Not a broken system / unpleasant evening

[BeeKay]

Maybe some can relate

This started Wednesday evening. I was listening to some music, could have been Carmel, on my main stereo. I had added a D70 Pro Sabre a couple of days before, was a happy camper with what I had listened to so far. Trouble started slowly. Clean singing voices suddenly showed some very(!) light distortion. Just a tiny bit. Enough to get paranoid. I listened into this passages again more focused and it happened again. First reflex was that new Topping is broken! And the distorted passages became more. Bass was really awkward, the top end likewise, everything turned into a broken old radio by the minute.
I started ripping the system apart, even changing interconnects. Rebooting the Roon server in the end (what a silly idea).
After things remained screwed I checked against the phone, Apple Music and decent IEMs. Guess what, same shite. So the reason - my hearing - became unpleasantly obvious.
GP in the morning, hearing specialist next. Couldn’t find any visible reason, so the diagnosis was a sudden partial hearing loss. Doc said these episodes use to sort themselves within three days. No medication or other treatment needed. Well, great.
I do regain my frequency spectrum somewhat slowly, but still miss quality in the 7kHz+ region. Hope this recovery will continue.
Else I could be selling stuff here soon …

Message might be - check against headphones prior to dismantling the entire stereo

 

[JeremyFife]

Sorry to read this, sounds tough to deal with. Hopefully your hearing recovers fully, fast. All the best

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

Sorry to hear it. I know the feeling. When I was about 30 I got a watch that had belonged to my grandfather who had died recently. I wound it and held it up to my ear. I couldn't hear it tick. It's been all down hill since then.

 

[DVDdoug]

Sorry to hear that. I read about that happening to someone else. There was no explanation, just a diagnosis with some fancy medical term than means "sudden hearing loss". His case may have been total, or nearly total, hearing loss. It was only in one ear and unfortunately he never recovered.

 

[BeeKay]

Thanks for the good wishes. Seems that helped.
Even higher frequencies are returning. State of paranoia though remains.

One benchmark to me was I could easily hear this glitch in an ECM recording in the 'Light Suite' by the Shinya Fukumori Trio. Each - very isolated - hit to the drum at the beginning of that piece is followed by a subtle white noise that is decaying well after the actual note. It was so obvious that it annoyed me. I can spot it again, but way more silent than before. Anyway, a good way to test myself.

 

[ozzy9832001]

I have an issue like that sometimes. Though for me it's only the low end. It's like my ears get stuffed up for some unknown reason (doctors don't "see" anything wrong and even the vibrations from my own voice can cause me discomfort. Could be stress, who knows.

When it's bad, it's bad. Have a separate EQ setting for when it happens to reduce the bass by about 5dB.