Festival Season Is Here: Protecting Your Hearing Through a Busy Summer
- Miles
- Jun 8
- 3 min read
June is here...
...now if like us, you are a working musician or engineer, that probably means your calendar is filling up fast.
Six to eight weeks of back-to-back shows is brilliant. It is also a lot. One festival weekend is fine — your ears recover, your body resets. A full summer is a different thing entirely.
The exposure builds up quietly, and by the time you feel it, the damage is already done.We talk to musicians about this all the time. And this time of year, that conversation gets a lot more urgent.
Why festivals are harder on your ears than most gigs.
It is not just the volume. Festival stages stack up several problems at once.
Powerful PA. Big crowds. Significant stage levels before you have asked for a single thing in your monitors. Then add inconsistent monitor rigs, different engineers on every stage, and mixes that were never quite dialled in because there simply was not enough time.
When the mix feels off, the natural response is to ask for more. More me. More level. More exposure. Repeated across six or eight weeks, that is where real hearing damage happens.
The crowd noise trap.
Here is something that catches a lot of musicians out. On a big outdoor stage, the ambient noise is already high before you play a note. Thousands of people, the PA bleeding back, the general roar of a large open space.
Without realising it, you start pushing your monitor level up to compete. Not because the original level was wrong — because the environment shifted what you could hear. By the end of a festival weekend, some musicians have spent hours in a seriously loud environment without ever clocking how much exposure they have taken on.
It is one of the most common routes to long-term hearing loss in working musicians. And it is almost entirely avoidable.
What custom in ear monitors actually change here
The big one is isolation.
A well-fitted custom IEM blocks 17 to 26 decibels of ambient noise. The crowd roar, the bleeding PA, the stage wash — all significantly reduced before your mix even starts. You are not competing with the environment anymore. You have taken it out of the equation.
Musicians on custom in ear monitors at festival stages consistently report running lower mix volumes than they ever did on wedges. The mix sits clear and present at levels that simply would not cut through on a wedge in the same space. Less volume, better clarity, and a lot less cumulative exposure across a long run of shows.
Over a full festival season, that adds up to something meaningful.
A few simple habits that genuinely help
Whether you are on custom in ear monitors or wedges, these few little tips can make a real difference!
Give yourself some quiet time before you go on. Not silence, just an hour away from loud environments. Give your ears a break somehow, they will perform better when they are not already tired.
Take a proper recovery day after a loud show if you can.
Not just time off — genuinely low-noise. A walk somewhere quiet. Time away from the venue. Get rested, rehydrate and reset.
Before you ask for more custom in your monitors or wedges, ask this: Is a level problem or a clarity problem. Most of the time it is clarity. A better mix is the answer, not a louder one. These problems are best sorted out prior to showtime but if you can't, try and be clear with what you need more clarity on, and if you're mixing your own sound live; try taking things out of your mix to make space, before you start trying to push volumes to get an element to sit on top of it all!
If you have been thinking about switching to custom in ear monitors, this is a good time to have that conversation. The busier the schedule, the more isolation matters. The better your summer mixes are, the more your ears will thank you for it!
Hearing protection is at the heart of what we do
At DCA, hearing protection this is not an afterthought. Every sale we make comes down to something simple. Musicians who can hear properly throughout their careers play better, perform better, and last longer. We know how you hear on stage is completely personal, and everyone has their own ways to get the best out fo their performance. But what's the one thing that levels us all?
Hearing loss is not reversible. The decisions we make this summer will still matter in ten years.
Take care of your ears this season. They are the most important piece of kit you own.
Something in this article left you more questions, or you'd like to chat to us about it? Maybe you'd like to talk about custom in ear monitors for your summer schedule? Click the button below!
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