Heavy HDD use gave us 40dB, while accessing HDD and spinning up a Blu-ray took this to a deafening 50dBA. Luckily, once a disc was loaded and running, sounds from the drive ceased almost completely and overall system noise remained close to the idle level while actually playing a movie -- the Samsung SH-123L was impressive in that respect.

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The graph shows prescriptions, not dollar sales, and this strips away all the noise caused by price increases to show overall use.

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Overall, nearly 700 people, or 13.2 percent of the sample, had noise-induced hearing loss in Djalilian's study.

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