Tinnitus

Shortly after I got involved in higher-end, I had my hearing tested because I thought there were issues. Yup. High frequencies on the left ear ain't what they used to be.

Someone suggested to me that left-side weakness was due to us, in our younger years, driving with the window rolled down. Interesting...

Fast forward: Both my wife and I have tinnitus, and we both love to listen to the music. It never really bothers us *while* we're listening. We have Magnepans, and they need a bit of oomph to really shine, so the music tends to occlude the tinnitus.

But, lying in bed in the morning after, we can tell that the ears have been 'disturbed.' The same is true if we drive our Prius, or worse, our pickup truck with fairly loud pipes. After only 1/2 hour in the car, things are ringing.

In short, no, it doesn't bother us while listening, only in the "quiet room", as Roxy54 says. Perhaps we might be missing something in the quieter music passages, but it's difficult to determine what you're NOT hearing due to the raised noise floor inside the head.

~

Tinnitus is made worse by caffeine and alcohol... dammitall.

Timrhu mentioned driving with earplugs. Working past my aversion to most things Bose, I recently bought some Bose QuietComfort 20i noise-canceling headphones. They are, in a word, outstanding!

When driving (or on an airplane, or when the neighbors are mowing the lawn, etc...), you can plug these into an iPod, or else just activate them without listening to music.

The moment I hit the switch, I usually say, "Ahhhh...." You rarely realize how noisy the world is until you pop these in.

Over the long run, they can really save the ears, and I've noticed that engine noise and background sounds don't fire up the tinnitus nearly as badly.

Had I known that this technology would be so useful, I would have bought them much earlier.