Another factor (probably not a big one) is that music itself has been getting louder and louder over the years. Songs get more and more compressed every year in order to sound louder coming out of small speakers. Those ultra-compressed waves mean less dynamic range and they're literally more fatiguing on your ears over time. So if your hockey arena PA is pumping out more and more of those super-loud modern tunes (and cranking the gain on the relatively lower volume tunes from previous decades to match the level) over the course of a night, it might be contributing to that "ugh this is unpleasantly loud" experience.
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