I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

Think you mean plugging, not plucking, your ears, unless sirens make you remove hair, in which case they did you a favor.

I got some nice ear plugs designed for concerts (Loop) because I go to a concert and I already have mild tinnitus and don't want it to get worse.

I do not know why concerts have to be SO LOUD. Loud, sure. Permanent ear damage loud, why? It should tell you something that the guys on stage wear ear plugs.

That's a really good point about hearing damage vs eye damage, the only thing I can think of is it's a lot harder to measure and people don't care as much. It would be really hard to prove you had hearing loss in a court of law, let alone that it came from one specific event, and you'd have a much easier time proving that a high powered laser blinded several people, perhaps. And nearly 100% of people would choose "deaf" if they were forced to pick between that and blind.

> I do not know why concerts have to be SO LOUD. Loud, sure. Permanent ear damage loud, why

I have often wondered this. So it’s non-deafening loud at the back? I was at a concert recently that was way too loud. A sound guy came to check and stood in front of the speakers. I thought finally it’s going to be turned down … nope … clearly his hearing had already gone which would explain why it was so loud.

I think my hearing has been damaged in the past and so I now always have either AirPods at the very least or earplugs on hand. If anything loud, like heavy construction next to a bus stop, is happening I put them in. I can’t undo the past but I can prevent future damage.

I went to a metal concert for the first time in err. 25-30 years and I don't remember them being so loud. It was physically painful.

I also had to go have a nap in the car waiting for the main act to come on.

Young people like intense experiences, blasting your ears out is fun when you're 18-24.

Concerts have to be so loud because audiences are loud. As in the band members on stage wouldn't hear anything but the audience levels of loudness.

Kids cannot grasp long term health. The military likes recruiting them because they think they're invincible.

Also the tech's probably cheaper and more capable. You probably needed a lot of money to get 110db sound in the 60s.

Also have fewer qualms killing other people. Young people are more idealistic/poltical/murderous on average.

99% of concert performers use Monitors to hear their own performance over the crowds and have nothing to do with the loudness of the audience speakers. Stage Monitors can be just speakers at the front edge of the stage pointed directly at the band [1] or they can be sound isolating earpieces so artists can hear exactly the sound mix they want [2].

[1] https://audioinstallations.co.uk/blog/stage-monitors-how-do-... [2] https://www.newsweek.com/taylor-swift-eras-tour-cruel-summer...

Not necessarily because of the band members, but yeah, you want to cover up the noise of people chattering away in the back.

Music can also sound better when it's louder, up to a certain point - if you're recording and mixing a piece of music, you want to do so at a very moderate volume, because if you crank it up loud some of the imbalances in the mix become less obvious.

That said, there's 'loud enough that the music sounds good and you're mostly hearing music and not audience', and then there was the Prodigy concert I went to, where I was wearing earplugs and my ears still hurt. Amazing concert, but holy crap, probably the loudest situation I've ever encountered. I've also been right in front of the speakers at a festival dance tent, and my earplugs rattled due to sound pressure, which was unnerving but quite funny.

Right and back then you had one, maaaaybe two monitor banks. It was a lot harder to delay the signal to the speakers at various distances from the stage to prevent echo effect. Now it’s trivial.