Measure sound output?

Hi all,
I was wondering if there was a method in which you could measure volume (in decibels) of sound thats coming out of my in-ears.
So far the only was I did it was to place the in-ear on the the microphone and let it record for a while, then I measured the volume. Just not sure if it's accurate enough though.

I wanna know what level I'm listening to my songs so I could know if I could turn it up a little bit more with out worrying about damaging my hearing.

if you want your songs to play at a constant volume, just normalize them using ReplayGain tags (e.g. created woth foobar) or mp3gain. No need to invent the wheel once more.

Originally Posted by Echo

Hi all,
I was wondering if there was a method in which you could measure volume (in decibels) of sound thats coming out of my in-ears.
So far the only was I did it was to place the in-ear on the the microphone and let it record for a while, then I measured the volume. Just not sure if it's accurate enough though.

I wanna know what level I'm listening to my songs so I could know if I could turn it up a little bit more with out worrying about damaging my hearing.

You can buy an SPL meter from your local hardware store, basically you need to use tape or a tight tube and hook that up to the SPL meter and that will give you the output in dB. Make sure you are in a quiet environment when doing this, as ambient noise can affect the results.

Originally Posted by BobbyQ

if you want your songs to play at a constant volume, just normalize them using ReplayGain tags (e.g. created woth foobar) or mp3gain. No need to invent the wheel once more.

I do use mp3gain, but i'd just like to know how much sound is coming out. Even though you do set the dB to 89, earphones all have different outputs.