Anyone with tinnitus or hearing loss who is into "high-end" audio?


Over the last few years I have developed tinnitus and also have some hearing issues.  I am a long time music and audio fanatic.  Years ago I built my own Hafler amp.  Before that I had a great AR system.  Presently, I have, what I believe, is a pretty nice system in a dedicated listening room (about 60,000.00).  My question is if there are others of you out there in similar situations concerning your hearing issues as they relate to your love and reproduction of great sounding music?  What are your experiences? Have you found anything that helps and do you have any advice? I would venture to say that we all experience some degree of hearing loss, or hearing anomalies as we age...whether we realize it or not.  Thanks, Jim 
pfeiffer
Thanks to everyone for this informative and, frankly, somewhat reassuring thread.

Last summer, on a flight back to CA from Prague, I sat in front of a family with a continuously shrieking infant. The child must have been sick; a week after getting home, my wife and I came down with severe fevers and, in my case, an ear ache. Long story short: I suddenly lost almost all the hearing in my left ear.

My GP sent me to an ENT who "diagnosed" the condition as "sudden idiopathic hearing loss" (more a description than a diagnosis, in my opinion). Apparently, this strikes about 1 in 10,000 people annually, and--as "idiopathic" indicates--it has no known cause nor any known reliable treatment. There's high-dose steroids (e.g., prednisone) injected directly into the ear canal (no thanks!), and the experimental "hyperbaric oxygen" (risk, besides cost: bursting into flames; again, no thanks!), but otherwise, I was told not to expect any improvement.

However, my own impression was that there was congestion in my Eustachian tubes; sometimes, swallowing hard would partially clear the problem temporarily. Besides, I'd just had a severe congestive illness. Sorry, the ENT said; a hearing test through the bone showed the same results as through the ear canal, indicating cochlear nerve damage.

I'm happy to say that he was mostly wrong. After some months, the ear began to clear more frequently, and now, it's almost--not quite--back to normal. I don't think I'm deceiving myself because, when this was in crisis, I was adjusting the balance on my audio system far to the left to compensate; now, the balance is set almost back at center.

As for tinnitus, yes, there's some of that, too. I think most of us past 60 have some problem with tinnitus. It varies in intensity, as several here have noted, and one gets used to it.

What interests me primarily about all this, though, is something few have remarked on and that may in fact be sort of taboo among audiophiles: the importance of subjectivity in the experience of audio bliss. After all, if you want to convince someone else of the superiority of your system, or of this or that component or tweak, you have to appeal to "objective" facts. Your friend can't have a pain in your tooth, nor can he have your experience that grounds your enthusiasm (he...or she--but face it, the vast majority of us are hes, another subjective factor surely).

Age related hearing loss should wake us all up to this fundamental feature of human experience. We may want to validate our enthusiasms as objectively justified, but they rarely are. Objectively, few of us can hear, coming from our many thousands of dollars of audio equipment, what our children can hear from their iPods playing MP3s through earbuds.

I know this is depressing, and kind of heretical. But... 
had Tinnitus  long ago,,,not sure causes,,Stress? Loud radio listening?  Age? (I am 64, had it when i was like in my 50's for a  few months*),,,there is a chinese herb that seemed to work. But yeah, no car radio,,quiet time  in park, things like that. But like 4 yrs ago, when i worked as a  scaffold helper valero gave a surprise hearing test,,like i flunked the super high range,,,which all my coworkes laughed when i showed them by graph test results,,that i was *deaf*,,anyway,, no big deal..just the upper range of violins a  bit soft,,,
hope some of that helps ya
paul
Snakeoil buster all things\
Stereo
audiophile since 1970's
new orleans
I am 66 years old, I have no tinnitus issues but after a lifetime of noise exposure in industrial work environments my hearing tests indicate very significant hearing loss above 4k in both ears.

I have habitually used tone bypass in the past but I now crank up the treble. It helps a great deal. I have been told that hearing aids do not boost missing frequencies but instead indiscriminately simply making everything a lot louder.

 In the past when using firearms or near heavy (loud) equipment I always used both ear plugs and ear muffs at the same time. Evidently those precautions were not sufficient.


I’ve had tinnitus, worse in my left ear, for the past two years. Mine sounds like a constant hiss; a sink on full blast. It’s not super loud but as others have mentioned, stress, caffeine, lack of sleep all make it worse. I notice that I listen to music “through” the tinnitus; I always hear the tinnitus on top of the music, but when I am engaged in the music I am able to tune the tinnitus out.

I will say this: tinnitus can be extremely distressing at first, but I advise those in this initial phase of experiencing it to take heart that the brain is an amazing organ, and you too can adapt to it. I know it’s there, and it can bother me at times, but in the grand scheme of things it is quite tolerable. I remember a time when it felt like it never would be, and I wish someone had told me what it was like to reach the other side.
@zm 
Good advice. The initial phase can be crushing, but habituation is possible.

For those in the US, consider joining the American Tinnitus Association (ATA). They raise money through contributions from many sources to fund research. For about $40 you can join and get their quarterly magazine which describes the latest research and coping strategies. The UK has a similar organization, the BTA.