Every time i play a game for the first time i have to immediately turn the volume down to like 10 percent. Does anyone play games at 100% volume? Are games being made to accommodate people who are hard of hearing? Why does the game need to be so deafeningly loud what the fuck.
Decent headphones are usually really quiet compared to cheap ones at the same source level. My akgs had to be near 100 to be at a normal volume. So the max volume has to be loud.
It used to be most people would be using computer speakers with their own volume control on them, so it made sense to default to max volume to drown out any electronic noise in the signal chain. The practice of defaulting to max stuck around even after this wasn't the case, out of habit.
Games have recently started to default to reasonable volumes, because everyone directly plugs headphones into their PC now.
Which is really annoying when you want to use them in any kind of noisy environment. Luckily the HD280 can handle a bit of volume (one glorious day I'll get a pair of HD600s or 650s.)