Generally speaking, if you've got a reasonably matched amp and speakers, playing a commercially mastered CD/DVD is safe at listening levels. But what about audience recordings that may or may not be mastered well? More specifically, what about recordings made with malfunctioning gear?
I had one mic of a pair go bad during a summer festival. Unexplainably, the pair worked well early in the week, and also again at a show after the festival. During the main festival performances, though, many of the recordings had a noticeable noise occur. I can post a sample if there's interest.
My main concern is that my subwoofer driver seemed to be responding oddly during playback of these recordings. Instead of a driver cone typically moving in/out, it kind of moved side to side. Even after trying to nuke the low frequencies of the bad channel, I wasn't able to get rid of whatever was making the sound and causing the cone to move erratically. I pm'd page back and forth hoping that iZotope Ozone could do what my software couldn't (Wave Editor). He found that the offending frequencies weren't just in the low end, and we weren't really able to effectively strip out the crap.
My sub has since died (2 years after these recordings were made), and I don't know if the sub was in the process of failing or if the recordings were stressing the gear while I listened to them. I did have the sub exhibit some of the same behavior while playing a specific track on a commercial CD.
I've pretty much given up on salvaging any of those recordings, but if I get a new sub, I don't want to possibly harm it by playing them through my new gear. Or distribute them to anyone else. Any thoughts or experiences from TS?