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Tinnitus, Listening Question


wvu80

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Beethoven composed much of his works being totally deaf. Those of us suffering from hearing impairments no-doubt can still appreciate ‘good’ from ‘bad’ sound reproduction and obviously prefer the former over the latter. And it is a true pleasure to introduce the uninitiated to excellent sound. You can see the wonder in their expressions and sit back and wait for the inevitable inquiries about the music, the systems and the acoustics. This is a marvelous hobby in many ways. 

 

Getting old sucks. By all means protect your sense of hearing. Methinx I can trace my troubles to jackhammers and concrete.

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I'm in the process of being fitted for hearing aids. After working in the GM plants all my life, I have hearing loss that starts to plunge after 10K, in both ears. I have Tinnitus also. My audiologist said that Tinnitus gets worse with more hearing loss.

  I can't hear my wife talking to me from the next room, but I can sure hear the difference between a Russian tube and a vintage tube in my system!

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On 12/12/2016 at 7:39 PM, MetropolisLakeOutfitters said:

Here's the problem with tinnitus.  When you have hearing loss, your brain more or less turns up the gain.  Think of tinnitus as amplifier feedback of sorts.  Basically when you have it, your hearing can be very sensitive due to this gain increase.  Material that seems fairly quiet to some can seem ridiculously loud.  When you get tinnitus it's typically due to a loss of a certain range of frequencies.  That doesn't mean that other frequencies are affected.  My hearing chart as shown below shows this.  I have hearing loss in the dip but as you can see, the upper frequencies are nearly perfect.  Add in some boosted gain and I have super sensitive hearing in that range.  With most setups I simply cannot stand the frequencies on the top end.  8 khz and on up better be buttery smooth with no distortion and preferably with a rolloff or else I'll be putting my plugs in.  What's weird is that somebody who has hearing loss due to general noise such as in a factory may be the opposite with hearing loss on the top end but without a dip like mine.  Such people tend to like the treble cranked and enjoy loud music.  Tinnitus due to shooting sports may not be the same though.  

 

 

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You’ve got it exactly right.  The hissing that’s heard with tinnitus is the sound of the audio section of your brain turning up the overall gain too high to try to compensate for the missing or overly low level of sound input at certain frequencies, even if the dip is over a relatively narrow part of your overall hearing range.  Who knew your brain could produce amplifier noise that you could hear?

 

I’ve got some tinnitus, due to wind noise while riding motorcycles, engine noise from working on Diesel locomotives, including using air tools, punch presses in a factory (those are really loud), and working on and around 300 megawatt steam turbines in a power plant.  Oh, and stadium rock concerts as well.  I wore ear protection from the mid-‘70s on, including wearing earplugs and earmuffs at the same time, so my low-level hearing is not bad, although many people around me often seem to mumble more than they used to.

 

Anyway, here’s a bit of good news:  tinnitus can be temporarily cured!  Since it results from the brain turning up the volume to try to help you hear, giving the brain a certain amount of sound can make it dial down the gain for a while.  This may not be effective for shooting-caused hearing loss, but for the more common loss of high frequencies, the simple solution is to supply your brain with some white noise.

 

You can buy white noise generators, but a bedside radio can do the same thing.  Just tune it between stations, which produces a high-frequency hiss.  This is where the cheap analog-tuning radios have the advantage over digitally-tuned ones that can’t be set between stations.  Luckily, you can get a perfectly suitable little clock radio for $10 or so.  Leave that on at low level overnight for a few nights, and you may find that the constant hiss you usually hear is quieter and less annoying.

 

If you stop listening to the white noise, your tinnitus will return after a few days, but you can work out a schedule that works for your particular situation, whether it be every night, or every other night, or whatever suits you best.

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On 1/20/2019 at 3:57 PM, Bosco-d-gama said:

Beethoven composed much of his works being totally deaf. Those of us suffering from hearing impairments no-doubt can still appreciate ‘good’ from ‘bad’ sound reproduction and obviously prefer the former over the latter. And it is a true pleasure to introduce the uninitiated to excellent sound. You can see the wonder in their expressions and sit back and wait for the inevitable inquiries about the music, the systems and the acoustics. This is a marvelous hobby in many ways. 

 

Getting old sucks. By all means protect your sense of hearing. Methinx I can trace my troubles to jackhammers and concrete.

In his later years, I doubt that Beethoven was able to distinguish "good" from "bad" sound, as he could hear essentially nothing at all.  Rather, he must have had an amazing "mind's ear" in which he could assemble musical sounds in his head and probably "hear" them from there.  His missteps were amazingly rare, e.g., in the Benedictus of the Missa Solemnis and an instrumental wind sequence in the development of the Ninth first movement.  

 

Most great orchestrators like Wagner, Mendelssohn, Berlioz, and even Mozart, had to have had that ability as there would have been few opportunities to hear their own music to do trial and error listening and writing.

 

Larry

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  • 3 years later...

In Germany we´ve have tinnitus pillows , called trigger sleeping

What problems does TriggerSleeping help with?
The following problems are signs of a functional disorder of the cervical spine, which can be prevented and treated in a supportive way by TriggerSleeping:

Tension (muscle tension)
Cervical spine syndrome (HWS syndrome)
Headaches (tension headaches)
Stiff neck with rotary vertigo (Vertigo)
Sleep problems (teeth grinding, snoring, apnea, trigeminal neuralgia)
Sleep disturbances and difficulty falling asleep with shortness of breath
Tinnitus (ringing in the ears)

 

Unfortunately I don´t know whether they are available in USA

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I have Tinnitus as well along with my disability from Uncle Sam.  Loud diesels and large caliber Army issue toys.  My ears ring for days with loud music.   Avoid headphones at all costs.  To me listening quality trumps loudness every time.  Although I CAN hear my wife saying, "turn it down". 

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  • 1 year later...
On 1/20/2019 at 9:47 PM, ryanbellb said:

Earplugs will help you to protect the tinnitus problem. So use earplugs and prevent tinnitus problem. 

I wish I followed this advice several years ago. Now I suffer from tinnitus :(

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I also have had tinnitus for about as long as I can remember, at least by about 10 years old when I became aware of it.  I was never exposed to any loud noises, and passed every hearing test, except that I was missing one particular frequency.  I lived in a very, very quiet place, I assumed, and still think maybe my brain was trying to put sound where sound didn't exist. these days going to try aural rehabilitation and see if that works for me,

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