SoulSyde
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2008
- Posts
- 2,676
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- 130
I've always suffered from a mild case of tinnitus in both of my ears, from childhood ear infections. As a result, I have learned to deal with it until about three weeks ago when I noticed that the ringing in my right ear was worsening as well as some loss of volume in that ear. I waited a few days and then scheduled an appointment with an Ear, Nose & Throat specialist in my area.
After a quick inspection of both ears the doctor said that he noticed some scarring in my left ear (likely from the above mentioned infections), but could not find the source of my symptoms. Without being too graphic, lets just say that after a thorough cleaning we found the source of my loss of volume and the seemingly intensified ringing - stuff that I couldn't get to with household cleaning techniques. Immediately, the world seemed clearer, brighter and all of the volume loss had been restored. Also from what I can tell, the ringing has not necessarily gotten any better, but it isn't as prominent as it was because I can hear my surroundings so much better now.
What makes me feel like a dummy is that I have probably been hearing like this for many-many years and never got an aural tune-up. I had only known what "sound" was like from my own perspective and didn't think that anything was wrong until it recently got bad enough for me to realize there was a problem. I've always EQ'd the higher frequencies on every source device I've owned by +1 to +3 to compensate for my hearing loss, something I no longer need to do. Over the past couple of days I have re-EQ'd everything flat.
I wanted to post this, not gross anyone out (sorry if I did), but rather to encourage everyone to get your ears checked on a regular basis - something I will now do for the rest of my life. Every hobby has maintenance, I guess this is ours.
After a quick inspection of both ears the doctor said that he noticed some scarring in my left ear (likely from the above mentioned infections), but could not find the source of my symptoms. Without being too graphic, lets just say that after a thorough cleaning we found the source of my loss of volume and the seemingly intensified ringing - stuff that I couldn't get to with household cleaning techniques. Immediately, the world seemed clearer, brighter and all of the volume loss had been restored. Also from what I can tell, the ringing has not necessarily gotten any better, but it isn't as prominent as it was because I can hear my surroundings so much better now.
What makes me feel like a dummy is that I have probably been hearing like this for many-many years and never got an aural tune-up. I had only known what "sound" was like from my own perspective and didn't think that anything was wrong until it recently got bad enough for me to realize there was a problem. I've always EQ'd the higher frequencies on every source device I've owned by +1 to +3 to compensate for my hearing loss, something I no longer need to do. Over the past couple of days I have re-EQ'd everything flat.
I wanted to post this, not gross anyone out (sorry if I did), but rather to encourage everyone to get your ears checked on a regular basis - something I will now do for the rest of my life. Every hobby has maintenance, I guess this is ours.
