Hi Bruno and all,
This has been a really interesting discussion, however, without an SPL meter and actually visiting your room, it's very difficult to determine what's going on. I threw out some of my own speculations as to what might be happening, and here's another one to "chew" on:
I do know that in our hearing system there is a muscle in the ear that attenuates hearing sensitivity when we are chewing food so we won't be deafened by the sound of our teeth grinding away on food. I once talked about this with Dr. Floyd Toole and I seem to recall him saying that our ears actually go into distortion when confronted with extremely loud sounds. I don't have Dr. Toole's book with me and I don't recall if he deals with this subject, however, I will email him and run this subject by him to see what he has to say.
In my own experience with loud sound or music, if I don't cover my ears, use ear plugs or get away from the very loud sound, what I subjectively experience is a kind of intolerable blurring and "distortion" if you will, of the music.
Regards,
Alan
