How many members here have unilateral hearing loss?

I am just wondering. I got some loss in my left ear. I have no idea how bad it is, because I did a hearing test recently and my results were equally good for both ears, but the hearing test was only from 500 Hz - 8 kHz. My left ear has problems with frequencies above 10 kHz, has a weird distortion around 5.9-6.5 kHz, and can't pick up spacial cues anywhere near as well as my right. I suspect it might be otosclerosis. My right hears above average. For me this can be extremely frustrating when listening to headphones - I can clearly hear more high range on the right side and that side also sound a lot more open, while the left side is much grainier and there's little sense of headstage.

Please vote and describe how bad your hearing loss is and which frequencies are affected. And most importantly, how much does it affect your headphone listening? Are there moments when you just throw your headphones aside in frustration and swear you will never listen to them again? Perhaps this thread will help those who have unilateral hearing loss to feel a little better knowing that they are not alone and that others have problems like that too.

++ He should go ASAP, or it might be too late! If I was in his place, I would've already went a long time ago, otherwise I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. lol

Lucky you. I wish I could even mine out somehow, but alas, I don't think that is possible. I tired using various channel balance/panning controls, including one on my Rockboxed Sansa Clip, but they don't seem to help, because I just can't hear as much detail in my left no matter what.

Here's the really strange part. My hearing in both ears is absolutely equal up to around 5.8 kHz when testing using sine tones. I tested tens of times and I just can't find any problems with my left ear on sine tone tests. I can hear the tones just as loudly in my left as in my right. Beyond 5.8 kHz, I can detect some slight dips and some weird distortion in my left ear when testing with sine tones. So I decided to do an experiment: I opened a song in Cool Edit Pro, cut out all frequencies above 5 kHz and then compared my right ear with my left on the same channel. Guess what - my right was still better! I just don't understand this. I can clearly still hear more detail in the midrange and low frequencies in my right than in my left. My left sounds blurry and muddy in comparison. Professional hearing test cannot detect this problem, so just what the heck is going on?! Too bad I am very busy these days - I guess I should get an appointment with ENT for more serious testing. Maybe my brain got messed up or something, or perhaps there's something wrong with my eardrum that prevents it from responding to sound the way it should.

Wow, you are crazy lol. I wish I could be as satisfied as you seem to be. My hearing imbalance drives me insane. I guess it may actually better to have crappy hearing in both ears than crappy hearing in only one ear, because when both of your ears are crap, you can get used to that eventually, but when only one ear is ****** up, you can always compare it with your good one and always be depressed about how much worse one ear is than the other.


BTW, it's interesting how this thread took off. One brave soul posted and others followed.

Oh wow. LOL Judging by that you put in the beginning, you sure don't seem to be very depressed. Of course that's becuase you had the hearing loss from birth. Interesting. Personally, I wouldn't consider myself hearing impaired, but I do have significant eyesight loss from birth, and my eyes see totally differently! My left is nearsighted and has about 30 % vision left and my right is farsighted and has about 80%. The last time I checked my eyesight 6 years ago, the optometrist told me that my eyesight in my right eye is slowly improving, while my left is getting worse. lol She was also very surprised how I could see properly with two totally different eyes. It turns out that at any one time, I only see with one eye, while the vision from the other gets blocked out by the brain. I use my right to see far distances, like watching TV, and my left to see close by, like computer screen or when reading. And I don't feel handicapped at all. I know I am a bit off topic here, but my point is that it's very interesting how well our brains can compensate so well for deficiencies we have from birth, or those we had for a long time.

Wow, congrats! You must be very happy. I wish I also had wax in my left ear that needs to be removed, but alas, my audiologist told me that I don't have excessive earwax build up. I am still not ruling out the possibility that I may have fluid build up though.