We're ushering in an entire generation of kids who are going to be suffering premature hearing loss / degradation.

i figured i'd bring you up to par on how you can potentially alleviate that particular reason . . . and you got all smart assy in response.

Heck, I don't even mix my music with my 'phones on... not if I don't have to, that is.

Tinnitus and hearing loss are also fairly common among veteran musicians and DJs, thanks to loud volume, with DJs especially due to having high volume in their headphones while mixing. The iPod itself shouldn't be anymore dangerous than any other device with headphones before or after it.

Writing on his website, Townshend said that excessive volume at the group's explosive 1960s concerts was not the cause. He blamed the earsplitting sounds emitted through studio headphones during years of recording.

He warned the users of iPod headphones: My intuition tells me there is terrible trouble ahead. The downside [to downloading] . . . may be that we use earphones at almost every stage of interaction with sound.�

In 2001, Fligor began a study to determine how loud -- and for how long -- you can safely listen to a portable music player through headphones. He found that the kind of headphones you use greatly affects the risk. "The closer to the eardrum, the higher the sound levels the system is capable of producing," Fligor says. On average, Fligor found that you can safely listen to over-the-ear headphones with a player set at level six (out of ten) for an hour a day. For most in-the-ear headphones, like the earbuds that come with most MP3 players, the acceptable time at that level is less -- around thirty minutes for some models before you've exceeded your safe daily dose.

Manufacturers of portable players recognize that their products are potentially hazardous -- Sony, for instance, includes a hearing-loss warning with all its players -- but they leave it to users to keep the volume at a safe level. Apple declined to specify how loud the iPod can go, but Fligor's preliminary findings indicate that the iPod is comparable to a Sony CD Walkman with earbuds, which can go as high as 130 decibels -- equivalent to a jackhammer. European iPods, in contrast, are capped at 100 decibels by law.

Young fans seem especially unaware of the risks associated with noise exposure. In 1999, Dr. Roland Eavey, Harvard Medical School professor of otolaryngology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, went to an R.E.M. show with his teenage daughter. "In the parking lot after, everyone was saying things like, 'Man, are your ears ringing?'" he says. "I suspected they didn't realize that they might be having trouble." Eavey conducted a study with the Harvard School of Public Health to determine how conscious concertgoers are that they might be damaging their hearing. Last year, Eavey's team posted a questionnaire on MTV's Web site. In three days, nearly 10,000 people (most under twenty-one) responded, answering twenty-eight questions about their attitudes toward issues including sexually transmitted diseases (fifty percent said it was "a very big problem"), alcohol/ drug use (forty-seven percent) and depression (forty-four percent). "Hearing loss was eight percent," Eavey says. "It was the last thing anybody's concerned about. But we asked later on in the survey, 'Have you ever had a hearing loss or ringing in your ears?' Two-thirds had."

Parental control setting for volume limit. Set the maximum volume allowed on the iPod and lock it with a combination. If the kids have a Shuffle, iTunes let you password lock the max volume level.

>http://support.apple.com/kb/TA38403