I explained my condition in an email to my church a little while back, and was curious if anyone has ever requested an "unplugged service" (no amplifiers).

Just found out their decibel level in an email: 81-84 dB. They say that is lower than the average large-sized church. And that earplugs should cut it by half.

Thanked 'em, and said I'm good. Just need to keep healing. Now to check the level for light rail trains I take every weekend: 90 dB in the tunnel?

Ah well, thanks for reading.

I'm a professional audio engineer and technician. I'm truly an audio geek.

I think the level of dB's a person can tolerate is of personal taste.

When I had the iicp, a soft whisper brought me lots of pain. Now, I'm good around 125dB again, but the content might make aggravate and degrade my cognitive functioning - but I'm pleased to report that it's still improving.

You might like this little chart:

http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/loudness.html

And whomever you spoke to at your church is correct: 80dB is quite low for a service for a large church. But I do wonder who's measuring it, with what instruments and from what location: because each of those answers can affect the outcome of the measurement. But they're probably not too far off with their estimation (I hope.)

Edited to delete the measured dB at the church I volunteered at due to memory recall dysfunction.

They are nuts if they claim that 81 to 85 dB is less than the average large church. They may have peaks that hit 90 or 95 also. I have followed church sound levels for 20 years. I have my own sound meter to check sound levels.

Foam ear plugs can only reduce about 26 to 30 dB at most. I could not be in 80 to 85 dB even with the foam ear plugs. I finally had to stop attending services in the auditorium.

A big issue in most auditoriums is poor sound design. Echos can cause as much problem as volume. The trade offs between form (style) and substance (sound quality) can be immense.

I have a friend who is one of the foremost church sound engineers in the USA. He routinely has customers who demand setting sound levels far above his recommended levels. He has worked in most church auditoriums in the SF Bay Area and Northern Calif. He has designed system on both coasts. They will complain and he will show up and they turned things up too high.

You will be fighting an uphill battle with this. Get some sound canceling head phones (Bose type) is you can. Or, maybe the church will get a set to keep on hand for needs like yours.

What's your church's average? And what kind of music do they have there?

Below is a link to a company that makes high fidelity earplugs. They don't take off the high end at all like the foam ear plugs that I personally can't stand. These just reduce the entire sound and all of its frequencies in various increments of dB. The sound quality still sounds clear and even, just not as loud. I swear by them (I use the ER15's). They make custom plugs for a decent cost with various levels of dB reduction as well as consumer grade ones that still allow everything to sound very good, but at a comfortable level, cost-wise and hearing-wise.

http://www.etymotic.com/

And I found some ER20's on sale at Amazon right now:

http://www.amazon.com/ETYMOTIC-RESEA.../dp/B000CC1RPS

Thanks, guys. As low as $7.50 on Amazon. I'll give them a try.

FWIW,

Check out these active noise canceling head phones.

http://the-deep-discount.store.buy.c...221537657.html

I paid $17 with shipping, and they don't reduce noise at all.

Guess I need to stick with the foam ones for now.

Thanks for the tip, though.

Hopefully this Bowen Therapy will help.

I'm sorry to hear that they didn't help you.

Since they are high-fidelity ear plugs, they allow all sound frequencies ("noise") through, but just decrease the overall decibel level. I'm sorry if I misunderstood your original request/complaint and recommended these earplugs erroneously. Hang onto them in case you can use them once you're doing better.

If your church's band is using distortion there's nothing you can do to eliminate that and I've found that distortion will overwhelm my brain - it's a lot of frequencies to have to interpret cognitively. At least, this is what I've discovered for myself from listening to music over the last few months. Distortion is a very popular effect that is used with a LOT of music and it doesn't even have to be very obvious to the untrained ear to be there. I've discovered that listening to very "clean" and "dry" (no distortion and no effects, or very little) and very simple music taxes my brain the least. Over the last few months, I've been able to increase the complexity of music that I can enjoy. I'm still not able to listen to the music of my favorite band much at all (I avoid it like the plague most of the time because it drains all my energy quickly), because it's very complex, but I think in time, I'll be able to listen to it on a regular basis again someday.

I've actually thought a lot about this in the last couple of weeks. I recommend that you to slowly increase the kind of music you can listen to, rather than overwhelm yourself all at once. Listen to very simple and clean music for a few weeks only. Then increase the complexity of it gradually as you can. Kind of like the way people who are recovering from a concussion need to increase their activity levels. I actually think this method of listening to music might help people recovering from TBI to rehabilitate their neural pathways and make some connections there that were compromised.

I've read articles about the benefits of music-listening for people recovering from TBI.

Can you excuse yourself from the service space when the music is being played?