you know, wearing a hearing aide to make things louder later can possibly perpetuate the damage, though they may have built-in tech for that. anyways. i get my hearing checked periodically at the mine, and get to see my results. one thing that got me, is that my hearing went from perfect, to "virtually perfect". a cold, or whatever, but i religiously wear hearing protection at work, no matter. the principal rule of thumb, is when you have good hearing, then if you can feel it (pain) it is your natural signal to tell you it is too loud, and there is damage going on, just the same way any pain signal works in your body. there are 2 things that happen when you loose hearing. first, you can kill the nerve, as everybody knows, and second, the nerve fibers can be laid over, where they can stick. the usually pop back up, not always right away, and sometimes they are stuck permanently, not picking up vibrations as they should. what makes things worse, is that the more the fibers are damaged, the less they will tell you "too loud". also, your brain is constantly adjusting. as the damage is done, then the range of signal changes, and your brain will adjust the sensitivity, kind of like turning up the gain. you may think the hearing is getting better, but it is not, and when you age, the damage is still there, so, 10, 20, 30 years later, when your body is no longer healing, your brain is also setting back to "stock" position, and the damaged fibers are starting to degrade sooner. kind of like the high-school knee injury that comes back as you degrade. i am very protective of my hearing. even with the large systems since i was about 18 and even not so strictly when younger, i made sure to use hearing protection, and have it on hand. you used to always see gas filled canal caps hanging from the shifter or mirror in my cars and trucks. i actually do listen to older people. 2 of the biggest things guys always regret are "not taking care of my hearing" and "not taking care of my back".
so, there are different length nerve fibers that are responsible for different frequencies. it evades my mind certainty of which, but i'm pretty sure it is the shorter fibers that take care of the lower frequencies (oh, and when one is damaged, your mind can pick up the frequency from the next fiber) i speculate that the shorter fibers can handle more than 120db, however, all fibers are receiving the same level of vibration in the same shared chamber, so the bass can still damage the fibers of higher frequency. typically, it is higher frequencies of hearing loss that occurs, regardless of the source.
another factor- the numbing vibration of bass, can mask the pain of hearing damage, more particularly, when you have 140db going on, and you need the mids and highs to match, you may not feel just how loud and damaging they have to be to keep up and sound clean and clear. if you don't care that much about what you are doing, or don't believe me. go ahead and crank it up with the mids to match, but un-seamingly too loud. pause the song, without touching any settings, and disable your subs, and resume. you will notice, more-so with a few min between, that your mids and highs are obnoxiously screaming at your brain. my advise, though- gat yourself some nice, comfortable, and aesthetically pleasing caps, or plugs, etc, protection, and keep them in there. really what you want is to feel the bass, and experience it's power, no sense in subjecting your ears to levels higher than you can actually hear anyways. it is pretty quick that your mind adjusts and you don't even notice you have the plugs in anyways, and even easier with habit. then, if you like the show-off cool factor, many see the hearing protection, and immediately assume you get fukin loud enough that you need it. wear with pride. if someone gives you ****, respond in a normal, mild tone/level. who looks like the idiot having to repeatedly say "what?" while giving someone else **** about keeping good hearing.
