Incredible improvement in sound quality

@macg19 My spouse is a PhD. who works with brains. Primarily through bio and neurofeedback. Our brains establish neuropathway patterns which can relate to for instance, epileptic seizures in children or yes, tinnitus. It is a brain neuropathway issue caused by any number of factors. That is why it is so hard to cure. In order to resolve it you need to alter the neuropathic pattern and establish a new pattern. Obviously she can explain it far better than I but it is important to understand that tinnitus is not an ear or “hearing” problem although we may want to believe that it is. I suffer from it also so no one should feel like the lone ranger here.

I’m 59 years old and have tried to brighten my system for 15 years with different changes.InDecember I got a comprehensive hearing and cognitive test and found my high frequencies were moderately too  severely damaged.  Ive been a singer in a band and a hunter all my life. I got a pair of Widex Moment 440’s and I  swear my system sounds like I am 21 again. Amazing.  Point is I waited way too long and enjoy my system way more   Protect what you have because it will eventually degrade with time

Good luck Willy-Tee

Great post. When I was in college in the '70s, and had a convenient, and free, health center, I went every semester to get my ears rinsed clean (my audiophilia started in high school, actually). The days afterward were always wonderful; everything was clearer, fresher, more immediate—and not just music. It often amazes me that so much attention is paid on this site to marginal improvements in sound quality that may or may not be obtained by changing power cords or interconnects or whatever, when so little is paid to room acoustics and basic ear health.

As for whether or not tinnitus is an "ear problem," from what I've read it is not well understood (the main reason there isn't yet an accepted treatment) but that it is believed to be largely a cognitive (brain) issue. After all, hearing may start at the ear, and may subjectively be localized at the ear, but it really happens in the mind, in consciousness. The same is true of sight. Many older people (my mother is my personal example) believe they need new glasses when the real problem is cognitive. Although my mother complained about not being able to read the newspaper, she could read her watch face without any trouble at all, even though the hands were tiny. What she blamed on her eyes was really a problem with her mind, as her subsequent mental decline made all to obvious.

@falconquest 

My spouse is a PhD. who works with brains.

Yet she still chose to marry you, well done. After being around brains all day I guess she wanted to leave that at work 😀

@falconquest Thanks for clarifying. There are multiple causes of tinnitus. I have a friend who developed hearing loss and tinnitus after taking an antidepressant - a known side effect.

Mine was caused by being too close to a speaker array in a night club in London in the late 90's. Mine is an ear problem. Some of the "hairs" in the cochlea are damaged. The tones I hear are around but not exactly the frequencies that are damaged. 

I'm aware of a possible cure, that involved a neuro-stimulator implanted near the vegas nerve that can be programmed to "cancel" the frequencies that you hear constantly. Unfortunately for me/us, that technology is being focused on sleep apnea - partially because there is already significant reimbursement for the procedure here in the US and of course because people don't die from tinnitus unless self-inflicted.