So, last night I went to a concert.  I had great seats: 3rd row. The show started, the drums, bass, keys, horns were perfect then the guitar kicked in and dang!!  That guitar was so, so, so, so damn loud and beyond belief with the treble. For a sec I wanted to get the heck out of there but my date wanted to stay.  I had to endure most of the show with fingers in my ears.  Oh, it was super painful. This morning I woke with a headache but I feel the buzz I had last night after the show is beginning to dissipate. Unless I am mistaken that guitar player had to have seen me a few times with my ears plugged. I don't think the band wore plugs but I think the sound levels on stage were not the same as they were for the audience.

I think I am going to carry ear plugs going forward whenever I go to a live show. I'll put a few in my pocket and whip them out if necessary.

This is the kind of thing that is not good for someone who loves audio and audio playback.

Has anyone ever had this problem?

My dad started taking me to concerts when I was 12-13. He would bring cotton balls and fill my ears with as much as we could jam in there. I'm so grateful for going to so many concerts and my dad understanding that protecting hearing is important.

Today I have multiple pairs of Eargasm ear plugs. I have them on both sets of my car keys. I have them in my travel bags and doc kit. I also have 1-2 extra unopened pairs that I have in the house.

Are they the best? I don't know, I did find that the hifi for small ears are the most comfortable for me.

They are clear so when you are wearing them they are not very noticeable.

I wear them all the time. As a society we have become blind to how much noise pollution  is around us all the time.

The Eargasm ear plugs are not the most db reducing plugs you can get. The positive of this is that they can be worn in a lot of situations and make the experience better. Example, having trouble hearing people talk in a noisy restaurant? pop them in. knocks out the background noise and you can hear the people at your table much better. Another place to use them is movie theaters, I don't goto the theater often, almost always it's due to an invite. The last movie I saw was loud distortion it sounded terrible. So glad I had the ear plugs to pop in, made an experience which would have been miserable into an enjoyable one.

Eargasm is a constant sale company. So sign up for the email list or what ever they want get the discount and leave the list.

edit: they come with a small metal holder with a key ring so attaching them to your keys is very easy.

I never attend any live event without those little squishy soft rubber things that you can stuff into your ears. I buy them by the hundreds. I give them to anyone who does not have any.
I put them in in the parking lot.

I also carry -45dB cans around my neck (The kind your insane friends use for protecting their ears on gun ranges. They are really good.) in case the little bubbles are not enough.

Despite the typical warnings, you should do this on your own.

But I have to establish the Legal Precedent in reciprocal for my admonishments.

I am a professional. You should always do this.

Back in the early 90’s, I worked as an usher for the Meadowlands Arena out here in NJ.  I was luckily enough to mainly work on the floor upfront center stage.  I did it for close to 15 years and have probably seen close to several hundred shows to date.  Ear protection was a must so  I learned early on how important it is to protect your ears.  AC/DC along with Iron Maiden wereso loud, I still came home with light ringing even with plugs in my ears.   SCARY!!  

I won’t go to a concert today without ear protection.  The ringing should only last like a day or two…so hang in there.   I played the guitar growing up and through college.   Having played in a wedding band for 2 years we were always conscious of our volume in relation to each other’s instruments.  It was always a battle….especially when you don’t have a sound man for adjustments.

Dom

Sorry to hear about that Matchstickman.  I am very sensitive about my hearing and it's not a subject to be taken lightly for audio fanatics.
I never attend concerts without earplugs anymore, and to be honest I don't really even enjoy live music when it comes to large concert events because the sound is rarely as good as my listening room.
I recently attended an Irish festival and mostly avoided the stages.  Bagpipes, amplified, are not enjoyable, especially when there are three at once!  Though I do find bagpipes at a distance quite nice when not amplified.
I played in a metal band for about a decade and we practiced in a low ceiling basement.  The guitar player used two full stacks and insisted on running them both at "10" to get that sound.  I used foam plugs under my muffs.  Bad times.
It's always the unexpected events that take me by surprise.  Air travel can be a little too loud, and when traveling over seas or for extended periods that high SPLs can add up.  Similar situation with driving.  I even had lunch outside recently at a brewpub and found thier "background" music excessive...  checked my decible meter ap on my phone and it was peaking over 100 db.  They lost my business.  Even more concerning was that the next table over from me was a couple with an infant.

Okay, this is strange.

It took a few days to get the ringing to go away.

However, lately, I've had trouble going to sleep.  I can hear the overhead fan humming, and I never heard it before.  It is driving me nuts.  I thought maybe the fan was old and needed to be replaced so I went to sleep in another room that also had a fan.  I could hear that fan humming, too.  Strange, right?  I have a fan in the kitchen.  I can hear that one humming also.

So, I thought.  Electrical problem at my house.

Then, I went to a friend's house and I could hear his fan humming, too.  In fact, I could hear his TV make noise.

It has to be some kind of psychological thing.  Or, maybe, I've turned into a superhero.

The hum isn't loud.  In fact, no one hears it until I point it out, but I hear it all the time.

This is nuts.

So, I am now using a white noise machine to drown out everything.  That seems to work. Aarrrggghhh!!

An audiologist?

That sounds like some guy that will tell me that Bose is the way to go.

'White noise'. I have had to use a fan next to me when trying to sleep for years. If it is quiet, I do not sleep and will hear everything within a few miles it seems.lol. Even an owl way off in the distance with windows closed. My wife and kids always seem amazed at what I can hear..then as the source gets closer, or we get closer, they finally hear it too. When I was young, I worked among fighter aircraft all day, every day, I was a fortunate one with no problems due to immense noise.  Lucky. Sounds like you are hearing just fine now! But if it is that 'different', I agree with Lon there...get checked out Matchstikman

Well, I did it to myself again.

I went to see a show at a small venue, not a concert hall or auditorium, small.  I'd say smaller than a typical restaurant, in fact.   I think the capacity was 200.  The show was great; however, the band had enough fire power for a hall double, triple or four times the size.  And, even though I now carry disposable ear plugs in my car I went with someone else and there were no ear plugs to be found.

The thing about 100 watt Marshall amps is that they don't shine until they are cranked.  I'm talking about a preamp-less Marshall with just a straight out volume control set to 10.

It makes me wonder how the musicians themselves aren't deaf.  I could not see any of them wearing ear plugs.  However, it is possible that the sound levels on the stage were not anywhere what they were on the audience side.

This morning, my ears are still ringing.

Wouldn't it be interesting if concert halls had a sound level display somewhere visible so people could see just how loud it was? Or, a sign that said, "establishment is not responsible for hearing loss due to extreme sound levels."  The thing is I entered at my own peril.  I should know better.

Carry Earplugs with you. I have been using protection for over 25 years for movie theaters, Motorcycling and any other situation you may encounter extreme sound. Everyone experiences sensitivity to different frequiency ranges differently. I have used for many years 3M E-A-Rsoft FX. the NRR is 33(db) You can get them on Amazon and are inexpensive. By the way I have walked out on a concert that was way to loud for me when I didn't have plugs with me. Sometimes I wonder how others can toloerate the excessive loudness but I may be more sensitive to it.