Hearing test

[Cockney Sparrow]

I have tinnitus which only occasionally becomes noisy and intrusive, and usually it seems to be stress related. (Retirement helped there...). I've taken care to keep out of noisy environments - Mahler 8 performances aside - and wear ear defenders, e.g. when using power tools.

I had the misfortune to be taken ("We're going....") to a Jools Holland & Big Band concert. The sound was never better than poor, and when the ranks of brass and saxophones joined in, it was just one huge assault of distorted undifferentiated noise. A shame, fine musicians there. (I sat nearest to the sound desk, and the operator was wearing ear protection - says it all!)

That resulted in intrusive and worrying tinnitus, which lessened after 2/3 days and I'm hoping no (..not much...) long term damage. On the upside, I don't have to go to a music event with amplification again (or if it can't be avoided, I'll be wearing earplugs).

[Serial_Apologist]

I have tinnitus which only occasionally becomes noisy and intrusive, and usually it seems to be stress related. (Retirement helped there...). I've taken care to keep out of noisy environments - Mahler 8 performances aside - and wear ear defenders, e.g. when using power tools.

I had the misfortune to be taken ("We're going....") to a Jools Holland & Big Band concert. The sound was never better than poor, and when the ranks of brass and saxophones joined in, it was just one huge assault of distorted undifferentiated noise. A shame, fine musicians there. (I sat nearest to the sound desk, and the operator was wearing ear protection - says it all!)

That resulted in intrusive and worrying tinnitus, which lessened after 2/3 days and I'm hoping no (..not much...) long term damage. On the upside, I don't have to go to a music event with amplification again (or if it can't be avoided, I'll be wearing earplugs).

The late jazz pianist Michael Garrick once told me about a gig he'd done in a pub. The band was squashed into a corner, and had Jon Hiseman on the drums. Mike's piano was right next to the drums. At one point Jon made a huge smash on a cymbal, whereupon Mike experienced a loud whistling noise inside his ears. "Hmm" he thought, "that's my hearing gone". So he felt extremely relieved when the next day, on getting up, the tinnitus had gone. I recalled similar from CCF field day exercises at school involving firing rounds of blanks. We were never given ear muffs. So it seems it is possible for damage to be temporary, or at any rate for long term consequences not to manifest straight away. While my own tinnitus seems to have been primarily triggered by stress, my suspicions also lie in headphones I used with a Walkman back in the 1980s when going to work in a works bus, to compensate for the dreadful local radio station the driver insisted on playing for the seven miles in each direction.

[ardcarp]

...which brings us to the phenomenally, woundingly loud 'music' at rock concerts and the like. Having taken my own kids in the past to relatively minor gigs of this sort, it is obvious as soon as you open the doors that the sound waves can be physically felt in the belly. Just think what an hour or two can do to your ears! I know that gig musicians often wear discreet ear protection devices. Alas these ore not distributed to the audience. Music of this sort, it appears, has to be fiendishly loud to have the desired effect on the teenage psyche. Trouble for the future.

Occasionally I have had to make a difficult social cjoice. I was on a sailing holiday in the BVI (I don't make a habit of this!) and we...3 of us...decided to eat in one of those typical beach restaurants. (Think palm trees at the water's edge, etc, etc) Soon after we had ordered, a band turned up consisting of a couple of guitars, bass and percussion. I think we all thought a bit of Caribbean mood music would be fun. Then the sound man turned up and they started doing a few riffs to test the apparatus. Then they started. It was terrifying. Not only could the music be 'felt' but any table conversation was obviously a non-starter. I made the decision. I explained (at the top of my voice) that as I was a practising (sometimes) musician, I could not risk damaging my hearing and had to leave. They decided tp stay, but when they returned to the boat an hour later they both complained of ringing in the ears. Mercifully it was short-lived, but surely regular exposure to this level of sound must be damaging?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I spent the first 40 years of my life feeling uncomfortable when watching cathode ray TVs. I could hear the picture - a high-pitch squeal at 15,645 MHz. Walking into a television shop was an absolute nightmare. Happily, modern televisions don't have this problem, though I doubt whether I could hear it now.

[Beresford]

I'm 73. I had a hearing test about 18 months ago and found that I had a 10 dB mid-range loss on both sides, and a high-frequency cutoff of around 5kHz. That's back to AM radio, though of course without the dreaded envelope detector distortion. I decided to pay lots of money for an aid which I control from my iPhone, and which has speech and music settings, as well as custom settings for various environments. Even on the music settings, it quite spoils piano sound, and I understand this is universal. The sound of a choir is fine, but when I'm singing in one, my own voice sounds a bit odd so I don't generally use it. For concerts, opera and social interaction it's invaluable.

My mid-range loss is now 20 dB (!) so when I play music at my preferred volume without the aids, my wife protests strongly. Wonderful to have good headphones! I am so very grateful that I don't suffer from tinnitus.

My experience is similar, and the top few notes on the piano no longer ring for me. (And is there any hifi that doesn't come to grief when compared with a real piano?)

Headphones have been recommended, for recorded music, and I would like to know what difference they make, and what type to look out for?
Can you recommend particular models or styles, and can they cope well with piano sounds?