[adirbenavi3]

I have ath-m50 with a fiio e10.
the e10 is pretty loud even at about volume 4 out of 8.
my friend used my computer and somehow put the volume on 8 and heard some music.
my question is, can it hurt the headphones themselves?
and another thing, what is burn-in?

 

[spidert622]

Well, in general I wouldn't be too worried about blowing your headphones, but obviously you shouldn't drive music so loud that your worried about damaging headphones.  If you are using them as speakers (putting them on your desk when friends are over so everyone can hear) I would probably stop doing this.  They weren't meant for it and you are better off buying a cheap pair of speakers than potentially damaging your headphones.  
 
Burn in is the idea that headphones performance and sound quality will improve over the time period of roughly 100-200 hours of use.  Whether or not this is true is actually a very controversial subject and something that can be looked further into to.  
 
Best of Luck!

 

[manbear]

Headphones aren't going to play at volumes that any non-deaf person could possible stand to listen to. Unless that person likes serious pain. I wouldn't worry about it. I blew some apple earbuds on purpose and it took about 13 watts, which ~87 times more power than you could get out an E10.