A maximum volume limit of 85 decibels may soon be imposed on DAPs sold in Europe according to the BBC. However, users will be able to override the setting to bump it up to 100 decibels.

Apparently, people are having hearing problems because they are turning up the volume too high in traffic to drown out the noise and some players go up to 120 decibels - the equivalent of a jet engine going off.

Well to be honest, I do hear music playing very loudly when I'm commuting - loud enough through their earphones/headphones as if they're being played on a small speaker. Those people should really try using headphones or if that's too "ugly" then they should use canal (in-ear) earphones. They really cancel out the noise.

With my old pre-packaged earphones, I had to turn the volume up to 15/40 (38%) but now I only need to set them to 7/40 (18%).

And if you don't think you'll like the feeling of having things further down your ear hole - it really doesn't feel that bad. Of course, you just can't eavesdrop on conversations any more =P

Also, the BBC should correct the headline from "MP3 Players" to "DAP (Digital Audio Player)" because these days, music players no longer only player MP3. Even iPods can play AAC audio files now while other players support an even wider range of formats such as FLAC or APE lossless files.

In the old days when these digital music players first came out at insane prices for 32MB of memory or so instead of the GB versions these days, they really were just MP3 players, though.