Hearing damage - distortion in one ear

"get a cob on"? This sounds worrying.

Yes, I should definitely try to go and see a specialist. I wonder if my work healthcare plan covers it (you'd think so, at a subtitling company, but we're pretty cheap here)?

Did you have regular ear infections as a wee'un? I did, and the constant breakage and re-healing of the ear drum left me with a pinprick-size hole in the right eardrum which gives me the exact problem you're describing. My solution was to a) watch my volume levels at home and b) ALWAYS wear earplugs to gigs & clubs.

Anyway, what Alex said - get 'em checked!!!

but difft ppl's ears are difft shapes slightly so maybe the wax causes difft acoustical byplay

get em checked out

I wonder how it would have been described before digital clicking. Imagine you are writing about it in a novel set in the a)the French Revolution b)WWII c) the block party era.

As for the incident with the home studio, I blame the artists.

I doubt our health plan will stretch to Hartley the Hare, never mind Harley Street. I'm sorry, that doesn't make any sense.

As for the incident with the home studio, I blame the artists.

-- Peter Stringbender (pjmiller6...), June 9th, 2005.

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(a) the whine of an ungreased guillotine, (b) the infernal chatter of the ack-ack, (c) Strange Dave and your Malky going mental in a dustbin.

-- Michael Jones (tourajsig...), June 9th, 2005.

hahahaha marvellous

It’s no problem in the day but when all’s quiet at night, that’s when I notice it.

Michael, as others have said, get to the Doc's. or it'll drive you mad.

My left ear is a lot better than my right. So boys can tell how much I like them, but which side of them I sit on. ;-)

Because Michael is a keen Mazola enthusiast.

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/candling.html - Why Ear Candling Is Not A Good Idea

(libran fence sitting c/d?)

definitely get it checked out if de-waxing doesn't help though. maybe a GP can refer you to a specialist anyway for free?

i'm also surprised by how many people on the thread has had ear trouble too. and that nobody has wah-wah in their ear.

I need a good servicing by a KwikFit EN&T specialist. I've reached my 10,000dB limit.

First, a round middle-aged gentleman (who had anecdotes about being deafened by the Dead Kennedys) put me in a soundproof box a la Mr and Mrs, and got me to press the button when I heard something that sounded like the best track off a Francisco Lopez LP. He mucked about with frequencies and levels and masking white-noise and sounds behind the pinna and reflected sound and all that. The results were something of an ego boost, if one's ego can boosted by the knowledge that, aside from a 4dB droop around 4kHz, your ears are pretty much top-notch. He did a tympanometric test and that was a-ok too.

Then the dashing young doctor and his nervy student charge took over - lots of questions, a bit of probing with an otoscope, some neurologial tests, something that might have been the Hitzlsperger test (that can't be right - he plays for Villa, doesn't he?) and a bit of banter about attending My Bloody Valentine gigs. The banter was one-way, really... "Who? I prefer Lionel Richie myself." Again, I was given leave to renew my audiophile licence as the doc purred over my hearing test results ("It could be weeks until I see anyone with results as good as that." Er, yeah, but this is an ENT clinic. It's a bit like your optician saying, "Finally, someone who doesn't need specs!")

The conclusion? There wasn't one. Doc reckoned it might be like subjective tinnitus or hyperacusis - i.e. there's no physiological cause that can be found, the ears are fluid-free and great audiometrically, but somewhere along the way my brain's auditory centre decided that it really hated certain high-volume high-frequency transients and it was going to ruddy well tell me about them when they occurred. But only if they were on my left.

So, comforting but a bit frustrating.

I have no insurance so I have not visited the an ENT fearing precisely what you encountered. No conclusion. Its very frustrating and I'm leaning towards a more muscle/bone issue than an actual nerve damage symptom and this is not purely due to wishful thinking. I notice that I can tolerate some of the tones that cause the distortion until my ear tenses up in a specific way but this may only be due to that tension amplifying the frequencies that trigger the effects of some sort of cochlear damage/recruitment. I do notice that if I leave a fan on all night or am around loud sounds more often the threshold at which the distortion is triggered is increased. It is tolerable, but being only 23 I do fear further problems later in life and I'm sure as hell going to do my mixing and music listening at a lower level.

One day, when I have the time, I'm going to do some kind of hearing test on myself - using signals with lots of HF harmonics, notching them out to see what precisely it is which sets off the distortion.

Looks like we may be living with it, CC.

OK, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and do this. Will start putting the oil in my ears and then make an appt with Doc to get referred.

I was in a club last night and simply could. not. hear. what people very close to me were saying. When the other people in the same nearby circle of people seemed to be able to hear perfectly adequately.

Perhaps it is partly psychological, because my hearing gets worse when I'm very tired.

The hearing in my left ear was starting to get noticeably quieter and muffled, but fortunately last week huge gobs of wax started coming out and things have improved greatly.

do you have the distortion thing they're talking about upthread, or just had trouble distinguishing what people were saying?

Trouble distinguishing, mostly. But lately, I have been having trouble with distortion in my left (GOOD) ear. At first I thought it was my speakers, but I checked and rechecked the wiring and it was fine, then realised the crackling was coming from inside my head.

i took that online hearing test, and was totally unsurprised to discover I had the hearing of someone 15 years older. But I notice that I definitely will have problems understanding people talking, especially in an environment with a lot of other sounds, like a club or bar.

That online test says I have the hearing of a 50+ person :( Since what I said upthread my tinnitus has accelerated horribly and I'm getting quite hard of hearing now, which is rather distressing. I must see to it. Ive no idea the cause: Ive been to a couple of earsplitting gigs like Mogwai without earplugs (I refuse to stick things in my ears) but that cant be the sole cause. Age? Smoking? Stress? I dunno.

That clipping distortion thing that used to plague me 3-4 years ago (and the reason I started this thread) has more or less gone away. My daughters used to be able to set it off by close-proximity screaming/crying but they don't any more, which suggests it was some psychological thing. Orbital at Brixton Academy last week was pretty loud and that gave me no problems.

Michael - i have emailed you.

Hopefully you receive it :)

Kashmira - I wish I could help but pretty all I have to offer on the subject is on this thread! My symptoms have receded, imperceptibly slowly, over the last 3-4 years, to the point where I just don't think it happens any more. Audiologist could find no problem in 2005 (in fact, I was found to have an exceptionally flat frequency response for a 37-y-o). It's comforting that someone out there is experiencing exactly the same thing (for a while, everyone I spoke to said, "oh, you mean tinnitus" - er, no!) and I hope you're encouraged by the fact that, in my case at least, it resolved itself in time. Best of luck.

Thankyou Michael,

If you can remember..

It was a distortion right?..

Like a quick buzz that is discomforting?..

If so

I hope it resvolves in time

Thankyou for your reponse :)

crinkling foil

I have/had this in my right ear, though my doctor couldn't find anything wrong with them. flushing out my ears with water was painful though. not sure if I have it anymore, as I can't remember the last time I was annoyed by it.

tinnitus sucks, and I'm glad I'm not the kind of guy who's psychologically bothered by it

Michael
I've been searching for a while to find someone on-line with a similar symptoms to mine. I'm a sound recordist and have always been quite hyper about protecting my hearing. Then about 18 months ago my right ear suddenly started to distort when volumes reached very moderate levels and I'm absolutely sure there was no high level sound abuse at the time. It will kick off especially on hearing a women sing or by that 'shouty' sound you get in a crowded restaurant with hard wall surfaces - very much upper mid range frequencies are the problem. Also my ears actually do feel different, there's almost a slight pressure inside the right ear.

I've just spent this last 18 months going through very much the same NHS process as you to reach the same conclusion as yours - I even had an MIR scan - but they discharged me after various visits saying sorry can't help and had no idea!!!

As a patient and professional sound guy I could describe all the minute systems to them, but it seems if they can't cure it with a hearing aid, they don't seem to be interested. On the hearing test the frequency response of my ears is actually quite good for a ** year old. It has really surprised me in this day and age how little is known by science about our ears and the way we hear.

As far as my own symptoms, I'm convinced the distortion or resonance is actually on top my normal hearing. i.e. it's only the moderate volume that is distorting and underneath is still 'normal' sound at the lower volume and I think my brain has begun to listen past the distortion, although if I'm in a high volume, distinguishing anything then becomes very difficult. I've heard a lot about some volume sensitive people feeling pain, but to me it's just frustrating I can't hear properly nice volumes go above 'normal'.

The things that have helped me greatly is firstly that I've found someone with very similar symptoms and secondly that long term it went away.

Kind regards
Mike

I've been having problems with my left ear recently. I'm 26 (too young for this shit!) and have had mild tinnitus for the last 5 years or so, maybe more, and an ENT visit last year showed up some hearing loss in my left ear. But recently that ear seems to have got a lot worse. I'm having trouble with bass frequencies, weirdly - it just doesn't sound as resonant as it should - and in general it sounds a bit dull and feels different. It also gets sore quite quickly if I'm listening to music and is sensitive to very sharp sounds, like cutlery on plates and pans.

I went to my doctor the other day and he was no hope at all. Took a look in there and ruled out wax deposits (damn) and basically came with the attitude of 'well what do you want me to do about it?'. I'm going to see an audiologist today in Boots the chemist so I'll see what he says. Btw I have been using attentuating earplugs (most of the time) for the last 2 years or so, but I lost a pair and went a few months using different ones (including those Doc's Pro Plugs, which I discovered are useless for gigs) or none. I think A Place To Bury Strangers with the Pro Plugs might have been the final straw.

"no hope" should read "no help", sorry.

Interesting. The hearing test showed up a deficiency in the 4KHz range (I think) but the audiologist wasn't too concerned - said it was "the beginnings of a hearing loss". He reckoned the problems I'm having in my left ear could be down to fluid in the ear and that a decongestant may sort it out. So Sudafed it is. Fingers crossed!

Update (if anyone cares).

This problem still exists - it's spent the last six months bothering me to a greater or lesser extent so I got referred to ENT. That ruled out fluid in the ear, but raised the possibility that the fact I grind my teeth could be the cause.

Has anyone else heard of this or found it to be true? A quick google for teeth grinding (or bruxism) and hearing loss indicates that it is sometimes a symptom. This is worrying because, unlike fluid in the ear, it's highly unlikely to go away.

I used to grind my teeth in my sleep, and that caused a "wooliness" to the hearing in the right ear. I stopped grinding my teeth (primarily by leaving a horrible job) and gradually the hearing came back over about a year.

Yeah stress seems to be a factor in this. I've always considered myself to be fairly stress-free, though there could be something in it. The ear problems started at around the time I broke up with my last girlfriend after four years. Two months ago, I started a more enjoyable, but also more stressful job (editor of a small but very busy magazine).

That said, as far as I'm aware I've been grinding for a few years, before any of this was an issue.

I've just spent the past months with burst ear drums (painful and messy, probably had one-fifth of regular hearing at one point) and one possible cause my doctor suggested was anti-dandruff shampoo. Wish I'd asked him how that would work, now.

That makes no sense. Sorry to hear about your problems though. Is it getting/likely to get any better?

Yes, they're probably back in volume terms to at least 90% of what they originally were, which I'm pretty happy with considering I spent April hearing everything as if I had my head under water. I'd always assumed burst eardrums meant you lost your sense of balance, glad that didn't happen to me. I'm getting the 'digital clipping' effect every so often in the left one, which might be something to bother the GP about if it continues. Just happy the worst of it is over, though.

No idea what brought it on, though, which is the most disturbing.

I definitely get that 'digital clipping' in my right ear and it's been worse as of late.

my pet theory is that it's just the sound of blood coursing through the veins & arteries near your eardrum

i only get that kind of thing if i'm like bending over or doing something that makes me strain my neck muscles really hard, which makes me think that yeah it does have something to do with bloodflow around the ears

I've just spent the past months with burst ear drums (painful and messy, probably had one-fifth of regular hearing at one point) and one possible cause my doctor suggested was anti-dandruff shampoo.

What in the fuck!? I've had burst ear drums. That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. Theyre caused by middle ear infections!

Anyway Chris: you sound like you have what I have. I appear to have lost all my bass frequency in my right ear, and my general hearing seems really poor now. It didnt even occur to me it could be bruxism/TMJ type of thing, i wonder if...

Anyway I was whining aout this last October and look at me, still deaf and have done nothing :/ I really need to. At work, poeple talk to me from 2 desks away and I simply cant hear them. Ugh.

Yeah the dandruff shampoo thing is ridic. My left eardrum has been perforated at least 3 times. It blew up while I was on a plane and then 2x because of ear infections. It's permanently perforated now and I have to have an operation to repair the hole but I'm too scared so I just deal with the hearing loss in that ear. :/

I got middle ear infections twice as a kid, and I've never been so terrified. It was like having literal minature firecrackers going off over and over in my ear canals, and it was so painful (and messy, ew all the goo). Went into hospital twice to have those "graumet" drains inserted.

Have ever since had a completely unmanageble phobia of ear pain/things in my ears.

I totally remember having those graumet tubes in my ears as a kid too...blech

have been exacerbating my tinnitus lately because I like to listen to music on my headphones, I don't even play the music loudly or anything. sucks

I've never had a burst eardrum, but I've used anti-dandruff shampoo for 20 years with no problems.

Yeh that shampoo thing is so wtf I dont even.

Middle ear infections are caused by colds, sinusitis, smoking, etc.in kids, it just happens (underdeveloped eustachen tubes) and is fairly common - shit backs up in the EU tubes against the ear drum and BAM. Ow.

Thankfully as an adult theyre rare due to the stronger ear structure, and I've been glad that Ive had no worse than ear pain/slight crackles, but yeah. This recent deafness is annoying.