Since I’ve chimed in a little bit about my own struggles with tinnitus I figure now is a good time for a little update.
It’s been two years since I even turned my two channel or home theatre system on.
Two years since I had a huge flareup of my tinnitus. It was very hard to sleep. And the worst part is that the tinnitus had become extremely reactive - if I even tried to listen quietly to a video or any music just on my iPhone speakers, it would set my ears ringing loud enough to make it hard to sleep at night.
The thing is, whenever I’ve dealt with flareups before through the past few decades I’ve been able to just move on with regular life, work, going out and about, etc. So that I could forget about it, and it would just go into the background and my brain would just habituate.
Unfortunately, four years of deterioration from another health condition has left me quite disabled, spending almost all my time lying down on the sofa in my listening room.
So there’s been a double whammy of the tinnitus no doubt being exacerbated by the system stress of this condition, while also preventing me from working or taking part in regular life to allow habituation. To be stuck in my listening room almost all day staring at my speakers without being able to even listen to music or watch a movie in my home theatre to pass the time has been…. challenging to say the least.
But this isn’t meant as a woe-is-me post. Everybody’s got their own stuff to deal with.
The above is just setting the scene for the following more positive report:
Lately I’ve noticed that I’ve been able to have a video or a music playing on my iPhone for much longer periods of time and also I would be playing music on my iPhone in the background while I do some activities, and it hasn’t been exacerbating my tinnitus. I took that as a good sign.
And just this week I decided to fire up my system and sit down for a very careful listen! I’m talking really quiet levels of playback, like 37-42db average.
And it went well! I could actually relax and enjoy what I was hearing. I started off very briefly the first day maybe about 10 minutes.
Then I expanded it to about 20 minutes and a little beyond for the last couple of days. My ears seem to be handling it ok. So I’m going to keep going with this, slowly nudging the volume up overtime carefully.
I have to say: I immediately felt my quality of life rise, just in being able to do this! It felt so incredibly nourishing. I was actually able to still enjoy the music even at those super soft levels. And I was also able to enjoy the audiophile stuff… the way my speakers just disappeared and cast this wide deep sound stage and just enjoying the magic act of imaging, all the little details in the instrumentation, recording, etc.
I had started this little experiment wondering if it was going to sound as good as I remembered, and boy did it ever. Certainly detail is a little bit more opaque at such low playback level levels (my CJ tube preamp is just a few notches above zero !), but I couldn’t believe how gorgeous the tonality of everything was.
The sound is lush, open, airy, vivid… and without even the remotest hint of coarseness, grain or etch. Just super relaxing for my ears, which is exactly what I need. All those years honing my system to my taste sure paid off.
I also worried that perhaps I might even have trouble sitting there and just listening to music. The reason is that having been stuck on the sofa interacting with the world through my phone the past several years (all voice dictated ) has basically supercharged my iPhone addiction and I can actually feel it frying my brain and attention span. (I’m taking steps to sometimes just leave my phone in another room.). But once the system was on, and the music was playing I was as seduced by the experience as ever and I just wanted to listen and listen all night (but I was careful to not go too far yet).
So to me, this is a hugely positive development, very hopeful, and an absolute upgrade in quality of life, even at this point.
Onwards and upwards!
(btw, I’ve also made some nice steps in the direction of recovery from my main health condition, which is very encouraging as well)
And sometimes when there are loud sounds or my allergies get bad. Still would be nice to have it treated. Mine is the type that is the frequencies I don't hear anymore, i.e. very high pitch sound.
