Ear patients and Audio

[MrSoul4470]

Being an audio freak with ears that suck isn't exactly funny. I've been suffering from tinnitus for decades and I have permament ear pressure and clogged ears since 2 years ago, starting with a simple flu. Yesterday I got tubes in my ear drums. I'm kind-of bleeding from my ears and my hearing is pretty damn bad right now. I wonder how it is for others who have ear problems too. I usually know in the morning when I wake up if it will be a "good ears" day or a "bad ears" day. Mostly I have "bad ears" days. It sucks, it's depressing and devastating. People usually don't understand, because I look okay and you don't see how I suffer. I also heard people saying things like "Be happy it's not your eyes!". I can't help it, but it makes me clench my fists. How do other people handle their bad ears situation? How does it feel, especially because good ears are so important for this hobby?

 

[ErVikingo]

Get well soon! I had an accident (as a child) which perforated the drum on one ear. Must have healed as I had no issues for decades. In my 50's tinnitus took over (I calculate it at 7000-7700 hz); it was pretty much centered (same level both ears). Now nearing 60, I had sudden sensorineural hearing loss on my left ear which dropped some frequencies approximately 80% (thank God for my ENT uncle who told me to take steroids right away; alternatively the loss could have been worse). Along with the drop in response, the tinnitus is now biased towards the left ear.

Nothing I can do, except if that tinnitus treatment posted here by @amirm actually works. I am researching it.

 

[MrSoul4470]

Thank you for your get well wishes! That's very kind of you. How did you get that perforated ear drum back then? I hope you didn't stick a pencil or so in your ear. That sounds painful and of course something like that can serverly damage or even destroy the structures of the middle ear. Not funny at all. My tinnitus is around 10.5 or 11kHz. Pretty high, but at least it reminds me of what high frequencies sound like. Tinnitus sucks and for me it is really connected to what condition my ear is in. Right now it's really loud and annoying. I didn't think it would be like that after that medical procedure and the procedure itself was pretty painful and took much longer than expected.
I once took cortisone (I guess that is a steroid) because of sudden hearing loss. My ears got better but I got bad edema in my eyes. Not sure which is better or worse.
I have to check what amirm says about tinnitus treatment. I'm always thankful for advice.

 

[ErVikingo]

Cheers!

Not a pencil, a cotton swab and fell on that side with it in my ear.................

I took a lot of cortisone that day. Took care of the ear, my back aches, sinus! but gave me hot flashes and nightmares. But no edema on my eyes,. Not complaining...

@amirm has been writing about the Lenire treatment.

One moment, please...

I sure hope it works. Tinnitus is quite distracting. I just try not to think of it.

 

[egellings]

I was drafted as an artilleryman in the Vietnam war. Those cannons are loud, really loud, and I have had tinnitus ever since. I couldn't both fire the howitzer and hold my ears at the same time, and a dropped earplug was forever lost in the inches of mud under foot. Replacements were not made available.

 

[Waxx]

I have way to sensitive ears, in that sense i hear a lot of sounds that i don't want to hear. I hear spiders and other insects creeping on the wall in my bedroom at night. I hear the neighbours all the time. It's mainly sensivity that is an issue, i hear sounds that are so low that most (read +99% of humanity) don't hear it. My hearing suffers also from losses due to age, but i hear way better than most of my ages, and i don't call those ears golden ears, it's a curse. They are annoying and distracting all the time except when i listen to music at a loud enough volume. I also can't stand very bright sounds, it litterally hurts my ears. It's a family thing btw, my mother has the same, and so has the oldest son of my brother..

 

[ErVikingo]

I was drafted as an artilleryman in the Vietnam war. Those cannons are loud, really loud, and I have had tinnitus ever since. I couldn't both fire the howitzer and hold my ears at the same time, and a dropped earplug was forever lost in the inches of mud under foot. Replacements were not made available.

Thanks you for your service, Sir

 

[ErVikingo]

I have way to sensitive ears, in that sense i hear a lot of sounds that i don't want to hear. I hear spiders and other insects creeping on the wall in my bedroom at night. I hear the neighbours all the time. It's mainly sensivity that is an issue, i hear sounds that are so low that most (read +99% of humanity) don't hear it. My hearing suffers also from losses due to age, but i hear way better than most of my ages, and i don't call those ears golden ears, it's a curse. They are annoying and distracting all the time except when i listen to music at a loud enough volume. I also can't stand very bright sounds, it litterally hurts my ears. It's a family thing btw, my mother has the same, and so has the oldest son of my brother..

That used to be me. Going to restaurants and having to consciously shut off conversations on other tables. I could hear the tubes on the old TV, the circuitry of my trinitron. I thought I was crazy.......

 

[Waxx]

That used to be me. Going to restaurants and having to consciously shut off conversations on other tables. I could hear the tubes on the old TV, the circuitry of my trinitron. I thought I was crazy.......

I did not watch tv in my youth (1980's and early 1990's, partly because of that. It's only when the newest generation crt's that i could watch tv (so from the late 90's) without getting crazy of the frequencie resonance of the system that was too low for my hearing. LCD's totally solved that issue.

 

[ozzy9832001]

I have Meniere's...so randomly I just get dizzy and have vertigo...and a selectivity to LF sounds that causes a weird vibration in my left ear.

 

[MattHooper]

Being an audio freak with ears that suck isn't exactly funny. I've been suffering from tinnitus for decades and I have permament ear pressure and clogged ears since 2 years ago, starting with a simple flu. Yesterday I got tubes in my ear drums. I'm kind-of bleeding from my ears and my hearing is pretty damn bad right now. I wonder how it is for others who have ear problems too. I usually know in the morning when I wake up if it will be a "good ears" day or a "bad ears" day. Mostly I have "bad ears" days. It sucks, it's depressing and devastating. People usually don't understand, because I look okay and you don't see how I suffer. I also heard people saying things like "Be happy it's not your eyes!". I can't help it, but it makes me clench my fists. How do other people handle their bad ears situation? How does it feel, especially because good ears are so important for this hobby?

Hi. First, I'm sorry for your hearing issues! (And everyone else's on this thread).

As to sharing experience with being an audiophile and "ear issues" I'm in that club. And I know what it's like to have devastating ear issues, so I empathize.

I developed pretty bad Tinnitus in the 90's while playing in a band. (And I can point to particular instances which I'm sure contributed, e.g. a monitor placed by the soundman at my ear level for my keyboards, with the level left way too high, so the first chord I hit almost knocked me off my feet in pain).

On the bright side, this got me wearing ear protection in loud scenarios pretty early in life, which has doubtless contributed to the fact audiograms show I have excellent hearing for my age. But, the tinnitus can really be a bugger. Most of the time it's not a bother, and often is masked when listening to music. But when it gets bad, I get "reactive" tinnitus and the ringing will ride on top of whatever I'm listening too. Makes listening to music kind of useless. Usually lasts for a day or a few, until I'm back to normal.

Much harder to deal with has been hyperacusis - an elevated sensitivity to sound. I developed it around 2000 or so. When it's bad, it's life-altering. Sound becomes exaggerated, harsh and painful. Just trying to put dishes away in the kitchen is torture. Even turning the page of a magazine can be annoying. Fortunately it comes and goes and most of the time I don't suffer from the condition. (Helpful because I work in post production sound!). But several years ago (pre pandemic) an air show with low flying fighter jets overhead had a massive impact on bringing out the hyperacusis. It got so bad that all sound was intolerable, even someone talking to me, even my own voice hurt my ears, even chewing caused wild distortion in my hearing. That finally got me to get treatment for the condition (wearing in-ear devices that produced calming white noise, re-training the nervous system). It worked very well and my hearing is more robust in the face of loud sounds than it has been in decades. My wife isn't so happy, because now I listen to music loud enough to bother her.

The upshot is that despite having sometimes super loud Tinnitus, and hyperacusis, while it has affected my audio listening hobby occaisionally, mostly it's still allowed me to enjoy audio. And when either condition flaired up, I actually found that mostly ignoring it and proceeding on as normal worked out best. It would go away more quickly than if I fussed about it and tried to protect my ears.

 

[ErVikingo]

I have Meniere's...so randomly I just get dizzy and have vertigo...and a selectivity to LF sounds that causes a weird vibration in my left ear.

I mentioned to the ENT that sometimes I could hear a strange noise; sometimes like a whoosh sound and other times like someone tapping a microphone. His opinion was that i was hearing blood flowing in my head; a type of tinnitus. It happened some time after I suffered a hard impact to my face.

Is that the weird vibration you are experiencing?

 

[ozzy9832001]

I mentioned to the ENT that sometimes I could hear a strange noise; sometimes like a whoosh sound and other times like someone tapping a microphone. His opinion was that i was hearing blood flowing in my head; a type of tinnitus. It happened some time after I suffered a hard impact to my face.

Is that the weird vibration you are experiencing?

Yeah sort of. My voice does it too. Creates this weird vibration-y pressure. Used to be very distracting but now I just don't talk very loud and it doesn't bother me. Sometimes if I turn my head I can hear like a popping noise.

Been to an ENT and had a VRM (I believe is the test name) and MRI and nothing shows abnormally, they just know there is an issue with my balance because of the way my eyes were responding to certain tests. After all the tests were done, the only conclusion they could draw was that it was Meniere's and since it only affects 1 ear, it seemed to be the best fit.

Most days it's fine and tolerable, but if I have a flare up I will have dizzy spells and all for months.

 

[prerich]

I'm sorry to hear about these disabilities (pun not intended). However, I'm glad because I suffer from the same things, Tinnitus, and the ability to hear a bug crawling on a wall or floor - I'm glad I hired Future (Terminix was no good). We had outside bugs getting into our 100 year old home. We sealed some cracks and they spray once every 3 months outside...no more bugs (main source was an oak tree....It's Florida).

I still enjoy listening to music, I've directed choirs, I can easily pick out parts (soprano, alto, tenor), guess chords by ear (I wonder am I filling in what I'm missing), I was also a conga player. When you think about this, no matter how well it measures - it could be perfect, our ears will mess it up. I believe the brain has a way of filling in when we listen to familiar pieces of music, even guessing what should come next in a passage. When something different comes along - I wonder do we listen more intensely? To me measuring only tells me the gear is not broken, but my ears and everyone else's will deliver only what they're capable of.

 

[DRMLFL]

Hey @MrSoul4470, I hope you are doing fine so far. So far, there is no "cure" for tinnitus because the topic is still not clear to audiologists/ENTs etc.
You got cortisone because of your sudden hearing loss (Hörsturz), it's a known therapy for this kind of medical situation which can help the hearing sensation to recover. There is no specific term in English but I would really translate it as hearing shute or hearing stubborn, it can happen from one moment to the next and you can compare it to an heart attack of your ears. I really don't want to bother you but somebody should inform you that this condition could happen again one day. There is "obviously" something with your hearing ability (I cannot make long distance diagnosis) but I want to inform people in this forum to be more aware of the hearing sensation. I assume you already visited an ENT for a hearing measurement, if not I would recommend you to do this within the next few weeks. Perhaps you should get comfortable with the idea of wearing hearing aids in the future. At least, get some information about it. If you want you can ask me a few things, I'm a hearing care professional myself.
Maybe they could help you to restore some of your life quality.

I wish you all the best!

 

[Joe Smith]

My very faint tinnitus got noticeably worse in early December, right at my 65th birthday. Going in this week to an ear specialist to evaluate, but I expect it's just the normal type of aging tinnitus. It mostly bothers me at night when falling asleep, some nights I need to use louder white noise in the room.

I can still hear to about 12,500 hz and my right ear is just a little less sensitive than my left, which is where things had been, so at least there is no dramatic change in my hearing. I plan to be more cautious about mowing and using the snowblower now. Most of my music listening is at quiet to medium volume levels.

There are some interesting new treatments that are out there, the Neosensory Duo device would probably be what I'd try first if this continues to bother me ($250 a month, two month minimum, or you can own it outright after four payments - uses a combination of tones and wrist haptics to desensitize your brain/auditory cells to the "internal" sounds).

 

[DRMLFL]

My very faint tinnitus got noticeably worse in early December, right at my 65th birthday. Going in this week to an ear specialist to evaluate, but I expect it's just the normal type of aging tinnitus. It mostly bothers me at night when falling asleep, some nights I need to use louder white noise in the room.

I can still hear to about 12,500 hz and my right ear is just a little less sensitive than my left, which is where things had been, so at least there is no dramatic change in my hearing. I plan to be more cautious about mowing and using the snowblower now. Most of my music listening is at quiet to medium volume levels.

There are some interesting new treatments that are out there, the Neosensory Duo device would probably be what I'd try first if this continues to bother me ($250 a month, two month minimum, or you can own it outright after four payments - uses a combination of tones and wrist haptics to desensitize your brain/auditory cells to the "internal" sounds).

You have excellent ears if you can hear tones at +12kHz. I can reassure you, there is no "normal" type of aging tinnitus, this is something that doctors and society (or should I say the industry?) teaches us and they keep repeating this story like a broken record. Normally, we shouldn't suffer from hearing loss, in many cases it is the noise exposure which leads to this condition. From time to time it is inheditery. So many professions are dangerous for our ears and I cannot emphasise enough the importance of the hearing sense. I hope you find peace very soon and get a comfortable sleep.

All the best to you!

 

[sgent]

Meniere's disease hit me about 5 years ago, and I have since lost all hearing in my left ear. My right ear is still good, but I cannot hear stereo or directional sound, everything sounds like it is coming from the same place. A cochlear implant would help but no coverage until I'm deaf in both ears, and self pay is astronomical (local hospital wanted 70k).

 

[holdingpants01]

I'm fine now, but I had sudden hearing loss about 5 or 6 times few years ago, every 3 months. Steroids helped every time, but I was left with diabetes after that. Anyway one time I had a symptom that made all the tinnitus and hearing loss seem like not the worst thing, it was diplacusis dysharmonica. I was hearing part of the spectrum in one ear higher in pitch than the other. Imagine detuning right hand part of the piano 1.5 semitones up and only on one side. It was traumatic to even hear a voice, sounded robotic and with some kind of a digital filter, but music sounded like an absolute horror. Worst 2 weeks of my life, good thing I found that it's even real and that it wasn't my mind playing tricks on me. I'm a sound engineer btw so it would be hard to even function with it, but it went away and I'm still working in this field

 

[DSJR]

I'd suffered severe hearing losses due to infection, on one occasion going deaf for two days as my ear canals totally closed up and another when my left ear had awful bass resonances making driving difficult (I now have a slight bass loss in the left ear in addition to what's happening further up) and I maintain this was the roots of more recent happenings with my hearing

I came by a set of Harbeth SHL5's back in 2016 and to me and in this room, they sound dull as ditchwater and *nothing* like they do in a friend's dem room which has a lively acoustic. I put it down to the room and then after discovering this place, the directivity of the speaker again, in this overdamped room... I all but stopped listening to music on this system as I couldn't sell the speakers for various sentimental reasons, but bit by bit, my wife struggled to get my attention (not the usual male selective deafness - honest ) while I was engrossed on this laptop (ASR most likely...). We replaced our ancient telly for a modern one which came with a slab-like 'sound base' and I spent hours trying to find one of the built-in eq profiles to suit and couldn't although my wife and son were happy with the 'tone' and the final straw two years ago was when our son spoke directly to me and I blanked him without realising it which upset him. I was dragged all but kicking and screaming to an Audiologist appointment to be told I had quite bad hf hearing loss and after a more thorough test including bone conduction, I was prescribed hearing aids. For someone who'd spent his entire working life demming, setting up, servicing and installing audio gear, it was a real kick in the ego frankly

To bring it up to date, I changed the 'aids for a set with Bluetooth which has been a godsend for various non critical audio tasks, I replaced our landline phone for one with better stronger volume and fidelity (a model for 'seniors' FFS!) and as I can adjust the aid's level, the Harbeths and the telly now sound fine and I can enjoy music and reproduced speech again!!!

Interestingly, as my regular headphones were cumbersome and wearing out with no parts now (HD265s), I started with ear bud types. My wife's a penny-pincher non-audiophile and really rated the very cheap Betron BS10 buds which are solid and around £13 on Amazon. These may be too toppy for peeps with good ears, but the excellent review of the 7Hz Zero got me buying a pair and really liking them as they have a touch more 'body' and don't 'hash up' when the music gets seriously busy. This type of earpiece seems to work well with my depleted hearing as the sound is injected straight into the ear canal (volume of Windows 10 via an Apple US spec dongle is between 14 and 24 depending on source so I'd suggest not loud). Following comments about the Tanchim One's (thirty one quid on Amazon UK without mic or any other add-on) I thought the Zero 2 with slightly less hf and a tad more low bass might actually be better so I have a set awaiting collection.

So yeah, our hearing is PRECIOUS and it's a depressing pain in the a*se when it fails. I can live with a nice stereo currently and still hear differences in speakers at least, although any form of hyped-up tone in the presence region (Dynaudio's top passive models especially when Naim driven and the godawful LS3/5A of ANY effin' vintage and make) gives me a headache now whatever I do as regards hearing aid levels or not even wearing them it seems.



Got to say I'm intrigued how and if I'd get on with waveguided tweeters and at some point I'd love to try some cheap JBL 305 or 306's as an introduction to see what a wide hf dispersion does for my ears...