Do you get Ringing in the Ears from your hi-fi?

There are certainly other causes of tinnitus than sound exposure, and if you have a continuing experience you should get to a otologist or at least a good ENT guy who could refer you to an otologist for appropriate evaluation. These guys will likely have your hearing sensitivity checked by an audiologist, but it should be more than that to eliminate other potential causes, e.g. tinnitus can be a symptom of a tumor which if caught in time can be operable.

By all means, do protect your hearing by listening at reasonable levels. Rock concerts can damage your hearing, so don't try to recreate anything near such perceived levels in your home. I think distinguishing between the effects of ported, air-suspension, or infinite baffle speakers is just more of the smoke and mirror stuff so common on Audiogon forums. It's high sound pressure levels, aka high dB SPLs, that get you.

db

Only when I turn it past 3 o'clock.

I should relate a personal experience: My best friend's father suffered from tinnitus, and went to his GP who told him he should just get used to it. He asked me about it, because he knew I worked as a graduate student at a research center that was funded to study the effects of noise on hearing. I recommended he go to the House Institute in LA, where they identified a tumor that had it not removed would have become life threatening. He died over 40 years later at a fine old age. Don't ignore tinnitus. It usually has a simple cause, but not always.

db

my father lived with hearing loss in his right ear for years in fact he was allmost deaf in that ear,before he died he had to go in for a mri & while he was in the machine he started screaming in pain,they pulled him out of the machine & he had blood running from his ear,they pulled a peice of schrapnel from his ear from a head wound in korea.

whats amazing is that not only was he lucky the machine didnt suck the metal right thru his brain but within days of getting released from the hospital his hearing came back in that ear.

not related to audio but a true story none the less.

mike.

I have tinnitus in the left ear only and it is intermittant.It started after a loud Three Dog Night concert at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville,NC 3 years ago.My hearing seems normal(for age 57) and I listen to everything from classical to Allman Brothers at no higher than 70 to 75 db with some 85db excursions. The medical recommendations are to keep the SPLs below 85db and you are okay. Three Dog night was way louder from the 5th row. I had no earplugs and stuffed paper in my ears, but it didn't help. I'm sure I have some damage because of the continued tinnitus. Be careful of concerts.
John