[Danchou]

Hello dear Head-fi community,
 
I am having trouble with my new ATH M50.
 
I am 18 now and i can hear frequencies from 20 Hz - 18 kHz (17kHz left ear). Since i was 14 i listened to music with my own mp3 players, while always listening on the lowest volume possibly, because a teacher at my school scared me that i will not hear anything right in my older days elsewise.
It was kinda funny and sad, that my friends started to listen on a slightly higher volume then me (I had like 30-40% of my iPod bar, they started with 40-50%) and over the past 4 years started to listen louder and louder (most of them 60-80% volume bar) , because their hearing got worse at the concerts and clubs they went to.
 
I am a bit oversensitive with my body, for example i can feel many things like blood flowing in my body parts, what other people cant, so because i don'T know if i am overreacting i wanted to ask here about my problem first.
 
Before i got my ATH M50, i still listened on 35% with my phillips in-ears for 30 €. I sometimes listened to them for hours, and when i was in a bus or train, i even turned them up to 40-60 % for hours, but i never got ringing or or pain in the ears once.
 
A week ago, i got my ATH M50 and i was blown away by the new dimension of sound they showed me.
Until two days ago, i only listened to them at home for a duration of 2 hours maximum per day, and i did not notice any problems.
But when my Samsung Galaxy S i9000 arrived, i started listening to them on the bus drive to work (2 hours total) and in the afternoon the usual 2 hours. when i wanted to go to sleep that day, i noticed a really silent high pitched ringing noise in my ears, and a pulling sensation in my right ear (somehow, i dont know when it happened, my left ear got damaged, since it was much better then the right one last year. so the sound is louder in the right ear now).
I then thought "ok, you listened to loud on the bus, just turn it down." So yesterday i again listened to the ATH M50 in the bus at a volume so low, that i barely heard something (40 %) and when i came home i started to listen at an even lower volume (20-30%). but after listening for 2 hours at home, i noticed that the sound got REALLY loud in my right ear and i got scared.
Now i slept over it, and the sound is still as loud as, if not louder then yesterday. Also the sensation in my right ear got unbearable (maybe because i focus on it so much). It doesnt hurt, it rather feels like someone is pulling the inside of my ear into 2 different directions really hard.
 
I don't understand why my Headphones are apparently damaging my ears on volumes, where i can barely hear something.
Can anybody tell me what i am doing wrong or what I should do now? i mean with in-ears i listened way louder then with the ATH's and for longer periods of time too, and they did nothing...
Should i maybe send the ATH's back and get some equally sounding in-ears?
Or are my ears just not used to the quality structure of Headphones?
 
Thank you in advance and sorry for the bad english and grammar, i am still learning it.
 
EDIT: Now 8 hours after i woke up, the ringing "teeee" started descending and is now not that audible anymore, it is still more present then the normal ringing you hear in a silent room, but if it continues to descend like this, it will be gone in a few days hopefully.
TL;DR: Even on very low volumes my new ATH M50 cause a pulling sensation and a high pitched ringing sound mainly in the right ear.

 

[Danchou]

I just remembered, that i already started to feel the pulling sensation a few days after i got the ATH M50, but at that time it felt pleasant, like my hearing evolved, since after i got my ath m50 my hearing got a lot more complex and sensitive, so i thought that feeling was not a pulling sensation, but rather a widening of my hearing spectrum.

 

[sidel]

That's really strange.  I'm sort of doubting it's a volume issue and thinking it might be more so clamping force / how it's sitting on your head.  Is the pulling feeling relatively close to the exposed part of your ear, or is it internal?  Does it go away after a while of not using the M50s,  or has it been more or less persistent since getting them?

 

[gamersince1976]

Danchou,
 
First, your English is fine - much better, in fact, than many I know for whom English is their first language (myself included)!
 
That said, it really sounds to me like this isn't necessarily an issue that can - or should - be solved by strangers on an internet forum. I think you should go to an audiologist and get yourself checked out.
 
If the problem you were describing was that the headphones themselves were producing a high pitched noise we could help you. It could be a defective or knock-off (fake) pair of ATH M50, or possibly an issue with the settings. But that's not what's happening. As I understand it, when you hear a high pitched ringing for hours after listening to ANY noise, it indicates hearing loss - specifically a frequency that's "dying". As for the pulling pain, that could be as simple as an ear infection.
 
But see, that's my point - I'm not a doctor. I know just enough medicine to give good sounding advice that's, likely as not, completely wrong.
 
I'm not trying to scare you - it sounds as if your teacher did a good enough job of that already. I wish I had taken the lesson - to protect my hearing with reasonable listening volume - to heart years ago, as you seem to have. But you really should get checked out by a professional.
 
Just my two cents. Best of luck to you.
 
Oh, and welcome to Head-Fi!

 

[Danchou]

@Sidel Until now, the pulling feeling was, as is said, rather pleasant. I know this silent high pitched sound, since it's normal for me to "hear" that when you go to bed and you cant hear anything else
but it was always so silent, that i couldnt tell if it was a sound or something i imagined. But now is the first time that after waking up i still hear it, and that's what scared me. The pulling sensation is rather internal.
 
@gamersince1976 Thank you for the reply, i know i should go see a doctor if these symptoms persist, but since it is only since yesterday and it's the first time it happened, i was hoping for someone telling me "stay calm, relax, stop focusing on it so much, it will eventually go away, i know that too. If it does not go away after x hours/days go see a doctor."

 

[koolkat]

Would definitely advice seeing a doctor. The clamping force on M50s I tried were quite strong, and it made my head feel a little light after a while, but nothing as serious as what you're experiencing. As for the high-pitched sound, is it similar to the sound you get when standing in a soundproof room? That teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet sound? If that is the case, I usually get it if I wear closed headphones for too long, and I suddenly take them off. 
 
Edit: Pulling thing might be an earwig, ouch. 
 

 

[sidel]

If the pulling feels like it's inside the ear it's definitely not just clamping getting to you and you should see a doctor.

 

[NotJeffBuckley]

Studies have shown that everybody has a persistent ringing in their hearing, it's just when it becomes audible over ambient noise that it becomes a problem. A persistent ringing noise that never goes away is referred to as "tinnitus," and is a serious problem for many musicians and others who don't take adequate measures to protect their hearing. However, with high levels of isolation (down to "anechoic chamber + massive isolation earmuffs"), literally every single person in the study was shown to eventually report a slight high pitched ringing sensation. It's part of our hearing system. Gets louder and becomes problematic when you have hearing damage because the complex network of sensitive cells that allow you to detect frequencies higher than 1khz (the maximum rate at which neurons can fire action potentials) become damaged within the cochlea and can basically get "stuck" on due to the damage. The brain interprets it as, well, ringing. Which never stops, and can make it difficult to sleep in quiet rooms. I speak partially from personal experience; I've raised the "floor" of my own ringing due to a period of a year or so when I was a teenager where I practiced drumming in a small room without ear protection - if you hear ringing after exposure to loud noise, you've damaged your hearing to some extent, whether it shows up as tinnitus or as gaps in your frequency sensitivity. I am afflicted with mild tinnitus. My dad, who has been a drummer since the '80s and who didn't start using ear protection until it was too late, has serious tinnitus and he has to take some extraordinary measures to get to sleep now.
 
Please understand that a percentage on your volume meter on your MP3 player may not necessarily correspond to a safe listening volume. The other variables there are the output impedance, output voltage, output current, and the input impedance, sensitivity and frequency response of the listening device. Take a pair of headphones with exceptionally sensitive drivers, like, say, Denons - with 24 ohm impedance and a sensitivity of 106dB at 1mW; they can be powered to dangerously high levels by an iPod even set quite low. Less sensitive, higher impedance headphones may be practically inaudible over ambient noise at the same setting that blasts unsafe volume levels with the aforementioned Denons. And common earbuds have such an exceptionally poor frequency response overall that it's very common for people to turn them up such that the frequencies they emphasize are dangerously loud, just so that the lower frequencies are audible at all.
 
I'm describing tinnitus and all this other stuff for you to help you understand what you may or may not be experiencing. To recap:
1. Everybody has some degree of ringing in their ears. It isn't considered medically problematic until it becomes audible as hearing damage: tinnitus.
2a. If you hear ringing in your ears after exposure to loud sounds, you have sustained hearing damage. It will not heal, it has been damaged forever. Sorry
2b. Ringing in your ears that goes away is certainly preferable to ringing in your ears that stays around, but it's still indicative of some degree of permanent hearing damage. There's no upside. If exposure to unsafe sound levels (either all at once in a loud burst, or over time at lower levels) has occurred and has resulted in ringing, you have sustained hearing damage.
3. Looking at the volume output setting isn't necessarily telling you anything at all, so regardless of where you've put it, the question remains open whether you have listened at a safe volume level or not.
4. Conditions of extraordinary isolation (as provided by good studio headphones, like the ATH M50) can bring out ringing that would otherwise be inaudible. The same goes for sleeping in a quiet room, etc.
 
 
When in doubt, though, don't ask the internet. See an audiologist if you are concerned that you may have hearing damage.

 

[Danchou]

@Koolkat Yeah that sound is like from old televisions. i sometimes hear it when it is really silent and i focus on hearing it, thus i never knew if it existed or if i imagined it.
I would describe it as "teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" or "piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii" but i said ringing, because evryone in this forum refers to it that way...
 
I dont think it's  a comfort thing, i got curly hair and the ATH M50 feel really comfortable for me (when i transpirate it gets nasty, but still comfortable).
 
How long does it take for you until the sound wears off?
 
It is a bit better now, I will wait until tomorrow and if it doesn't get better, i will go see a doctor.

 

[koolkat]

Recently I got the really high pitched sound for much longer than I would normally. Maybe about 30 seconds max?
Usually I just shake it off, and shut my ears and then it'll disappear. By the way, I'm not sure a normal private doctor 
would know what to look out for. If you have the money, you might want to go to a specialist to get it checked. 
 
All the best

 

[Danchou]

@NotJeffBuckley
 
Thank you! That was really informative.
 
I already understood that this sound most likely means i have sustained hearing dmg. The question i was asking was why i get that on levels so low i barely hear something.
I did not think a short burst can dmg your hearing too...
Yesterday, when i first put in the ATH M50 into my Laptop, the volume was at 100% and i was like "what the hell" and ripped them from my head, but that was only 1-3 seconds, could that be enough to cause symptoms that heavy?
 
Anyway, I am gonna wait a few days, if it does not go away, i will go see an audiologist, and if it does go away, i will try listening at low volume again for a short time and try to figure out if it is the volume, the M50's or if the short burst of sound yesterday is to blame.

 

[almasy]

Are your headphones pressing harder on the tongue of the ear than they used to? i've found that excess pressure there triggers my tinnitus after a while even without discomfort.
 
If i were you i'd just not listen to anything with headphones for a day and just wear them without anything playing instead, if the problem persists it's likely just the way the headphones are being worn causing it, whether there's any permanent deformation of the ear or just a temporary thing is another matter, if the problem don't persist then there's something about the sound thats causing the problem for you,  maybe you're insensitive to a certain freqeuncy that the headphones emphasise and due to the SPL of the insensitive frequency it's damaging your hearing despite being quiet to you?
 
Either way don't make any decisions on how to go about sorting it without finding out whether its the sound or the wearing of the headphones that's the problem and then seeing either a doctor or an audiologist or two about it.
 

 

[NotJeffBuckley]

Hearing is sensitive and idiosyncratic. Some people are very lucky and abuse their ears for years without trouble, while others are very unlucky and can sustain serious hearing damage from one accidental exposure to overly loud noise. That the ringing is receding just means that your brain's doing its thing, re-routing as best it can around the damaged "hair" cells (which are not actually hairs, they just sort of look like them; ear hair and the "hair" cells in the cochlea are vastly different!). But I am afraid to say that yes, it is entirely possible that one exposure to blasting loud music could have been sufficient to cause this. It's up to you how you proceed with the info, understand, but keep it in mind, you won't get another set of ears and hearing restoration is still in its infancy.
 
High frequencies go first because it takes groups of cells to detect them, and any one in the group being damaged can cause failure at the frequency range. A neuron can fire 1000 action potentials per second, but in reality they "tire out" (become temporarily depleted of the necessary sodium and potassium to fire the action potential); distributed coding is what is done in the cochlea and in the brain in order to "sample" higher frequencies given the limits of neurons. It's interesting stuff. An audiologist could tell you more, worth quizzing them on if you do get in to see one (which you should, if you continue to experience issues with your hearing - seriously).

 

[FatalSylence]

Any idea roughly what frequency range the ringing is at?

 

[Danchou]

I think it's about 14-16 kHz, but im not sure.
 
GOOD NEWS: The sound is getting lower with every minute now. It is now at the point where i can hardly catch it with my eyes open.
If I close my eyes and concentrate, it is still louder then usual, but it does not distract me anymore.
 
Now my last question:
 
Are in-ears better/healthier then Headphones? Because i really appreciate my hearing too much to destroy it just for the sake of the awesome sound the M50's deliver.