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Wouldn't you get deaf if you put all the amps right behind yourself ?

• hluska 8y ago
  Yeah - a lot of high profile musicians end up with terrible hearing as they age.
  • MichaelMoser123 8y ago
    In the words of the classic: roll over Beethoven (he used to be deaf for a decade of his live)
  • Applejinx 8y ago
    Bear in mind that for many of those guys, notably Townsend, what killed their ears was not stage volume but abuse of headphones in the recording studio. If you're wearing headphones to record and they don't isolate very well and you're in a live room with drums and stuff around you, the bleed from the live sound seriously interferes with your ability to keep track of what's going on. If you choose to turn the headphones up until they drown out the bleed, you're effectively doubling sound pressure levels and that's what will make you deaf. Effectively, you add to the bad-sounding but still loud bleed, another layer of distorted cranked-out audio from tiny speakers right against your ears. The Wall Of Sound was line arrays. If you stand right next to those, you hear only a tiny fraction of the loudness of the full system. Much of the wattage is literally firing over your head or at your feet. If you've not experienced line arrays, this is counterintuitive, but it's very true. There's nothing that can even out 'distant volume' against 'close-up volume' like a line array.
    • MichaelMoser123 8y ago
      very interesting, thanks!
• _greim_ 8y ago
  Yes. If you're a musician or attend lots of live shows, consider visiting an audiologist and investing in some custom-formed earplugs. You'll be able to hear clearly and comfortably without destroying your hearing over time.