[forumaudio20]

 
Hello Everyone. After reading so many quality posts at headfi I finally registered. Thanks.
 
To start off with:
 
There are a few legally available mp3s that contain a mega bass tag in the file name such as:
Track name – track# - megabass.mp3
 
Sometimes these mp3s contain the following warning: WARNING: This can damage your speakers/subs/headphones/whatever else you use if turned too loud. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
 
I would please like to know what sort of precautions a user can take to protect his audio equipment from damage caused by music files like the one mentioned above and any other situations, in which audio files can damage equipment.
 
Are there any guides, articles, or tutorials that focus on this problem?
 
Would normalizing the mp3 before listening to it be helpful? I am interested in a foolproof way to protect speakers and headphones. It does not matter if there is sound quality compromise.
 
Would using an equalizer help? How?
 
Foobar has an advanced limiter feature is this useful? Are there any other foobar dps or configurations that would help? How can I add a frequency cut off option to foobar?
 
Would it help to use frequency cutoff?
 
Are there any settings in an av receiver that would help protect speakers or headphones?
Are there any settings in an laptop that would help protect speakers or headphones?
 
I read in another post there are some high quality speakers that are not made to handle low frequencies and constant exposure may cause some damage. Is it so? How can one protect these types of speaker to avoid the damage?
 
Is it possible to modify a music file taken from a purchased cd to match the frequency range of certain particular headphones or speakers?
 
Is it necessary to send lower frequencies to headphones or speakers even if they cannot reproduce those frequencies based on their specifications?
 
Thanks in advanced for any replies. Since these are a lot of questions even just answering one or a few would be greatly appreciated.
 
Regards
FA20

 

[forumaudio20]

Would remastering audio with sound forge or other tools help to solve this problem?

 

[obobskivich]

This seems somewhat silly. I don't mean to say that you are silly, I mean such warnings seem silly. Of course if you take a very low frequency (high energy) sweep and push it through a transducer at some insane level you risk damaging the thing. 
 
There's going to be similar warnings in most speaker and headphone manuals, they will read something along the lines of "do not play low frequency sine sweeps into the product." Bass information encoded into music can't really damage anything by itself - you hit 0 dBfs and then you go into clipping (in other words, the signal cannot get any bigger); it just sounds like garbage. If you take that nasty signal and crank it way up, yes, you can risk damaging your equipment; you'll probably damage your ears first though. 
 
Where you're more likely to damage your equipment is trying to take a given headphone or speaker that has limited bass response (let's pick on my Sony MDR-F1 again!) and EQ the bass up to some insane level. You'll increase the demands on the power amplifier and the output transducer in a silly way, and you can easily damage things. Again, you'll probably be stone deaf by the time everything blows up. Clipping an amplifier into the same load will kill things faster (and again will sound horrible and probably hurt). Normalizing the volume (via some sort of "Smart Volume" feature) will bring everything else up to the level of the offending signals - it will probably destroy the sound quality. 
 
Overall I wouldn't worry about this. Most headphones currently on the market (even the less-loved products, like Bose and Beats) can withstand an insane amount of power either as a short-term/peak input, or as a continuous feed (1000mW/side max rating is not all that uncommon). Much more than you'd expect with speakers. To use another Sony model as an example (the MDR-XB1000), going from Tyll's measurement data (http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/SonyMDRXB1000.pdf) they require 0.28 mW to reach 90 dB @ 1 khz (this is probably louder than you'll want to listen long-term (it's definitely louder than OSHA/CEA/CCOHS suggest)); they have a maximum rated input of 3000 mW!
 
Now, the XB1000 have somewhat higher power handling than many similar headphones, but nonetheless, it demonstrates my point. By the time you get 3W into these (from what I have no idea), you'll probably be in physical distress; I doubt the driver damage will worry you very much.