First of all - thanks for the replies. I am glad I am not alone on this one as I thought I must be the only guy in an airliner that prefers not to have the inside of my brain rattled by exploding voices! I prefer to protect my hearing although I am sure that I have lost some over the last few thousand hours though.
It is just that the speaker is really annoying but I hate to harp on the other guys about it as particualry the deaf guys seem to get the hackles up when you ask them politely for the 373rd time to try to bring it back down to the 130Db range.
I tried at one point shooter's earplugs (more clay than anything else it seemed) under my headset. That did absolutely nothing for to block this atomic energy beam of sound pouring across the cockpit. I just throught that there must be something to stop the sound in that range.
My airline only require an earpiece until 18K and then it is usually unfortunalely a full wall of sound. Fortunately most of my flying is over the deep briny and so that cuts down on it a bit.
Waiting for the day that we are CPDLC everywhere we go expect for arrival and departure
