Hearing Damage Possible?

All it says is that by listening to lossy, perceptually encoded music, our ears -may- begin compensating for these distortions of the music by making adjustments that affect the way our nervous system perceives all sounds. 

I'm not a fan of lossy encoding schemes, but his paper seems like mostly unsubstantiated conjecture.  I wouldn't be too worried.

I'm not a doctor but I play one on the internet...

Also the more and more increasing rate of hearing damages with young people may not only originate from the high volume, but partly also from the data reduction employed in the musics they consume, because this is the first time in the history of evolution, that the human hearing becomes confronted with a quasi- intelligent technical opponent player, who similarly systematically cheats the hearing's compensation circuits and abuses them for his own purposes, like in nature the most disastrous and sick making viruses do with the human immune system.

...not a bad thesis concept, though...

kfr about nailed it on the head... Decent scratch, real study applied, then I'll look at it again. But hey, compressed music sucks for SQ, period, don't listen to it. :) I'd say that the human ear does more "tone" development in the birth process, ya know, when it has nothing to do but listen. I also apply this to a local shop ex-owner that is friends with the current, she was pregnant with one boy while she owned the store, apparently he can dance INCREDIBLY well. Now this could toss up for just coincidence and such, but I dunno, hearing beats for nine months, like it or not, I'd say would probably affect the development enough to help your body synch with them. My 2 cents. :)