Tinnitus, hearing distortion & how musicians deal with them

About in ear stage monitoring I havr to say that aviom solutions or similar clones such as the behringer stage mixers with in ear support can only make things worse for someone like me.

Tinnitus cases though are very personal so its nice to see how others deal with it.

Aldevis i have a neighbour osteopath that totally looks like Candice Night so i think that i should definately ask for an expert's opinion. I mean how bad could that be 😛
 
I think the cleaning out did something even more disruptive than just removing wax, and the way Brian (the guitarist) describes it, the distortion is now physically painful, beyond discomfort.

If the cleaning of the ears has made things worse (other than just improving his hearing at normal volumes) something has been done badly wrongly. Having ears cleaned is a process involving a controlled pressure warm water syringe pump, with the water being spiralled round the inside of the ear to gently free up stubborn wax deposits. He did get it done properly, hasn't he? Serious problems can be caused by poking things in the ear (never put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear) or squirting in water from a normal syringe.

(I know all this as I have hearing problems and to minimise the issue, the lovely Mrs F, a practice nurse of many years experience does the ear syringing for me at home, using a machine we bought for the purpose).

If the treatment has made things worse I'd suggest he has an appointment with his GP to check out what's happened.
 
Reading this makes me count my blessings, having needed two hearing aids for many years and all the problems that are associated with them are a bit of a pain but I thank my lucky stars I don't suffer tinnitus
 
I get 'stuffiness' (sometimes called Temporary Threshold Shift - but sometimes it's not temporary!) and tinnitus from playing, and also have constant low-level tinnitus. I don't like ear plugs, so I don't see a solution. For me, the answer is to play less, and maybe work on mellow ballads more often.
 
It's something as musicians we need to be aware of. I am very wary of being exposed to very loud sounds for any length of time. It's probably good that I don't like discos/nightclubs and things as the odd time I have been to one, my ears end up ringing.

When I was playing in a large symphonic wind band and sat in front of of 9 trombones and 4 percussionists, I had made-to-measure ear plugs made. These attenuate by 15db, but you can get different filters.

My dad had hearing issues due to being exposed to artillery fire during army training during his National Service back in the early 50s.

I strongly recommend that people get their hearing tested on a regular basis. In the UK many of the opticians also have on-site audiologists.
 
Buggered my hearing when testing and repairing disco speakers and amps. I was young and stupid. Now I'm old and stupid.
I also suffer from the latter problem. I'm about to head off to get hearing aids, but I fear that I'll be a difficult customer, and I suspect that it's all going to be about eq. Thankfully the tinnitus I've had has only been temporary.
 
Protecting your ears is something that should be taught at early stage of music educations.
And it's not.

I suffered of tinnitus as well after concert on loud stages... (badly managed both by musicians and stage monitor engineer). And I learned the hard way to use ear plugs and cotton wool (as ear plug).

Same when I go to concerts where I know things gonna be loud.
July 2024 I was at a concert of Cory Henry and Funk Apostles... tons of sub-bass stuff, octave pedal on bass... that's cool, unless there's harmonic distortion on the PA.
And that time was a mess, harmoninc distortion, feedbacks from the stage and clipping.

So... I had that hiss in my head for almost 4 months... and the only thing that can relieve that thing were those tinnitus-aid compilations you can find on Spotify/Deezer.
You need nice ear phones (possibly with a hear-through function...) and keep running those relieving sounds for 3/4 hours a day.
Those sound tracks help your brain to not focus on the hiss... when you stop listening these sound tracks, you'll indeed feel the hiss much reduced, at least temporarily.
But keep doing this listening therapy it will get reducing permantently overtime.
 
Being older I have tinnitus, but it is more related to how much sleep I get. If insufficient, it is louder. Also being married 40 years, during that time on various occasions, my wife has told me that I need hearing aids. :confused: 😀
 
I have ear plugs when playing with the orchestra, I need to practice more often with them in, I tend to only wear them when I know brass are going be particularly boisterous.

Used to get my hearing tested regularly in Navy, was always an anxious thing second guessing if you heard a beep or not.
 

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