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Remove iPod European Volume Cap 157

Posted by pudge from the only-americans-should-be-loud dept.
bsodmike writes "This is a complete how-to for removing the EU Cap in the new iPods allowing 104dB bliss! Thanks to everyone @ #eucap including UnixMonkey, Keaner, Silvacow, m@rk et al." Some countries have an upper limit of 100dB for consumer devices, so the European version of the iPod is "crippled."
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Remove iPod European Volume Cap More

Remove iPod European Volume Cap

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  • iPod isn't the only thing that will be crippled. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by checkyoulater ( 246565 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @11:20AM (#6559434) Journal
    If you listen to your iPod at 100+ dB for a prolonged period of time, you might find yourself with hearing loss. Broken iPods can be fixed or replaced, but unfortunately your eardrums are permanent, and non replaceable.

    • Re:iPod isn't the only thing that will be crippled (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JHMirage ( 570086 ) * on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @12:49PM (#6560711)
      but unfortunately your eardrums are permanent, and non replaceable.

      Except that they aren't.

      Eardrum repair [entusa.com] is actually fairly common, and I'd know. I currently sport a 31-year old eardrum and a 7-month old eardrum. And before anyone goes off about it being the Tympanic bones that get damaged, rather than the drum itself, they can give you prostetic bones, as well.

      I tried to talk my Dr. into giving me bionic bones/membranes, but he wasn't too into the idea.

    • Re:iPod isn't the only thing that will be crippled (Score:5, Informative)

      by FFFish ( 7567 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @12:58PM (#6560865) Homepage

      It's not your eardrums that are damaged, but the cilia in your cochlea. These are fine hairs that are vibrated as sound waves travel past them, and stimulate the nerves to which they are attached.

      These hairs do not recover from damage. Once the hair is killed, you have lost the ability to hear the frequency that hair was "tuned" for.

      You will experience permanent, irreversible hearing damage at 104dB within five minutes.

      Decibel Exposure Time Guidelines

      Accepted standards for recommended permissible exposure time for continuous time weighted average noise, according to NIOSH and CDC, 2002. For every 3 dBs over 85dB, the permissible exposure time before possible damage can occur is cut in half.

      Continuous dB Permissible Exposure Time

      85 db 8 hours

      88 dB 4 hours

      91 db 2 hours

      94 db 1 hour

      97 db 30 minutes

      100 db 15 minutes

      103 db 7.5 minutes

      106 dB 3.75 min (< 4min)

      109 dB 1.875 min (< 2min)

      112 dB .9375 min (about 1 min)

      115 dB .46875 min (about 30 sec)

      Don't fuck with loud sounds. It's just not worth it.

    • Re:iPod isn't the only thing that will be crippled (Score:5, Informative)

      by shamino0 ( 551710 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @07:54PM (#6565957) Journal
      If you listen to your iPod at 100+ dB for a prolonged period of time, you might find yourself with hearing loss. Broken iPods can be fixed or replaced, but unfortunately your eardrums are permanent, and non replaceable.

      This assumes, of course, that they're talking about 100+ dB of sound pressure (SPL [sweetwater.com]).

      But that's completely ludicrous. The SPL levels are a function of the speaker/headphone design and proximity to your ears in addition to the power output of the amplifier.

      A dB [sweetwater.com] is a unit of ratio between a given level (power, pressure, whatever) and a reference level.

      In this particular case, they're probably talking about dBu [sweetwater.com] or dBV [sweetwater.com] or dBm [sweetwater.com] or some other ratio involving output voltage/power levels.

      104dBu is not the same as 104dBV which is not the same as 104dBm. Either one can translate into high SPL levels, low SPL levels, or anything in between, depending on what kind of speakers, headphones or other amplifiers are attached.

      According to Apple [apple.com] the iPod can put out up to 30mw of RMS power per channel. This is about 29 dBm (20 log(30) ),so it's obviously not what the original article is talking about.

      I'm actually rather curious now to know what that unqualified "104 dB" figure is referring to, since every different brand/model of headphones you use will have a different SPL for any given power level.

      • This assumes, of course, that they're talking about 100+ dB of sound pressure (SPL).

        They likely are talking about dB SPL. Remember, pressure is force divided by area, and pressure is scaler. The headphone speaker diaphragm puts out a force. When you hold the headphone out in the open air, that force is divided by an (effectively) infinite area, and the resulting SPL is very low.

        But when you put that speaker diaphragm into your ear, the total interior area of your ear canal is very small. Divide the d


    • How absurd.

      The iPod does not get that loud... or, at least mine never will. The loudness has to do with the size of the earphones, and if you use regular sized earphones with your iPod you find that the current it provides isn't enough to drive the larger magnets at a high volume.

      Thus, my problem is more often that he iPod is too quiet, not too loud, especially in noisy environments.

      This is just another example of the idiot state deciding it knows what's best for people and ignoring not only the fact pe
    • My eardrums are already damaged, you insensitive clod. I need to be able to turn it up.

  • Slightly [ot] (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gazbo ( 517111 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @11:21AM (#6559444)
    These files and anything else on this site are here for private purposes only and SHOULD NOT BE DOWNLOADED OR VIEWED WHATSOEVER!

    Why the fuck do people bother with that crap? Do they really think that they have cunningly found a legal loophole that every lawyer in the world has missed? Do they not realise that if they trotted out that defence in any court in the world the judge would just laugh at them?

    Gah.

  • And I thought... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @11:25AM (#6559496)
    It said "140db" cap! Hot damn! If it did that, I'd buy 2 for my car and drive around like a hoodlem.

  • Seriously, who thought that people needed to be protected from a portable music player? How much money was spent in the House of Reps. and Senate debating, drafting, and approving this bill? If you want to make a device that plays 125dB through headphones, fine. If people want to listen to it at that level, fine. If a year from now, that person is deaf, too bad. Don't listen to music that loud, dumbass. Can't we just get to government to quit trying to protect us from ourselves?

    • Re:Do we really need this kind of protection? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And who will pay for all the hearing aids?

    • Re:Do we really need this kind of protection? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chnuschti ( 575034 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @11:38AM (#6559646)
      Actually in most European Countries the Taxpayer will pay for your disability. So it is in the interest of everybody to protect dumbasses from themselfs Just my 2 cents

      • Ah yes, socialism has enslaved everybody, therefore everybody must be futher enslaved by socialism!

        Talk about a self fulfilling prophecy! And it was modded 5 Insightful?

        How about this-- you let the Taxpayers keep their money nad pay for their own health care.

        IF you did that, then the poorest would actually get health care for a change!

        Most of the money that is claimed to be used to help people is stolen, wasted, or destroyed.

        That you want to force me to listen to only music you approve of-- excuse me,
        • You clearly know absolutely nothing about it.

          In the UK dental care ceased to be available on a strict "free at the point of delivery" basis around a decade ago and in that time many poor families have stopped visiting the dentist completely. Most poorer people would FAR rather spend money on cigarettes, lottery scratchcards and alcohol for themselves than on dental care for their children.

          It is a democratic government's DUTY to protect idiots from themselves when their behaviour has ramifications for the


          • On the contrary, I know far more about it than you apparently do.

            Used to be, when this was a free country, people walking around trying to force others to live the way they want would be shot on sight.

            Now you think not only should you be allowed to, but that its morally justified!

            The other poster is right-- you're advocating socialism-- the system that killed 100 million people between 1900 and 2000.

            Killed them for their own good, and the good of society, you say.

            Death to tyrants!
            • The other poster is right-- you're advocating socialism-- the system that killed 100 million people between 1900 and 2000.

              Lets get our terms straight here: you're talking about Stalinism, not socialism. Socialist governments aren't murdering their own citizens in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, France etc., where democratic socialism has been around and running pretty well for a long time, and all of them a damn sight more democratic than the US has ever been.

              Killed them for their own good, and the g
          • In the UK dental care ceased to be available on a strict "free at the point of delivery" basis around a decade ago and in that time many poor families have stopped visiting the dentist completely. Most poorer people would FAR rather spend money on cigarettes, lottery scratchcards and alcohol for themselves than on dental care for their children.

            Actually, dental care in the UK is still free if you:
            • have a valid NHS HC2 Certificate (NHS low-income scheme)
            • are receiving income support, family credit, or jobs

    • Re:Do we really need this kind of protection? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @11:39AM (#6559653)
      How much money was spent in the House of Reps. and Senate debating, drafting, and approving this bill?

      Since the law is European, my guess would be $0.00.

    • Re:Do we really need this kind of protection? (Score:4, Funny)

      by gazbo ( 517111 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @11:39AM (#6559655)
      How much money was spent in the House of Reps. and Senate debating, drafting, and approving this bill?

      Given it's the European Volume Cap, I'd wager that very little money indeed was spent there.

    • Thanks to all who pointed out that it's a European regulation. Guess I spent too much time listening to music at 125dB and scrambled my brains.

  • It's not just European units. It seems to be all iPods outside of the United States.

    I know that personally, my first generation 10GB model iPod was volume dropped [livejournal.com], and I'm in Australia.

  • People who do this (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pmz ( 462998 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @11:43AM (#6559706) Homepage
    will be branded assholes.

    Think you are being polite wearing earphones in a computer lab or library? Think no one can hear you? You are wrong!!!

    Only those full-size aircraft-or-studio-style headsets can attenuate the sound enough for other people to be oblivious to the crap-rap within.

    • Re:People who do this (Score:5, Informative)

      by infornogr ( 603568 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @11:59AM (#6559968)
      Otherwise known as circumaural headphones, and not even all of those will help you. You need to seek out closed headphones, which are usually either circumaural or intra-aural (earbuds). If you're in a quiet environment, closed circumaurals don't sound as nice as open circumaurals, because in closed ones the sound is vibrating around in whatever material is keeping the sound out/in, but in some cases they're necessary, such as loud rooms or rooms with other people. Just don't think that because you're buying a big pair of headphones that completely engulfs your ear that you're going to have isolation from the outside world or that the world won't be able to hear what you're listening to.

    • Re:People who do this (Score:3, Informative)

      by shippo ( 166521 )
      Err, not tried a pair of Sony MDR-EX71SL earbuds then?
      • I was about to post a comment just like yours, as I'm wearing a pair of the EX71s right now. :^) They are great for motorcycling by the way (no, I'm not motorcycling this instant, but I do have the headphones in at work)... Anyway, when pulling a helmet over other earbud headphones, they fall right out. The EX71 earbuds stay put, and they sound great while riding. I can still hear horns and other loud noises outside the helmet, so I'm not sure if it would be considered illegal or not.
    • What? My vented diaphragm headphones don't seal in all the noise? I'm shocked!

  • I'll give you 4dB (Score:5, Funny)

    by jolshefsky ( 560014 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @11:53AM (#6559862) Homepage
    1. Insert earphones in ear as normal.
    2. Note the distance from your ear to the earphone diaphragm.
    3. Since sound level is reduced by the square of the distance, mash the headphones into your ear so the distance is 0.63 (sqrt(10^-0.4)) the original distance.

    This will increase the amount of sound reaching your ears by 4dB.

  • valid reasons for "104db" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fingal ( 49160 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @12:05PM (#6560087) Homepage
    Before everyone starts going off on 104db being too loud for people to listen to without hearing loss (oops, too slow everybodys started already), people might like to consider a totally valid reason for this patch: the SPL of 104db is only generated when utilising the supplied headphones with the iPOD. If you choose to use better quality yet less sensitive headphones then you will need a higher output to generate the same SPL. However, you are not currently permitted by the powers that be to do this. Also, some people may be listening to non-normalised sound files which have an average volume considerably lower than your average normalised recording. The peaks in non-normalised recordings will be much more likely to be transients which are much less likely to cause problems, but are you "permitted" to raise the average output level up to a reasonable level? I think not...

    • Re:valid reasons for "104db" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @12:24PM (#6560364) Journal
      It comes down to this. A little media player driven by a tiny amount of battery power can only put out so much sound and still have a sane battery life.

      If someone actually wants quality sound, instead of just some junk to listen to while jogging, they're going to use a non-mobile system.

      • Re:valid reasons for "104db" (Score:5, Insightful)

        by fingal ( 49160 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @01:07PM (#6561053) Homepage
        Totally valid point. However, the choice as to whether I want to have less battery life at the expense of better sound quality should be my choice should it not?

        And I suppose that this means that the battery life on the European iPods is better than the American model then?

        • Re:valid reasons for "104db" (Score:5, Insightful)

          by chrisbw ( 609350 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @02:37PM (#6562334) Homepage
          Totally valid point. However, the choice as to whether I want to have less battery life at the expense of better sound quality should be my choice should it not?
          And I suppose that this means that the battery life on the European iPods is better than the American model then?

          Depends on what you set the volume at. :)


        • Totally valid point. However, the choice as to whether I want to have less battery life at the expense of better sound quality should be my choice should it not?
          Actually, that choice is up to the manufacturer. Your choice is whether or not you want to buy it.
          • Actually, that choice is up to the manufacturer. Your choice is whether or not you want to buy it.

            Erm, No.The whole point of the story is that it is not the manufacturers choice but it is being imposed onto the manufacturer by the powers that be.

  • Better to Cripple the iPod... (Score:5, Informative)

    by bluethundr ( 562578 ) * on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @12:17PM (#6560271) Homepage Journal
    ...than your hearing! We're all used to thinking of ourselves as immortal, especially when we are young. When I was a teenager I used to listen to a Sony walkman fully crankin'. Now I have well over a decade of suffeing with tinnitus. [ata.org] Anything over 90db is damaging to the ear. One hearing specialist said that listening to headphones is akin to jamming a pair of firehoses into both ears and turning the water on full blast in terms of the damage it'll do to your hearing. It may sound like hyperbole, but it probably isn't that far from the truth!

    Tinnitus can cause depression, sleeplessness and a host of other psychic and physical maladies. From a personal perspective, if you hear a loud noise that annoys the hell out of you you have two choices. 1)Walk out of the room where you hear the offending noise 2) Turn the sound down! If you have tinnitus, you can't do either of those things. You just have to live with it. There is no cure and by the time you realize that the ringing in your ears isn't going away that's about it. You will hear that sound for the rest of your life! Unless, of course nanomedicine can provide a cure, but don't hold your breath or hang your hopes on that one!

    • Re:Better to Cripple the iPod... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by HaloZero ( 610207 ) <protodeka@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @12:46PM (#6560657) Homepage
      A friend of mine contracted tinnitus after going to an Orgy concert. From what I last heard, she's in the opening stages of dementia, because of the noise in her head. It's really, really sad. She's a great girl, too. :-\

      Made me turn my headphones down, it did.
      • Not to make light of your friend's terrible condition, but really... was it the level of noise or the type of noise? We are talking about Orgy, after all. I'd have dementia afterwards, too.
      • I have had tinnitus ever since seeing Suicidal Tendencies at a Livid Festival [livid.com.au] a few years ago. Wasn't worth it. Now if I go to a concert, I take earplugs. I suspect the musicians use them too.
      • She should sue them for damages. It's negligent of them to play the sound dangerously loud.

        I say this not because I like lawyers or want them to make more money, but because I'm sick of the ridiculous state of play that bands turn the volume up way too loud and expect everyone to wear earplugs. Of the last three live shows I've been to, two of them were ruined by the sound system being turned up way too high... one was painful even *with* earplugs.

        #1: Autechre. The whole appeal of Autechre is the delicat
        • Mogwai is supposed to be notoriously painfully loud.

          I'm surprised to hear Autechre's live show is so loud. As you point out, that's absolutely not the appeal of the music.

          I went to a TOOL show that was ideal with earplugs. I've gone to some concerts that were fine without any plugs (though they were usually the "art-rock band in a small theater" type, instead of the "commercially huge rock band in an arena" type).


    • Color me surprised that Slashdotters are jumping in to support the government mandating morality.

      Nevermind that there's no way in hell an iPod can put out 104db, nor that many people use headphones that lower the volume due to the larger driver.

      This is just like those people who want to make it illeagal to eat fatty food, smoke, have sex, or drive a sports car.

      When did the idea that people should be able to run their own life beceme so radical?
    • LISTEN TO THIS MAN! I just went to the Motorhead, Dio, and Iron Maiden concert last night, and still can not hear! Motorhead played so loud thatit hurt my ears. I got some earplugs for the Dio set, but took them out fo Maiden. Needless to say, I still can not hear. Hopefully by tommorrow I will be able too.

      • Re:Better to Cripple the iPod... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by bluethundr ( 562578 ) * on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @03:28PM (#6573217) Homepage Journal
        LISTEN TO THIS MAN! I just went to the Motorhead, Dio, and Iron Maiden concert last night, and still can not hear! Motorhead played so loud thatit hurt my ears. I got some earplugs for the Dio set, but took them out fo Maiden. Needless to say, I still can not hear. Hopefully by tommorrow I will be able too.

        Thanks dude. I'm sorry to hear that you're having trouble with your hearing. I strongly believe that my tinnitus was caused in large part by wearing headphones. But what tipped the balance for me, as far as the persistent ringing in my ears is concerned, was seeing the Nine Inch Nails play at a tiny club in Neptune NJ (back in 1990). It was so loud it was like standing inside a jet engine. Directly afterward I couldn't hear properly for three days straight days to the point where during that time everything sounded as if it were under water. The loss in hearing, thank god was temporary, but the ringing in the ears has been there ever since. Another time, a few years later I was bombed out of my mind at a Bad Brains show, and due to fluctuations in the pit, I ended up pressed up against the speaker column! Though at that point I was a devout ear-plug user, and I were using 30db attenuation rated earplugs it wasn't nearly enough for the time I was pressed up against the speakers! From that point I had tinnitus *AND* pain for something on the order of 3 years afterward. Not fun, not really.

        I have to say though that earplugs, while gerally a good idea, definitely interfere with your enjoyment of live music. The bottom ranges of the music become muddy, and the top ranges are almost always cut-out altogether. A good alternative to your garden variety drugstore earplugs are something known as "musician's earplugs" [google.com] which attenuate all frequencies of the sound spectrum at roughly the same level.The only drawback to those is that they are fairly pricey (at approximately $200 a pop, last time I looked). So, if you lose them or they fall out of your at a show you're fucked! Other than that, even at the going rate I find them to be of exceptional value.

        But what you are going through in terms of "deafness" is almost certainly temporary. It sounds like what happened to me after the NIN show. I went to the doctor because I was so freaked about the possibility of going deaf and a good old fashioned ear siphoning did a lot to restore the hearing I had "lost". Pretty amazing how much they can get out of there, I'm pretty sure I could have built an entire new human out of the refuse ejected from my ear! :) That didn't bring me back to "normal" hearing, though. What the Rx explained to me is that the ear has "natural defenses" agains loud noises and some parts of the inner ear swell up to prevent further damage. Pretty intellegent, really. But during that period where parts of the inner ear are "swollen" everything will sound quiter. After about a week, everything returned to "normal" and my hearing honestly seems completely fine. Except of course for the ringing in the ears, which never went away. I hope that your hearing returns to normal sans ringing! If you're still concerned about your hearing, a good souce for information [hearnet.com] is this place called "HEAR" [hearnet.com]or "Hearing And Education for Rockers". Some people may find them to be a bit preachy [slashdot.org], but if you can get past that there is a lot you can learn about how not to fuck up your hearing. As the old saying goes, you don't know what you have till it's gone.

        As to this "bitcreep" fellow (or whatever the fuck his name is)...about all I can say is "yeesh! Some people!" He makes a lot of assumptions about my "assumptions" and what I know and what I don't know. And I was particularly entertained by his attempts to tell me what I'm saying. Thus spake bitdork:

        • Sure are a lot of words there just to re-assert your same old assertions and to ignore the entirety of my argument.

          But then, that's not surprising, when you have no argumetn that you'd engage in hand waving.

          My hearing is quite fine, and I've been listening to loud music for about 20 years.

  • Memory lane: remember the Apple ][ Sup 'R' Mod? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @12:39PM (#6560575)
    Anyone remember the Sup 'R' Mod, the little RF modulator that cost, IIRC, $29.95 and allowed you to use your Apple ][ with an ordinary television receiver instead of a monitor? In those days, a dinky little green-screen monitor cost $150 or so, and few people invested in color monitors. All Apple stores carried them, they were as automatic a part of the sale as the camera store selling you a roll of film with your new camera.

    The supposed story is that this was the actual modulator Apple had PLANNED to build into every Apple ][, but this was about the time the new FCC regs came into effect and, with the modulator, it didn't meet them. So they quickly set up a deal with the company that became Sup 'R' Mod. It was illegal for Apple to sell an Apple ][ with the modulator IN it, but perfectly OK for a company to sell the modulator by itself, and OK for an end user to PUT the modulator in.

    I remember thinking at the time that the modulator fit so nicely and installed so easily, almost as if it were MADE to go there.

    OK, mod this down as off-topic... it would only be a good parallel (and hence on-topic) if Apple had assisted with and winked at the defeat of the volume limitation, and I don't think they did.
  • I cranked my pc's sound up to 104dBs and then turned on text-to-speech. Now all I hear is the piercing sound of CmdrTaco telling me that I'm an insensitive clod and the neighbors have called the cops! Thanks, thanks a lot guys.
  • Why did you install 1.2.4 iPod update if you _now_ want to get away the European volume control software update?

    I am european, and never bothered to install that (1.2.4) update to my iPod so I don't have to wonder how to undo it.

    If you did not install it there, it is not there, period.
  • Not one comment actually discussing the article and how to do it. In fact, the article no longer exists. So slashdotters, no mirrors? No karmawhoring?

    How do we remove that volume cap? I have my ipod in my car and the extra input volume makes a big diference into my stereo

    • Found it (Score:2, Funny)

      by JjCale ( 555759 )
      Well, this is the method apparently:
      --
      Solution to the EU Volume Limitation!

      E.U. iPod sound limitation here's the solution

      OK guys, here's the ultimate solution to your European iPod sound limitation problem. It worked sweetly on mine, only 5 minutes ago.

      Go to TinkerTool (a small utility u can download at download.com) and tell it to display hidden files and folders.

      Double click the iPod icon on the desktop.

      Go to folder (iPod_control->device)

      There you'll find a file named "Limit".

      Send it to trash, a
  • not to hear music at deafening volume is the point, but to be able to jack the ipod into the stereo without having to ramp up the volume on the amplifier...
    ...and the next time switching back to radio having instantly the neighbor knocking at the door...

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