Inspired by this article, where a Texas family claim that an “Amber Alert” on their son’s Airpods caused his eardrum to rupture.
At least some parts of the case have been dismissed:
https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/6354c39e5358106ecd0d9f1d
https://casetext.com/search?q=Gordoa v. Apple&sort=relevance&p=1&type=case
According to this, sound levels starting from 165 decibels would cause eardrum rupture: https://evidence.unboundmedicine.com/evidence/view/EBMG/457351/all/Acute_acoustic_trauma#:~:text=An intense sound wave will,also rupture the tympanic membrane
Question: Are the Apple Airpods physically capable of producing 165 decibels of sound?
According to a test conducted by the source below, they max out at 108.3 db, so I guess the claimants are full of shit.
https://headphonesaddict.com/how-loud-are-apple-airpods/
Doesn’t actually mean their eardrums didn’t rupture from the airpods, just that under those testing conditions they can’t generate the imposed constraint of 130 dB.
And because of the logarithmic nature of decibels, 6 dB louder approximately means twice as loud. So these claimants are saying the airpods reached about 700 times higher volume than they can.