Expert: Cleggsan - 12/14/2008

Question
Hi there i just wanted to ask about speakers.I have a pair of krk studio monitors (rp8's)and each time i have a few hours playing music my ears feel a little swollen on the inside.I have always listened to music on speakers and even in nightclubs but have never had this trouble and was wondering if there was a certain frequency that maybe dosen't agree with my ears or could it be a reverb problem?I know its a weird one but need to get to the bottom of it and was wondering if you've ever heard of this before?
I'm aware of temporary threshold shift but this is very different.
Thanks for your time
regards Lloyd

Answer
I don't think the speakers are inhernetly a cause of this.  But, I am not sure what you mean by "my ears feel a little swollen inside".  If you have high distortion from playing too loud, and especially intermodulation distortion, it will produce severe listeners fatigue which can cause several different kinds of manifestations,  however, if you really believe there is a swelling going on you may want to get to an ear/nose/throat professional for a check up.

Just a comment: if you are playing them at a good level and you are listening at close range you can get a build up of ear shift which will take several days to relieve the pressure on the inner ear; under worst case conditions it can bring permanent damage to your hearing, but usually the ear mechanism will settle down after a few days of avoiding the loud, close up pressure levels.  In fact, listening close to loudspeakers is dangerous even though others in the room do not feel it to be so loud; recording engineers have to be very careful because the monitors are usually sitting right on the mixing board with the speakers only 2 or 3 feet from the ears.  The sound pressure level from the transducer diminishes according to the inverse square of the distance.  So moving away just another foot or two can reduce the potential damage to the ears by a large portion.

Hope this helps.  Best wishes,

C