Whether you’re a musician or just a music lover, playing your music too loud on a regular basis can cause hearing related problems. For example, if you’re one of those people who like to drive around in a “boom box car” with the music up full blast you should consider turning the music down quite a bit. Those “boom box cars” can generate up to 130 decibels of sound, which is very near if not over the human hearing pain threshold. A typical value for this threshold of pain is 120 decibels. To put things into perspective, a soft whisper is about 30 decibels while a train is around 100 decibels. The average rock concert is around 120 decibels, which is right at the pain threshold. On a personal note, I wear earplugs to every concert I attend as a precaution, since prolonged exposure to sound pressure levels in excess of the threshold of pain can cause physical damage, potentially leading to hearing impairment. It’s important to keep in mind that hearing-induced hearing loss is permanent.
