We got them right before the bass music scene fell apart here in the bay, with the festival market dying shortly after, so we haven’t gotten anywhere near as much use out of them as we wanted. Just put the lot up for sale actually.

I own 12 Battleaxes. I do bass music shows. I would believe the SPL’s.

You are correct that there’s little to no published research data regarding effects of VLF on hearing. Obviously there will be a threshold where those frequencies will cause physical damage, but IMO that’s likely far beyond what we experience with dance music.

“Doing damage” or “don’t know for sure”. You can’t have it both ways. I’ve been regularly subjecting myself to 123+ dB-C for nearly 30 years now. No loss of hearing in that range from what I can tell. Astronauts are subjected to 150+ dB in the 10-30Hz range with no recorded long-term damage

Classical music is a good example.

From what I can tell, VLF doesn’t damage hearing, so I look at dB-A to reference listening to music. I look at dB-C/ dB-Z for noise abatement/ soundproofing purposes and I can also use it to tell if the music was produced for performance vs Spotify ;)

Anyway, I think my original point was that music with a 6dB crest factor played at 101 dBA Slow is likely worse than music with an 18dB crest factor played at 90 dBA Slow.

Long story short, LEQ is an inadequate measure when it comes to preventing long-term hearing damage. LAE is better, but best would be to find a way to combine LEQ, LAE, and LAFmax to provide a better representation of the threat level.

Absolutely not. I think there isn’t enough research that quantifies the differences between steady state and sounds with various crest factors when it comes to long-term damage. FWIW industrial noise often has a much higher crest factor than most music. That being said, yes, transients matter.

I think transients can have a negative effect, but considering most stages get run 98-101 dB-A Slow, and the safe period before potential damage ranges from an hour to minutes, I think it’s safe to say that overall levels play an important role in long-term hearing damage.