[Cobaltius]

I was told by various amounts of people that listening to music way to much and long actually can ruin ears. I asked them "even if the headphone offers no fatigue and sounds smooth?" and they said that it doesn't matter because the sound waves travel through and over time deteriorates your ear drum or something like that. They even say even moderate volume is bad.
 
Now I use my HD 600's and I don't even listen to my music that loud, and I pretty much listen to music everyday 8 hours of course with breaks in between.

 

[Mr Rick]

  I was told by various amounts of people that listening to music way to much and long actually can ruin ears. I asked them "even if the headphone offers no fatigue and sounds smooth?" and they said that it doesn't matter because the sound waves travel through and over time deteriorates your ear drum or something like that. They even say even moderate volume is bad.
 
Now I use my HD 600's and I don't even listen to my music that loud, and I pretty much listen to music everyday 8 hours of course with breaks in between.

Your ears are working 24 / 7. Sounds like BS to me.

 

[Cobaltius]

  Your ears are working 24 / 7. Sounds like BS to me.

Said the same thing but what about a driver literally sitting less then a cm away from your ear instantly playing sound?
 
Makes perfect sense, maybe that's the reason why we all lose hearing at older age, because the sounds around us every single day?

 

[Mr Rick]

  Said the same thing but what about a driver literally sitting less then a cm away from your ear instantly playing sound?
 
Makes perfect sense, maybe that's the reason why we all lose hearing at older age, because the sounds around us every single day?

 
 
As you get older your body parts start to degrade. I'm living proof. LOL

 

[castleofargh]

depends on the music and depends how loud you listen.

 
you can probably find a more relevant graph, but the general idea is that if you want to listen for a long time, you need to lower the volume.
but even seen like that, they're not saying that it is great to spend 8hours a day at 85db(looks optimistic to me TBH), those are more like limits given for noisy jobs.
the type of music is also important because of the overall energy inside it. if there is a good dynamic in the music, you will have a meaningful part of the music that are quiet and would ease up on your ears, so you won't have a full time with music between 80 and 85db like when listening to justin bieber. overall your ears suffer less if you you spend less time with loud sound, whatever way to reduce this time is good, so maybe look for some calm and dynamic musics if you plan on spending the entire day with a headphone.
taking a break from time to time would also be a good idea.
 
and if you decide to follow those graphs, try not to forget the time you will spend watching tv a little loud, having fun in a bar with music and people shouting, driving or commuting etc. all of that time should be accounted for.
 
is the place where you listen to your hd600 quiet? otherwise it would be good to maybe get a closed headphone to get some passive isolation and avoid being tempted to cover the outside noises with louder music.

 

[proton007]

Most listeners tend to underestimate the root cause behind 'listening to loud music'.
 
Our listening has evolved to be relative to the surrounding environment, and the environment today for most outdoor listeners is to put it mildly, less than ideal.
Once our ears get used to the higher volume, it's hard to tell how loud it actually is. It takes 10-15 minutes for our ears to adjust back.
 
Try listening to music at the same volume once you're back in a quiet environment, and you'll be amazed how loud it is.
 
Now, the only way to cancel external noise is to 'isolate' your ears, and not blast music louder than the noise around you. That's like fighting a fire with a bigger fire.
 
Working in noisy environments over years degrades hearing, but a lot of listeners, for want of an isolating earphone, are destroying their ears without having to work in a factory 16 hours a day.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  I was told by various amounts of people that listening to music way to much and long actually can ruin ears. I asked them "even if the headphone offers no fatigue and sounds smooth?" and they said that it doesn't matter because the sound waves travel through and over time deteriorates your ear drum or something like that. They even say even moderate volume is bad.
 
Now I use my HD 600's and I don't even listen to my music that loud, and I pretty much listen to music everyday 8 hours of course with breaks in between.

 

Distortion and sensitivity to certain frequencies affects our perception of loudness. For example, playing music at 88dB at 2khz using a headphone or speaker with a spike around 4khz to 6khz is "sibilance" and "sharp treble" in audio forums, but you can play the same track on an HD600 or a Wharfedale Pacific Pi10 at 90dB at 2khz, and chances are most people will tell you it's "smooth." It's the same thing as a class yapping at 90dB, but the teacher can discipline them by scratching the blackboard, loudness level being 80dB for example at the farthest students' seats, but guess which one makes anyone feel pain.

 

As for distortion, one time when I had my Pi10 (powered by a NAD 304) I went out of the house to smoke, only to realize I can hear a bit of the music from one storey down at the other side of the house (and it's made of concrete outer walls, doors and windows in the room where the speakers were were all closed); another time I didn't hear my brother come in, he tapped me on the shoulder and told me to put the HD600s (powered by a Corda Cantate.2) down on the table, and they might as well be desktop speakers. In this case using audible distortion as a basis is a bad idea when you're using quality equipment, since they're going to play a lot louder before they hit audible distortion.

 

In short..."sounds smooth" isn't an accurate way of telling how much dB's are reaching your ears.