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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
listening99
172 posts
 
My best advice for working with tinnitus is watch your mental response to it and just let it be, get on with your life. Certainly, take precautions in loud environments, but don't let the new sound effect(s) push you around. Learn to let go of the idea that something big is happening. Make it a small thing. My symptoms began to appear within the last year, and you will find that there is evidence indicating that some of the tinnitus symptoms are impacted by the degree to which we keep checking in on it, worry about it, trying to get past it, etc. I go for hours and days without any awareness of my tinnitus. My music listening is barely impacted because I'm not attuning myself to my tinnitus. I'm attuned to the music.
s_carra
5 posts
 

Hi all, returning to the subject: has anyone had experience with the use of hearing aids to try and manage the tinnitus as well as the hearing loss (6-8k in my case)?

mathiasmingus
52 posts
 

I've just started looking at various forum comments about tinitus, and I am surprised at how little content I see on a topic for which I expected to see tons of attention: What sources and equipment do the most to irritate vs sooth the situation.  For my tinitus, it is usually forgotten and in the background unless I am in a quiet environment or something "sets it off."  Harsh sounds can set it off.  And "less good" audio systems can set it off.  I have assembled a good system and a better system, and I am often reminded that I have tinitus when listening to the "good."  The better (tube) system gets closer to a "liquid" sound, which totally affects how much tinitus trigger I experience.  I am not a very technical audiophile, so I hardly have this figured, but I would have expected that more advanced members would have reported a lot of opinions on how to minimize tinitus trigger throughout the audio chain (e.g., start with vinyl front end (or certain exotic $$$$ digital), then run through this or that tube systems, and end in warmer (Spendor or Graham) speakers, etc.).  Perhaps my experience is somewhat uncommon, where relatively modest advances in smoothing the edges of the sound can have a BIG impact on my tinitus level.  

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