Once again I stumbled over an article that warned every sound-professional (and DJ) about the dangers of catching a Tinnitus at the club. While the article is pretty profound and covered all relevancies towards ear-protection, the "truth" was only captured closely but not entirely. We need to know one very important thing: Tinnitus is mainly a neurological condition, not alone dependent on loud volumes at long listening periods. It's basically comparable to phantom-pain. It works like this: If you are performing or clubbing with a nervous attitude (let's say you are highly stressed by the event or private life) then the volume will add stress to your neurological system and THATs the moment you can get it. There is simply a threshold for stress. So, trying to relax before / at the performance / the club-night will highly reduce the probability of a tinnitus event. Also important: Clubbers, who are enjoying their party, high as a kite on drugs or alcohol will rarely experience a chronical tinnitus due to their relaxed neurological system (= parasympathicus nerve-system firing up). This was all quite well studied by Prof. Dr. Eckhard Hoffmann of the University of Aalen / Ulm. He claims that the most usual cause for hearling loss is the growing use of explosives (on new years eve etc.) and not night-clubbing. Even more interesting: In a comparison of 1500 "home-boys" vs. "clubbers" the clubbers in average had the better sense of hearing! So there was a correlation of an hedonistic lifestyle to having LESS tinnitus or hearing loss due to a trained (= exercised) ear. Dig that - Sure, it still makes sense to put down those monitors IF you feel stressed by the volume. But I consider this a must for a professional anyway. Despite of what I claim here, Tinnitus is quite often experienced in a result of stress alone without the event of loud levels of music or noise. So my conclusio is: YES, take care of excessive levels as the article by the fantastic people at dj-techtools explains, but first: Relax if you wanna do it. 

SOURCES:

Phantom percepts: Tinnitus and pain as persisting aversive memory networks

Hoffrnann, E. (2001): Sind gesetzliche Regelungen zur Schallpegelbegrenzung bei Konzertveranstaltungen und für Discotheken notwendig?

Bildungswerk d. Verbands Deutscher Tonmeister (Hrsg.) Bericht der Tonmeistertagung (21.) Hannover 2000. K. G. Saur. München, S. 533 -547

Hoffmann, E. (1997): Hörfähigkeit und Hörschäden unger Erwachsener unter Berücksichtigung der Lärmbelastung. Median, Heidelberg

"LAUTE MUSIK: Kein Grund für Hörschäden ?"

http://web.tiscali.it/musicculturclub/guest/lautemusik.htm