I find it rather odd that when I want to do a project, and I post about in online the absolute FIRST thing I am constantly met with is "discouragement". And why is it no one ever actually offers actual inputs on forums? Oh they'll tell you their opinions but no actual "if I was you I'd design it like this" and leave examples... it's as if everyone wants to hoard their ideas rather than share them openly. Like how big bran manufactures act, like they need to safeguard this knowledge so they can have a competative advatage over their advisary companies. Could you imagine what sort of tech we could have if we stopped competing and all just openly shared and discussed ideas!?
Also I must say I find it rather funny, how people here reacted to my comments/posts. It's like if I said "it's really bright in here" and a bunch of you chimed in and said "oh you're going to go blind because any level of brightness will blind you! To be safe just keep the level down super low or wear sunglasses indoors just to be super sure your not damaging your eyes!"
... like really how can you tell being halfway across the world how "bright" over here is to me??
Secondly you can't compare "loud" on a cheap $50 Fisher Reciver to a $3000 Receiver with a high end DAC connected with nice $400 Op-Amps installed on it.... A alot has changed since the 70's.. but there is also the quality of an amp, there are in fact some epic amplifiers from these generations of past... but many sources sucked back then (tapes, 8 tracks, LP's) and all of these were also downgraided by the recording industry at the time not having the tech like we do now for recording and mastering. In fact I download a lot of 24 Bit recorded FLAC (lossless audio) albums from bandcamp... (and the sound card I am saving up for currently now supports 32Bit audio at an unreal 384bit sampling rate!).
Also amps list their specs like "this receiver is 130watter with 0.09% THD at that wattage..." where as others say "hey we also have a 130watt amp in our receiver! But when you look at their specs they are achiving that wattage with 10% THD..." that's when you know you're going to get a distorted expereince with possible hearing damage on an amp that has 10% THD, if you play it at loud volumes. Shoot I dislike anything near 0.9% THD... I don't tend to buy it or use. I need clean power that is "distorion free". Also you guy's need to keep in mind the speakers I am using (you never asked how big or small they are if they are like PA speakers or 6inch woofers or 15inch woofers) I mean I'm not listeing to "stadium horn tweeters or raid sirens here" ... in fact I've even begun making my own custom built speakers (reading up on woofer specs, mids, tweeters, cross overs cut offs etc).
oh you guys "it's too loud you'll damage your hearing!" Listen, I've been at this for around 4 decades and I can still hear all the tones in a hearing test fine... so I must know what I am doing. In fact there is a reason why I've not damaged my hearing....
However, before I get into that.... I will share a story of, the only "real hearing damage" I believe I suffered. And please note this was back in the 90's when tech and amps in headphones really were much poorer compared to todays tech/gear. So back in the early 90's I picked up a really nice pair of Audio Technica or similar barnd over ear headphones (that looked much like the Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pros with the fuzzy ear piece that went around the ears). Whatever they were, they sounded amazing so soft and smooth. But a few days, later and my father upgraded his reciver, and picked up some Cerwin Vega AT-10's... a day or two later, he was out, so I plugged these headphones into his new reciver and was listening to stuff. Then I think he came home, so I took them off we chatted a bit and then turned the speakers on and started jamming to some tunes on the new speakers. Suddenly I hear this "crackling beat" faintly, and I look in that direction, and I see my headphones are still plugged in, I grabbed them and sure enough they were on at the same time as the speakers! (All our previous recivers when you put speakers on - the headphones shut off - but on this receiver it ran both at the same time! Which is rare/unusual most recivers no will click over a relay when you plug headphones in that automatically shut speakers off) either way, my headphones were blown, and I had just bought them (was $200 or $300). So my dad took them back to the dealer to claim warrenty "they are defective"... the store owner smelt "BS" I think, but my dad had purchased a lot of gear from him previously. So he took them and said ok I'll claim the warrenty. Some time passed, and he never called us back about claiming the warrenty.. so we called he gave us a story "yeah soon". Then afew weeks later we called back yet another story... my dad got ticked off and we went down there in person. The headphones were still sitting on the owners desk where he had left them previously... so seeing us he got up and said "I tell you what here's a pair of Nikko headphones to try, if you like them you can take them as an exhange" he put me on some reciver with the FM radio on to test them. I stood there and immediatly I could tell these were faulty headphones, one side was 2x louder than the other side. It suddenly dawned on me "There were not in a box, he took them out of his office where mine were.... I think these are another pair of returned headphones! And he's also not honored or called in the warrenty on these from another customer & now trying to pawn them off on me". As I stood there listening I was feeling like "no I don't want these they are faulty" but I looked up and my dad finally seeing "justice" was encouraging me, even egging me on to "well take them, at least it's something back" he just had that look .... "WELL??? Like come on, take them! Let's go (like we won)". I wanted to say "but they are faulty too..." however I was scared (I was a young teen) and both these adult men were hovering above me pressuring me to take them. I contemplated speaking the truth about these headphones and saying these are faulty too... but I pictured that is going to cause the store owner to say "are you accusing me of trying to scam you!" and this would start some huge argument in the store (over me) with my dad yelling at the store owner, and us getting kicked out and me getting nothing, so I just shut up and took them. (I wanted to wait for the owner to just send them in under warrenty when he got around to it) but my dad was impatient. And so they were OK if I listened at home on my receiver because I could adjust the balance to make them sound "equal". However... when I was at home I listened to music on speakers and thus the main thing I wanted these headphones for was to use these for walking to school and back or going for bike rides to the park on my portable CD Player. And of course the Left side was much quieter than the right... and there was no balance to adjust, so to hear the left side I had to turn it up more than usual and this made the right side overly loud vs the left and the left sounded "normal". Sadly it was the only pair I had, and I used them often... years later I noticed that all sounds (like answering the phone) was quieter in my right ear now vs the left (since that right earphone was so much louder than the left). I swear to this day that my dad pressuing the store owner coupled with the guy "pushing his scam deal on me" to get rid of a nuisance customer, caused me hearing damage.
That is the only thing I've ever noticed about my hearing that is "off" but as time has gone on I think my brain (being malleable) it has wired it up so that to compensate for this, my right ear is just more "sensitive or more aware" light hightened awareness. Because now it sounds more "balanced" even tho I can tell if I balance headphones "prefect" then reverse them one side is louder than the other. And that is because my level of audible sound is less in one ear than the other.... you know that ear can still hear the same tones that my left ear can (it's just quieter).
Also please note, I grew up with a 60's hippie dad, whom was a music junkie, he had these massive 12inch woofer speakers hung from the ceiling, where he would blast the radio, or play LP's... (you know typical classic rock, The Doors, Alan Parsons, Jefferson Airplane, Iron Butterfly, Pink Floyd into all the great 80's tunes "every body wants to rule the world" and harder rock too like Van Halen, AC/DC ... to softer things like Genesis and Yes, well just about everything he played). And so I was constantly listening to music for hours per day, in fact from the moment I was born and brought home... I would constantly sleep by the speakers or ask to wear those massive black and white over ear headphones with the volume knob on them then fall asleep listening to music. I mean I was just a child but you could tell I loved music and felt so much comfort in it. You'd think I'd have some sort of hearing loss after decades of music pounding in my home....
Yet to this day, I'm the only one who's always notices faint sounds or errors in recordings... or if someone's mic is clipping ever so slightly on a live stream I will point it out. And everyone else will be like "I don't hear anything" and as it keeps happening I keep pointing it out and I often get people arguing with me "the sound is fine for me, maybe it's your gear!" etc and I keep pointing it out until someone who was disagreeing with me suddenly says "ooooh wait I heard it that time I get what he's complaining about, but come on man it's so slight it's not worth mentioning). But hey I am a perfectionist in many respects, and among them, I do audio editing, and remastering of older recordings... I've even sat down and by ear removed all the pops n clicks from a LP recording.
I also have trouble sleeping because I get woken up by the slightest sounds. For example someone in the kitchen crinkling a chip bag or running the water... or a car passing outside on the street, it seems I'm very senstive to sound. And if an ambulance goes down the same street I am on whaling it's siren I have to cover my ears as it's a "peircing noise" that distorts in my ear and hurts my ears, while others look at me like I am insane for covering my ears. But it's like I can "feel it hurting" as if my body "tells me" hey this is "bad levels/tones". I get the same pain when I go to a rock concert... it's just too shrill and hurts my hears so much, that I have to put ear plugs in.
So I think with decades of sound being all around me I have just very sentive and aware of the slightest detail in audio and I can pick up the slightest begining of distortion when playing back music loud I hit that "oh there it is the beat is breaking up turn it down" and my body "tells" me when something is damaging my ears and when it's not. I'm just that senstive.
.... and as if all that wasn't long enough.... but let's also add how not only you but others have made fun of my crying to music, but I guess you'll never understand the way music touches my soul, to me it's like the single most important thing in the entire Universe. It seems to regenerate my soul, which in turn regenerates my body... music is more important to me than anything else. Sometimes music touches me so epicly that I will pour and I mean pour tears of sheer joy all down my face onto my shirt soaking it. It's like pure "ecstasy" "bliss" "euphoria" "my heaven"... I've been forced to go without music for years until recently... and I noticed a lot of changes in my body and health... lacking passion and motivation and meaning and purpose and drive. I once had a "sort of g/f" who would come over and specifically ask me to play some music because she wanted to sit and watch me get all filled up with emotions and cry tears of joy. She had never seen anyone do that... and you know my mom says she gets "rushes" from music which I do as well.