What was the material you had on? What amp were you using and how high up was the gain dial? Nice speakers by the way, I would like to know how the WF series compares to the Reference series and the Icon series. If you really want a beating, try that experiment with some Klipschorns.
It was good to see you had plugs in, too many people have too cavalier an attitude with respect to their ears. Many of the fellows I used work with didn't care to use ear plugs for whatever reason when they were supposed to, and when the hearing tests came back it really showed. When we compared results, I had the best hearing from all the charts I saw, with very good sensitivity to over 18 khz, and I always used ear plugs on the factory floor. Some of these other guys' hearing pretty much stopped at 10 khz, they were too reckless with their ears. I think that when the ear-bud generation has to take care of the old-timers, they may have worse hearing than the seniors in their care.