Hey Andrew,
I fully agree with you that some of what I wrote belongs in a private discussion… - thankfully it was initiated, soon after, and there is no more a need for the like of it, from me, here.
Thank you for your effort to make sure that those more technical aspects and their harmful implications for one’s hearing, were well aware of and understood (and, in my case, they are).
Theory aside (and that does not imply that I question the truth of any of it - no disagreement there), on a more ‘empirical’, factual and pragmatic level - my case is rather simple - I described everything in the most objective and accurate way I could, from specific sample tracks through file formats to the gear and its settings… - the way I attempted to listen to music through the Clear, that I received, is no different than my regular listening through other headphones in any way, neither in overall loudness level nor in a partial selective loudness level in the lower frequencies range (and, me being still me, with the same personal collection of music, preferences and ‘genres’) - the Clear clips extensively, and no other headphones I have ever used did… And, in the discussion here, in general, there seems to be an accepted to be true underlying assumption, that there is 100% correlation between the occurrence of clipping and excessive and harmful listening settings, under all circumstances, based on which the focus of the discussion shifts to a more abstract and generalized level, from the point of view of which my, and maybe others’s, listening settings is determined to be ‘wrong’ (= harmful as well as justifiably illegitimate when discussing the clipping)… It is crucial to again turn to actual experience no less than theory, while also examining whether the experience is compatible with what is entailed by the theory or not… - I do not listen with a sound loudness meter, I just listen to music… And my listening with the Clear is not any different than my listening with all other headphones that preceded it for decades (I am 50 years old and in the hobby from my early teens) - this damage to hearing, which repeatedly becomes the focus of the discussion whenever the clipping is brought up, is not only a potential future outcome, from the present point of reference of this discussion now (with the clipping implied to be not much else than a legitimate, maybe even a positive indicator for that pending harm) - it would have been my present condition already - my hearing would have been impaired long ago already, following that rationale, with its underlying assumption, me reporting clipping and equating the clipping with harmful (and therefore ‘illegitimate’) listening settings… We do not need the future when we have the past and the present… This whole ‘journey’ with the Clear, with the way the clipping is presented and justified, led me to have also my hearing tested, and it was found to be normal - not damaged in any way.
What is it that is logically entailed by that? - that I should avoid my regular listening settings because my hearing would be damaged (based on the generalized theoretical assumption that that would be the inevitable result of what my Clear’s clipping necessarily implies)? - obviously not.
I hope that this sharing makes the whole discussion complemented also by an experience-based ‘empirical data’ (even if the sample size is 1).
I do not fully understand what is the explanation for why the experience of those who replied to my post is different than mine (and quite a few others, it seems when browsing the web, though it might factually still be the minority) - I do not know - but, what I can know, for certain, is that the attempt to justify the Clear’s performance in my case, based on the generalization above, in the case of this specific Clear, this setup, and these specific ears and hearing of mine, is not applicable.
Thank you!
