LOUDEST Concert and Tinnitus

With all those entries, it's a shame there's no measurement of distortion, too, or the measurements can be misleading as far as the subjective experience. 

In my younger days, I came home from many a concert with my ears ringing, sometimes for a couple of days.  But the concert that hurt the most was a local three piece band. Guitar, keyboards and drums. The venue was the upstairs of a bar. They weren’t particularly loud, but something in their PA setup had me out the door in less than a half hour, but the damage was done! I’ve had issues with my right ear ever since.

Mine was Neil Young, at the United Palace in NYC, with my son.  We both had ringing ears for three or more days.  

the Stones, Grateful Dead had very good sound systems. top notch. the best naturally. it was so clean it did not hurt while it was damaging your hearing. the security staff would always provide me with plugs. hearing today has suffered tremendously. but i attended over 1000 shows. was in and around the biz so on a lot of guest list

I don’t what was the loudest concert (maybe The WHO, Vancouver, 80’s) but we saw Eric Church and Dave Matthews in Tahoe last summer, same venue. SPL meter on my phone. Eric Church - excellent sound, did not need the ear plugs. Dave’s sound sucked and it was too loud - didn’t stay for the whole show.

I do know the exact moment my tinnitus started - outdoor rave in London - late 90’s. Got too close to a wall of JBLs. So call it 25 years.

It is very prominent but stable. Roughly 50dB loss 750-4kHz both ears. I use an app called rain rain at night - it needs to be loud to drown it out.

Tinnitus can be really serious though - I have a close friend that got it recently from anti-depressant meds - a known risk - he was considering suicide - he has a wife and 2 little kids. Fortunately his mother knew I have tinnitus and she told him to call me. I talked to him for a long time - talked him of the ledge. He’s coping. Sound generator app and hearing aids.

I’m not ready for hearing aids yet but the theory is they can be programmed to amplify the attenuated frequencies which makes the ringing less prominent - some also have white noise - but there is no cure and none of the OTC stuff that claims to help works for me.