Re: " live music necessitates earplugs"
Not so - I've been to several gigs in the past couple of years where the volume has been quite acceptable (something I'm personally conscious of since developing mild tinnitus from too many loud gigs in my yoof!). Of course it depends who you go and see, but my experience suggests plenty of the shall-we-say more mature artists seem to be preferring quality over volume in their live performances.
I think it also comes down to the monitoring used by the performers: in-ears allow the overall onstage volume to be much lower, meaning the front-of-house system has a lot less to compete with.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
