I spent my life as a professional Musician/Teacher. From the time I was twelve (Marching Bands/School Bands) to as a working Musician (Orchestras, Brass Quintets and R&B/Top 40 Bands, starting about age sixteen) I tried protect my hearing, which was MUCH tougher to do in clubs than in amphitheaters/Concert Halls. The monitor situations in amphitheaters aren't as "Hi-Fi heaven" as most folks would assume, but in general the space between the individual Musicians was greater and that tended to favor random chance in terms of your being able to hear yourself if you played an acoustic instrument (potentially amplified, but not very much unless YOU paid the sound guy.....lol) or were a singer. All that is by way of explanation for what I've been VERY interested to observe since I retired from playing/teaching about seven years ago. I was briefly bothered by Tinnitus in 2010-2015 and it turned out to be a side effect of an anti-peripheral Neuropathy medication. I had to dial those doses back and I haven't had a problem since.
But here's what I'd like to share: My hearing self tests out to being better NOW (not quite 18K, I can still hear a flyback transformer on the rare occasions I run across them) than it was when I was playing three to six nights a week. It wasn't hearing LOSS. It was psychological DESENSITIZATION. I don't play my gear (the main system features a boatload of multi-Carver and Sunfire Amps fed into proprietary custom Subs and a pair of Carver Amazing Plats Mk. III's) anywhere NEARLY as loudly as I used to when I was younger. Part of it I attribute to the increases of Dynamic Range in the Blu-Ray format. I knocked the shutters off the outside of my listening room, when I played "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" a while back. At THAT point, I decided "reality" was as close to having arrived as I should ever want. The subs are SVS/Hsu inspired enclosures with 4 15" D2 Stereo Integrity Drivers from the "heyday" of Car Subwoofage. So here's the punch line: I just don't turn it up as much anymore. There are several reasons. First, knowing it's THERE and not having to worry about its BEING THERE tends to extinguish any OCD tendencies (I'm not just a client, I'm the President) about "did it REALLY do what I thought I heard it do?". (Either positively or negatively valued.) The second thing is having not been in a live (often amplified) environment most of the time has made everything ELSE seem louder. (And easier to perceive at lower levels.) We are the LEAST (while still being the most important) objectively calibrated evaluation tool in the equation. I know I have just a BIT of loss in my left ear. (Thanks, idjit jukebox hero Drummer, RIP....I hope you eventually discovered that watching Animal on the Muppets was NOT the same thing as trying to BE "Animal" from the Muppets in real life. The only person who couldn't hear you was YOU....very sad....) It's because "Horn sections" in Club Bands almost always wind up in front of the keyboard player (I carbon date back to dual stacked Leslies and B3's) or in front of the Drummer. Loud's good, just like spicy food's good. But our sensory wetware is adaptive (and self-protecting) and the transmission/delivery infrastructure decidedly (and increasingly) delicate. I have to do the same thing with food. One GOOD but reasonable amount of something doesn't hurt anything. I just can't kill a whole bag of Tortilla chips or a pint of Ice Cream anymore. Look after whatcha still have.....(off soapbox.....) All that said, the "Fi" always matters.