Joe Yates
A team of researchers discovered a horrifying truth about modern music, thanks to Adele and a select group of guinea pigs.
A study conducted by a team of scientists in France may have uncovered the truth behind compression music - with many hypotheses suggesting that it may cause hearing damage.
There are two forms of audio files and music around - 'compressed' and 'uncompressed'. The latter is music that has not been tampered with and so is preserved in its original form, but is a much bigger file size.
Compressed music is used during production and refers to a technique in which musicians can make louder and quieter parts of a track more similar in volume, as well as using algorithms to reduce file size by removing redundant or inaudible data.
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But what have a group of guinea pigs got to do with all of this?
Well, it just so happens that they could have just been the key in finding out that compressed music can be more damaging for your ears than uncompressed sound.
Four of the rodents were used by the researchers, who placed them in pairs into a small, super-quiet room that blocked outside noise.
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One group listened to compressed music while the other was subjected to uncompressed.
Two big speakers were set up 40cm from a cage, and the volume was carefully measured and kept consistent.
Adele's 2015 hit 'I Miss You', that has been streamed over 164 million times on Spotify, was played on loop for four hours straight without a break.
Let's crunch the numbers to see exactly how many times these pop-soul furballs listened to the Brit singer. Well, the song is five minutes 48 seconds long, so putting that into four hours... it equates to 41 times.
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In the study, the large speakers were blasting music out at 102 decibels (dBA) on average, with peaks not going over 118 decibels (dBC) - which is about as loud as a rock concert.
There were no quiet parts in the song - every part was packed with sound energy, so the noise was constant and intense the whole time.
Tests were subsequently taken of the cochlea from both groups of guinea pigs', which is found in the inner ear and in which damage to is the leading cause of hearing loss.
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It was temporarily impaired for both sets of guinea pigs immediately after - which was in line with expectations.
However, the compressed music caused more lasting damage to a muscle known as stapedius, in the middle of the ear.
The paper also discovered the guinea pigs that listened to the standard uncompressed music recovered fully the following day, whereas those that endured the same Adele song on repeat took longer to.