Quote Originally Posted by dodgyedgy
i also wonder if the human ear can get tired as in a temporary threshold shift whether it would be worth investigating how to overcome this shift.

Also how long does it take to recover the ear? how long does it take for the ear to reduce in effectiveness to certain frequencies...

psycho acoustics... etc etc, big field, lotsa scientists not sure i can handle it.
i've read that the human ear does have something like a trim that is automatically turned down whenever we hear something really loud. not sure what time scale it operates under, but they do say that hard panning of really loud parts (like kick drums) is a no-no because when using headphones, the quiet on one side can confuse you and make both ears go into high gain mode, then the loud part on the other side blasts you because your ears should be in low gain mode. hearing damage can result.

another interesting but probably useless tidbit - the distance between our ears and shoulders is said to play a part in why we hear best betweeen 1 and 3khz. those frequencies are apparently amplified by bouncing off our shoulders on the way to our ears. also, the human voice lies in this range, so it seems natural from an evolution standpoint that we hear each other better than we hear other sounds. great for things like coordinating an attack on a heard of mammoths. but i digress....