Recommendations for the best headphones with equalization after severe acoustic injury

My hearing loss came about gradually and finally got to the point that I hated to listen to my stereo. The music sounded two dimensional, lacked high frequencies and the bass was muddy. It sounded like I had cotton in my ears. I also have worse hearing in my left ear than my right ear so the soundstage was completely out of whack.

Hearing aids made a huge improvement. My audiologist was able to fine tune them to where the sound was close to the way I remembered it. It wasn't perfect though. The high frequencies lacked sparkle and clarity and there wasn't any improvement in the bass.

I downloaded Equalizer Pro (equalizerpro.com) and the Peace Equalizer GUI. They were very beneficial in fine tuning the sound. One nice feature about Peace is that you can save different leveling adjustments. I have one for my headphones and another one for my speakers. You can also adjust the levels for each speaker, even for speakers in a surround system. It was a big help to center test tones in the center of the soundstage and to make musical instruments and voices appear in their proper location.

It's important to remember that hearing aids aren't intended to reproduce the full spectrum of sound. Their primary task is to make speech more understandable which means they focus on a relatively small band of frequencies. The equalizer helped tremendously to boost the volume in the frequencies that my hearing aids didn't address.

I hope this is beneficial to you. Both Equalizer Pro and Peace are free so there's no cost to give them a try.

If anyone is interested, check out my response on 3/10/23 to a question about tinnitus. It summarizes my experience over the past 6 months and may be informative. Classicalpiano

Can you give more specifics under which topic/headline your tinnitus response can be found? Not easy to do without more info and I’d love to read it as I have a band mate who’s suffering from pretty severe tinnitus. Thanks!

I’ll just also add, I have some tinnitus and did some research and this seems to help and only costs $5/month so I’d think is well worth a try.  FWIW…
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006OI33QU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I hate to say start with a google search, but it's a starting point for tinnitus and hearing loss. Reliable sites online for me for hearing info would include mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, NIH, and original published articles in reviewable journals. Best to avoid anything that is an ad or sounds to good to be true. I tried Magnesium, Zinc, CVS inner ear plus - 6-8 weeks and no help. Some hearing aides help with tinnitus. **My best suggestion is see a good ENT specialist and a couple audiologists for their opinions after taking a hearing test**. Problem is hearing loss and tinnitus often come from the death of hair cells in the cochlea, and so the signals of hearing cannot be passed to the otic nerve and to the brain. In essence, hearing loss and tinnitus are very complex issues with limited treatments. I did find that listening to music or playing piano for 20 minutes daily helped to retrain my brain to interpret some lost signals. I even tried high end headphone listening, but I prefer speakers, and the headphone experience did not work well enough for me. You might try headphones though, but be careful of listening at low-mid volumes only. I have not tried counseling, but that is another avenue. Each person's experience is unique. I hope this helps you and your friend.

First, I’m SO SORRY to for your hearing loss as a fellow audiophile.  If I was in your situation I’d ramp up a good headphone system with an equalizer.  As someone who has some experience with headphones, I’d recommend Hifiman HE1000SE open-back planar headphones, a Quicksilver tubed headphone amp, and a Schiit Loki Max equalizer.  What I like about the Loki, in addition to its quality, is that it has a remote so you can easily adjust specific frequencies on the fly to meet your individual hearing needs from song to song.  Just one suggestion FWIW, and best of luck in finding a workable solution.