If you have a university with a Speech and Hearing Science department nearby, check them out. I got fitted for the nice plugs at no cost and got to spend an hour having my hearing tested every which way. They even gave me a frequency response plot of my hearing. Big notches, but now I know where they are.
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hey chris, don't forget about the fletcher-munson curves. dropping everything equally by 20-25dB will change the relative balance of the lows/mids/highs by a little, won't it? since the frequency response of human ears are far from linear relative to level? but no doubt, the pro earplugs are way more 'flat' than any other option and are the best way to go.

last time i had an audiogram done was back in college. and at 4K, i actually had a *positive* value, somewhere in the neighborhood of like +1.5dB i think it was. which finally explained my oversensitivity to noise, and why i hated power tools so much as a kid.

I've had it my entire life. Maybe it's because I had a bad ear infection when I was little, I dunno but I always remember the noise in my ears. I guess it's like Tim's where I mostly only hear it when it's quiet. I go through periods in my life where it drives me crazy and makes me have panic attacks and then other periods where it doesn't bother me at all. I always tried to wear earplugs when I played. Everybody always hates earplugs but I like them. Everything always sounds much more clear and I can hear myself with them. I guess that makes me a puss.

larsxe wrote:For all those suffering from tinnitus, I recommend the following site:

http://www.tinnitus.org

"... all the accounts of tinnitus in textbooks said it was all due to ear damage which couldn't be fixed. That is what many people and professionals still believe. It just happens not to be true."

It gives a good introduction how hearing is connected to emotional states, and thus how tinnitus stays with you when seen as a problem. If you stop seeing it as a problem, "subcortical filters" will filter out the noise generated by your brain.

Everyone experiences tinnitus after spending some time in a totally dead room. It's the auditory system's way of reacting to an abnormal situation. The same phenomenon occurs after being subjected to extreme SPLs. If you develop an emotional reaction to these sounds they stick with you -- but they were there even before traumatic experiences made you start hearing them.

The part about it being connected to emotional states makes a lot of sense to me... it's kind of the same conclusion I have come to over the years. The second paragraph kind of reminds me of things I've read saying that perhaps it's just the brain's way of filling in silence. Sometimes I think about how great it would be if there were a way to fix it... or fix my perception of it. If there were though I'd probably be too scared to try it because if it didn't work for me that would be really crummy.

My engineer buddy asked me once if I had tinnitus, and I was all like, "Fuck No!". Then one day I decided to listen for it, and out of nowhere... bam I got tinnitus. It's one of those things that I can just ignore. There are times when I listen for it and can't hear. There are other times when it's just blaring, and I find that it's usually when Im stressed or sleep deprived. Ive even checked the frequencies in each ear, and they've been different at different times.

Anyhow, when I first heard the shit I got some custom fit earplugs. Mine are made by etymotic research and are really great. I use the 15dB pad and they sound good. Although they are flat in frequency, the wierdest part about them is that they fuck with perception in terms of acoustics and depth perception. I notice that when I put them in it is much easier to distinguish the direct source from reflections in the room, particularly in really boomy or echoic rooms.

If you decide to get some custom earplugs, be sure the mold is deep enough, it should go past the second bend in your ear canal. My ears are really sensitive to pain and the first time they pressed a mold I couldn't take the pain of them pushing the stopper plug into my ear, so my first molds were too short and sounded really muddy. I noticed that if I pushed them in deeper they would sound much better. Etymotic offers a free re-mold for one month. I went ahead and faced the pain like a champ, and my new plugs are really great.

mtar

As much as I hate plugging anything, I bought a pair of these earplugs and haven't had a single bad experience at a show yet, and my hearing's always been fine the day after. It's worlds better than when I was a stupid kid and never even put toilet paper in my ears, which would've saved me from countless feedback-drenched teen compositions masquerading as Velocity Girl opening acts.

Anyway the earplugs are at http://www.etymotic.com/ephp/er20.asp . They even come in pretty colors. Enjoy, or something.

I recently went from the cheap foamy ones to a pair ofHeroes.

They're super easy to put in and sound ok, but similar to the foam. I've grown pretty used to that sound, and I always wear them at shows, all though sometimes when playing, when the monitor mix or stage layout is bad, I'll have to take them out rather than play a bad show (when you play in an instrumental band, you don't have much to fall back on except stage energy )

another way to avoid tinnitus is to not smoke cigarettes. cause they're ototoxic. same with various different recreational drugs. like cigarettes, they actually destroy your hearing. how bout that!!

You know what's weird? Objective tinnitus.

newberry wrote:You know what's weird? Objective tinnitus.

That is weird.

I've never had addiction problems to any substance. Never struggled to quit this or quit that.

The only thing that feels like a monkey on my back is my inability to play with earplugs in. I've tried countless times to play with something in my ears and everytime I take them out minutes after putting them in.

I really can't help it. I am powerless to the urge to clear whatever it is that rests inside my ears. And I've tried them all.......

I will pay dearly for this someday. I'm so sorry, self.

Sometimes loud things actually feel good.