I probably am as it seems like a crucial variable. I couldn’t see any mention what compression was applied other than "strong dynamic intensity compression".
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I haven’t read the article yet, but I’m genuinely interested in how one would make that determination. There’s of course no clear line between “compressed” and “uncompressed” music, and I’m willing to bet that virtually all audio post-production done today employs at least one compressor stage.
I’m willing to bet you’re right.
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