Do you protect your hearing?


My Dad's hearing has been bad for a while and he recently had to get hearing aids. I'm a relatively young man and I know I have not used proper hearing protection throughout my life. This audio stuff is a wonderful thing and something I'd like to enjoy my entire life, so I have been more aware of noise in my everyday life. My job requires me to work in a sometimes loud environment and my other hobby is woodworking. For about the last 5 years or so, I have made a conscious effort to wear hearing protection when I'm in such an environments. Just recently I started to use hearing protection while cutting the grass, something I wouldn't have considered in the past. Has your interest in audio caused you to be more aware of hearing protection or am I the only anal one here?
mijknarf
Fishboat,

There is some argument about whether hearing changes with age absent exposure to noise, but if it does the loss is nearly always at higher frequencies. I suspect what you're experiencing is a change in taste. I find that I now tend to prefer music of small groups, e.g. quartets, to large orchestrations. My favorites now are Bach, Corelli, and some jazz, whereas the bombast of Pictures or the 1812 might have been more to my liking as a teenager -- still enjoy Let It Bleed, though. I'm 69, 14 years after FIRE.

db
I hear all the way to 18.5kHz so I preserve that with ear protection. I want to be confident in the performance assessment of my stereo.