[Argyris]

UPDATE 12/18/11: I figured I'd put this here because this post, which I'm appending (or prepending, maybe) with an update, otherwise leaves things up in the air. Since I posted this last Tuesday, my hearing seems to have made a full recovery. I did ultimately make an appointment with my doctor, but after I ended up paying the better part of a Benjamin for little more than a referral (I remembered, in my youth, getting a hearing test at the clinic I used to go to--it seems times have changed), I'm going to leave it at that unless an obvious issue pops up. In brief tests at low volume I've confirmed that the tonal balance sounds fine and there's no imbalance anymore. I'm going to chalk this one up to one moment of carelessness, and it appears I dodged the bullet.

But it was a learning experience--once a week has passed and I ease myself back into regular listening, the volume will be staying at a reasonable level. I want to thank everybody who posted here with suggestions and good wishes.

And, I want to say that the original message of the following post still rings true...here is commentary about one of the most terrifying things that has happened to me in recent memory, and it should be living proof that the folks reminding us to keep the volume down are not killjoys--they happen to be right, and we ignore them at our own risk.

***

...and yet sometimes it does. I did a phenomenally stupid thing and I may well have paid the ultimate price. Over the past month or so I'd spent a lot of time with my Beyers, and after not wearing my Shure SRH440 hardly at all during that time, when I finally put them on again I noticed that my suspicions about the 840 pads were accurate: they really mess with the sound. So I fished out the stock 440 pads and put them back on. At this point I had to re-EQ for the change (using the method I learned on this forum). So for the past few days I'd been trying to dial in a good sound. I kept getting annoyed by a certain tizziness in the upper treble I couldn't quite locate. Finally, frustrated and not thinking clearly, I ran the sine sweep in the 10-20kHz region back and forth, and I turned the volume up almost three quarters on my amp so I could hear "better." I probably spent little more than 30 seconds doing this. Immediately when I switched back to music I noticed that it sounded horrible, like it was both muffled and rough at the same time, and spacial cues were way off. I thought at first that something in the playback chain had gotten screwed up, so I took the headphones out of the jack to try with my iPod. Even before I got them plugged in, though, I realized with horror what had happened.

My equipment wasn't damaged. My hearing was.

It's been a little over 14 hours since it happened, and I can't tell if it's improved or not. My right ear seems better, but my left ear doesn't seem to have improved much. Also, I've got a slight ringing that hasn't gone away since it happened. The information I found on the Internet said that temporary hearing loss will usually wear off after between 16-24 hours, and within three days at the absolute most. I'd been listening to pink noise up to that point as well, in small doses (as per the EQ technique). I can't account for the volume, though sometimes it was louder than comfortable. I didn't notice any issues from that, but I've no doubt it contributed. The big issue happened after the sine sweeping. I'm hoping with everything I've got that things will get better, but I'm starting to think that's not going to happen. Just to see where I am, I tried some very low volume listening for a few seconds on my Beyers on a reference song and it was flat out horrible. Nothing like how I remembered it.

I'm not looking for sympathy. I know what I did was dumb to the extreme and I accept responsibility. I'm trying to prevent somebody else from doing something just like it. So what I guess I'm trying to say is that there's the possibility in this world to do a lot of stupid stuff. I don't know for sure whether what I've done is permanent or not, but I'm warning everybody out there who took the time to read this to think about what you're doing. Don't listen at excessive volumes. Don't expose your ears to repeated loud noise. And, perhaps most importantly, don't obsess over details to the point that you risk everything. If you love music as much as I do, your ears are your most important asset. Robert Schumann lost the ability to play the piano because he used some contraption to try to strengthen a weak fourth finger. What he ended up with was orders of magnitude worse than what he started with. I may well have traded the greatest source of joy in my life in hopes of curing a slightly uneven treble. Up to that point I had extraordinary hearing, and I rarely if ever subjected it to potentially damaging situations. But all that doesn't matter now. One stupid thing, one act of carelessness, is all it takes.

Be careful, folks. Protect your hearing and just enjoy the music. That's all I'm saying.

 

[ostewart]

woahhh crap man, i feel for you. I would hate this to happen to me, i always am careful with my listening levels, im young and dont want to loose my hearing. I hope it gets better.

 

[deadlylover]

Good luck bro.
 
Do you have a dB meter to check what levels the sweeps were at that volume? It could shed some light on if it might be permanent damage, there was some kind of sound level vs time exposed until damage chart somewhere.

 

[IMAWolf]

Here's the chart: http://www.noisehelp.com/noise-dose.html
 
I once went to a really loud concert and my ears were ringing for a while after that too, recovered in a few days.
 
If the ringing doesn't stop after a couple of days it could be tinnitus, well, cheer up, if you have been careful about your hearing all along it couldn't be THAT bad.
 
Well, uh, good luck man. 

 

[Argyris]

I thought of that. No, I don't have anything I could use for that purpose. I have no idea how loud it might have been, except that it was through a 44 ohm set of headphones with an efficiency of 105dB/mW (or thereabouts; I don't remember exactly) and that for normal material about 9 o'clock is plenty loud. I had it between 12 and 3 o'clock, probably closer to the latter. I don't even know for how long. The over 30 seconds is just an estimate. It might have been as much as a minute. I've seen those charts. If it was closer to a minute, there's a very good chance damage was done.

Sitting here now the difference between right and left is very obvious. The right ear seems to have somewhat cleared. The left one doesn't seem to have improved at all. I can tell when I touch the pinna. The right one sounds/feels almost normal. The left one sounds muffled and it feels disorienting, as though it's stuffed with something. It doesn't actually feel numb, but that's the closest comparison I can make. It's not a physical sensation, and it's really weird. The right ear was like that, too, but it seems somewhat better (though not perfect).

I really appreciate people's concern. I'm pretty much scared to death at this point. I've also got two days worth of finals and studying and whatnot from today through tomorrow, so this couldn't have come at a worse time. Also, nobody around me is going to be very sympathetic. My parents regard the whole headphone thing as weird and obsessive, and they usually adopt the "It's your own damn fault and don't expect us to pay for this!" attitude toward everything, so I don't expect they'll be doing much to make me feel better when I finally have to tell them. I'm pretty much on my own with this.

 

[ostewart]

my parents act the same way towards my headphone hobby, they wont even let me order some KSC75's to mod from amazon. Will have to get my friend to order them for me.

 

[LizardKing1]

Wow this is really terrible. I never gave too much thought to the whole hearing damage thing. In all the threads about headphones, it's rare to find one with warnings of high-level listening. But honestly, although it's normal to be worried (I'd be glass-eyed by now in your case), I think it will go back to normal. It's normal for them to be that way, but permanent hearing damage is cumulative, that is, it happens over time. Of course if you're standing next to a concert speaker it will cause permanent damage too, but in moderate cases it usually wears off. I really hope you get better. If you don't, and even if you do, you should see a doctor.

 

[Brooko]

@Argyris
 
As a chronic tinnitus sufferer (mine is permanent) - best advice - no headphones / iems for a week.  Give your hearing a chance to recover.  It may only be temporary.  If it persists, don't muck around - see an audiologist.
 
I hope it's only temporary - but if it does end up permanent - you do get used to it.  It's not nice at first - but after a while (unless it's very quiet) your brain will compensate.  I never had it until one event that I still regret to this day (one concert, indoors, excessively loud - no hearing protection).  I just hope the younger guys read this and learn to turn the volume down a bit.  By the time it's actually gone - it's often too late .......

 

[Argyris]

Just a quick update here. I won't say definitively (the same psychoacoustic trickery that lets us get used to wildly different sonic signatures might be at work here), but I'm cautiously optimistic about my hearing. Things definitely seem improved. The imbalance seems to have cleared, and the weird, muffled effect I was getting when touching my left pinna seems to have fallen more in line with the behavior of the right ear. Also, the ringing isn't as bad. I have had very mild tinnitus for as long as I can remember (probably because my family business' premises feature a rather loud compressor forcing air through plastic tubing into about 750 fish tanks, which makes quite a racket--don't ask), and what I've got now seems about the level I had before all this started, which is to say almost insignificant unless it's dead silent around me.

I plan on seeing a doctor the earliest I can, which is Friday (damn finals and such), and that will hopefully settle things one way or another. I'm also several steps ahead of Brooko's well founded advice--I've been following a strict low-noise policy (no music, YouTube, TV, loud conversations, etc.). And, when I do have to go somewhere where sound might be an issue (however briefly), I've detached the cable on my SRH440 so I can wear them as ear protection. I haven't had much cause to do this, but they're there just in case. I absolutely won't even think about listening to my headphones or any other audio sources for the next week and/or until I get more specific advice from the doctor.

So, like I said, I'm cautiously optimistic. But the spirit of this thread still stands: regardless of what ultimately happens to me, let this serve as a warning. Don't mess around with your ears. You'll only get one set, and any damage you manage to do (and which doesn't manage to clear itself up) is permanent. The little hairs don't grow back.

 

[Astrozombie]

So at the time you didn't hear anything or feel any pain?

 

[Uncle Erik]

Have you cleaned your ears recently?  Maybe you dislodged a plug or something.
 
My father was worried sick that his hearing was going, went to the ENT, and was horrified by what was flushed out.  He's fine now.
 
So maybe it's just wax.  Though keep listening levels down and be sure to get checked out.

 

[hfrakvich]

I hope it's only temporary - but if it does end up permanent - you do get used to it

 

[funniecow]

So sorry to hear about this, I know for myself I only use my INK'd Skullcandy at both home and travel now due to the open KSC75 disrupting those around me.  But I make it a point to to never go above two notchs on my Itouch.  Sad to say though its made it impossible to listen to Pink Floyd =(

I really hope that you have a really bad case of earwax instead of of permanent damage.  Maybe switch on over to a speaker system so you can always use ambient sound to compare?

 

[Armaegis]

Running frequency sweeps can be dangerous, particularly in the treble where you get spikes starting around 2kHz. I've had a couple times now where I was paying attention more to the bass end and had it turned up, listened for the levels through the mids, then had to tear the headphones off my head when the treble peaks hit.

 

[ShamanSleeve]

I used to be really careless with my ears..I'm lucky I can still hear decent. Meh, hope your ears come back to normal!