In Reply to: You wear ear muffs to use more watts? posted by Rider on July 09, 2002 at 10:00:26:
My magnum ear protectors STAY in the living room. How else are you going to "proof test" the acoustic output power in a meaningfull way? 1 watt/100dB. With muffs, ears get 70dB. 100 watts/120dB. Ears get 90, loud but not too bad. Naked ears at 120dB? No way for this guy...
Even freq. response testing at lower SPL's is much more enjoyable(?) without being drilled by 12kHz. sine waves.Keeping ear protection handy means I am much more likely to wear them when mowing the yard, operating power tools, or power tuning the KZ1000 out in the garage. When you defend against all the high SPL's you can avoid, your sound system will sound consistently better.
When "hammered" by spl's, the muscles in the inner ear respond protectively by tightening up. How long they take to fully relax is not clearly understood. This is why after "blasting a song or two" and then listening at a lower level, the system will sound like crap for a while, to your ears. Till they readjust and relax to the lower sound level again...Sam
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