When you listen to music with wired earbuds or headphones that you like, you might want to turn the volume really loud so you can enjoy the music a lot. However, if you listen to very loud music for a long time, you could hurt your ability to hear permanently. This is why experts suggest that you should not listen to really loud noises for too long.
On Android devices, there’s a safety feature that tells you when you’re turning up the music volume too high. However, sometimes people tend to ignore this warning. In the upcoming Android 14 version, there will be a better way to take care of your hearing. It will have a feature that gives you a warning if the sound from your headphones is too loud. This feature aims to enhance hearing protection.
For those unaware, Android phones in the EU show a message when you connect headphones and try to make the sound louder than 85 dB. You can say okay to the message and make the sound a little louder, but the message will come back after you’ve listened to music for 20 hours. This is to remind you that loud sound can harm your hearing.
Android 14 Loud Sound Alert Complies with EU Regulations 
CENELEC, the European organization responsible for setting safety rules for electronic devices, chose a safety standard (IEC 62368-1) for audio and video devices sold in the EU. The safe volume warning on Android phones follows the advice in this standard. The standard has been changed a few times over the years, and the latest change was made earlier this year. Therefore, Google wants to ensure compliance with the latest recommendations. Google is putting a new safety feature in Android 14. This feature will tell you if you’ve been listening to music too loudly for a long time.
During Google I/O 2023, Google introduced the ‘headphone loud sound alert’ feature. This feature was discussed in a session about what’s new in Android Accessibility. According to Google, when you turn on this feature in Android 14, your phone will let you know if you’ve been listening to really loud music through your headphones for a very long time. Back then, Google didn’t give a lot of details, but Mishaal Rahman of Android Police has been keeping an eye on this feature since the news first broke out months ago. Now, with the most recent release of Google’s source code, Rahman has come out with a better idea of how this feature actually works.
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Android 14 Headphone Loud Sound Alert, How Does it Work? 
The latest information comes from the release of SDK 34’s source code. He discovered the inner workings of Google’s headphone loud sound alert feature. Instead of just using a fixed volume level, the feature uses something called “computed sound doses” (CSDs). Android looks at the sound’s different frequencies to figure out how loud and possibly damaging the sound might be. This analysis also considers how much the volume is changed, and this is looked at over time to see how much exposure you’ve had to loud sound over a rolling 7-day period.
Android 14 triggers various alerts when the “computed sound doses” (CSDs) reach specific levels. There are alerts for a short moment of loud sound exposure, as well as when the CSD is 1 time (1X) or 5 times (5X) the safe weekly limit for headphone use. The exact ways the warnings appear on Android are explained in a document called “Safeguards against acoustic energy sources” in the IEC 62368 standard. This document usually costs a lot of money to get, but Rahman has managed to find a source to access it.
To evaluate the effectiveness of the warnings in Android 14, he conducted a practical test. He played a YouTube video with a very loud air horn sound for 10 hours (WARNING: VERY LOUD). With this, he was able to discover how the warning looks on the Android device.
When the CSD is at 1X, 2X, 3X, or 4X, Android shows a notification saying “volume lowered to safer level. Headphone volume has been high for longer than recommended.” When the CSD reaches 5X, the notification reads “volume lowered to safer level. Headphone volume has gone beyond the safe limit for this week.” For the “momentary exposure” notification, it says “loud sound detected. Headphone volume has been higher than recommended, which can damage your hearing.”
Android 14 Loud Sound Alert Supported Devices
In actual fact, Google added this feature in Android 14 in order to comply with EU regulations. Therefore, this feature is not device specific, but it is based on the region where the user lives. The feature is disabled by default in order to allow users enable it as they wish.
Appreciation to Mishaal Rahman.
