USA: iPod conundrum: how loud is too loud?

August 1, 2007
Sydney Morning Herald

Dave Legeret silently fumed as the man seated beside him on the plane blasted techno music on his iPod at full volume.

"It was kind of rude," recalled Legeret, 38, a jewelry designer from Connecticut., who was forced to listen while flying from New York City to Disney World with his wife and 8-year-old son.

"Listen to it at a level that just you can hear it and everyone else doesn't have to be subject to it."

Apple's ubiquitous iPod is best known as an instrument of solitude - unless the user ignores standards of etiquette by invading the eardrums of fellow commuters, officemates or other innocent bystanders.

Then it starts to get annoying. Especially when you're stuck in close proximity ...

And then there's the impromptu karaoke problem. Kahney said a colleague at Wired, which covers technology and how it affects culture, has a bad habit of crooning to his playlist at work ...

Anna Post, an etiquette instructor at The Emily Post Institute, said she'd heard a story about a woman who asked an iPod-using train rider to turn down the volume, only to have her request ignored. So she used another tactic: Singing along to the music.

"And, all of a sudden, boy, did that iPod get shut off," said Post, who stressed that "a little social shame can go a long way ...