Invest in your ears. Hearing damage is not reversible.
Open ear buds have an advantage that’s also very hazardous: they allow surrounding sound to compete for your attention. Most people solve this problem by cranking the sound level high enough to drown out the surroundings. The resulting noise floor is hazardous to your hearing.
If you were to hop on the bus with a sound level meter, you’d be amazed at how loud it really is. We tend to tune out this noise level, and think of it as quite a bit quieter than reality.
Your music needs to be louder than this noise floor.
The solution, quiet the noise, so you can enjoy the music without high volume. You can do this in one of several ways: active supression phones like the Bose, which generate a “negative” cancelling signal via amplifying the ambient sound, or by choosing an “around the ear” headphone, or for portable use, an in-ear type of earphone.
In-ear monitor types are my favorite for a noisy environment, as they seal the ear canal, blocking ambient noise, and the speakers can play at a significantly lower sound level. The drawback to this type is that some units completely block the outside world, so when walking about, keep that volume low, or switch to open ear buds when strolling the sidewalks, or crossing traffic.
I like the Maximo iM490s headphones, as they sport a wee vent port on the outside of the driver case, allowing a bit of outside sound to reach the ears (and this improves bass response too). They work wonderfully as combination noise supressors and headphones.
You can find the JVC Air Cushion IEMs at pretty good prices too, or the Sennheiser CX300s… IEMs are worth a listen!
Bob :smileyvery-happy:
