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Well, not per se. As the Americans say, "here is the deal": I had
never tried using Internet audio before. A caprice led me to attempt
this, for the first time, in sampling the Red Army Choir. After
searching Google, I clicked on a likely provider of online audio, and
when the link connected, the video/audio of the Red Army Choir singing
the Soviet National Anthem started *immediately* and automatically. I
had no chance to adjust the volume level before starting play, and
indeed, there was no volume control built into the player software of
the site. (I was later able to determine that there is a master volume
control, in the form of a completely unidentified slideable strip, in
the lower right corner of the Firefox browser, outside the site content
entirely.) I estimate that the volume was on the order of 150
decibels. (And no, this is NOT what I deserve for listening to the
Red Army Choir.) I was using a pair of earphones made for Walkman-type
use in the audio-out jack of the computer -- some Philips
"surround-sound" earphones (a description which exists largely as
advertising hyperbole), and I ripped out the plug from the jack very
quickly.

The problem is an apparent change in the audio quality of the
earphones, as used once again with the Walkman unit I had been
habitually using them with. I cannot say that there is any unambiguous
distortion in particular frequencies or in the audio as a whole, though
it seems to me that some frequencies (horns show this particularly) are
slightly scratchy. The quality of the audio seems, however, somehow
noticeably poorer. The balance of frequencies has changed, for the
worse. And these earphones, which had previously done a good job
filtering out background noise (e.g., traffic) seem much less good at
this now, even with the same music.

I am hoping that this is ear-damage (!) -- TEMPORARY ear-damage ONLY,
of course -- rather than damage to the earphones. I am not sure what
technical explanation, other than a rather vague "speaker blow-out" --
could be responsible for this, unless it is that one of the speakers
was damaged more in these frequencies than the other (though I would
expect the audio in question to have been mono, though perhaps not).

Mark Adkins