Random Skips

glenn, the nih article was written for people who do not have a medical background and was done very nicely with pictures of hair cells and all but it is still very simplistic and omits the more complicated aspects of human hearing. Most people can listen to music safely at 95 dB as long as they warm their ears up first and get their stapedius muscles tightened up. Some people are more susceptible to hearing damage not only from noise but also certain drugs. The most dangerous noises are high volume impulse noise like gun shots and repetitive loud short duration noise like you would get from repetitive use of a hand held circular saw. In both instances your ears do not have a chance to accommodate to loud noise mode. In quiet environments your hearing sensitivity automatically increases so that you can hear faint sounds in the environment like that lioness sneaking up on you. It takes your ears a minute or two to get into loud noise mode which is why you always warm up your ears at lower volumes increasing a few dB at at time till you get to your preferred listening volume. Music at 95 dB is safe for most people. The problem is that it is hard to tell who is going to be more susceptible to hearing damage like Beethoven. The best indicator is family history. If both your parents where deaf as a door knob by 80 I would worry. Everybody should always wear hearing protection when shooting or using just about any machine tool. Not doing so is asking for it. For us music lovers there is a great product, the Etymotic  ear buds. They have a 32 dB attenuation rate and they sound better than 90% of the ear buds out there. When in the shop or mowing the lawn I'm in my own little world listening to Rage Against the Machine. You could set off an A bomb behind me and I would not hear it. Perfect.  https://www.etymotic.com/consumer/earphones.html
I use the ER 2XR plugs for hearing protection.

Mike

mijostyn

... the nih article was written for people who do not have a medical background ... it is still very simplistic and omits the more complicated aspects of human hearing. Most people can listen to music safely at 95 dB as long as they warm their ears up first ...

That’s interesting. So please tell us about your medical background.

Thank you for your response the anti-skate makes sense it skips out. Going to reduce it today and give it a try. Like I said can go weeks and all is well then out of the blue it happens. As far as the volume I’m 63 have been listing to Rock n Roll at maxim volume since 1969. Hearing is probably not as good as it was then but it’s fine for 63. As it says on the label of The Who Live At Leeds “Play Loud”. After all It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll. Once agin thanks for the advice.

cleeds, I am a board certified family physician. I practice in southern New Hampshire. You can check my reviews out on the internet.