In this article, [Link: seattletimes.com], the author explains that the ability to understand what one is hearing can be damaged, even if actual hearing sensitivity is not lowered.

This should be of interest to all of us since at some point we depend on our hearing to evaluate our work or what is needed in an audio system.

This may be somewhat related to an issue having to do with brain plasticity. I've got moderate hearing loss and a hearing aid salesperson made the puzzling claim that a person with bad hearing in one ear should use a hearing aid even if the other ear works perfectly well.

With normal hearing, our brains dedicate certain portions to interpreting what is heard. It's not true that the brain is static; instead it will adjust to the different kinds of input we give it. This means that if we lower the amount of input given by one ear, the brain will lose some of its ability to interpret what comes in that ear, so there's a double loss: input and intelligibility.

This ability of the brain to adjust to the inputs explains how a blind person can be so much better at reading braille than a sighted person: it's not just practice, it's actually also the amount of the brain dedicated to the inputs. If there's no sight input, and tactile input is maintained or even increased, the parts of the brain that would handle visual input learn to handle better and better detail of the tactile input.

Does not take much research to figure that out.
I was an automotive technician for 20 years most of it too macho to wear hearing protection. Been to many loud concerts and I can't hear shit for conversation in a crowd. I call it lack of audio comprehension. People think I am having a bad time or I am pissed off.
If its important conversation I take it to a quieter place.

+1, tire business for thirty years.

Thanks Ernie. Very good read and useful research.

after about 8 years wearing a radio (like cops wear with the remote speaker/mic up by ur shoulder) in a glass factory as a maint mechanic for the plant machinery i started having issues with my left eye. The side i wore the radio on. The plant is so loud you have to wear earplugs. Problem is you're always going in and out of loud and quiet places so your always taking your earplugs out. Same with when your on break. When your on the floor you have the radio cranked as loud as it can go to hear it. Many times you forget to turn your radio down with earplugs out and somebody on the plant for keys up the mic. Usually its because there is an issue and another mechanic or boss is nearby so you get feedback bad too.

The son of a B is ridiculous loud.... especially with the high pitched feedback squeezing and ambient noise. I put a DB meter on it once and it was over 110. I forget exactly how many db but it was above that. Now picture that for 8 years about 3 inches away from your ear.

What happens is i have no hearing loss... so doctors dont find shit on a test... but in louder environments my left ear freaks out. like a blown speaker. its uncomfortable.. i worry... and sound gets distorted bad. It happens cranking music in the truck. If a band is playing in a bar. At concerts. Even when someone is loud on the phone.

I dont know what the hell is wrong with my ear but it hasn't not got any better years later after i stopped wearing that radio.

Once damage has occurred to our inner ear, it is permanent. It does not 'heal' from damage, unlike other parts of the body.
This is why it is so important to protect your hearing, throughout your life. And why so much effort is put into education about hearing protection, from a young age.
The problem of course is the young never listen - how ironic :)

That's been true up to now but there is some new hope. Please see: [Link: huffingtonpost.co.uk]

I have tinnitus, which is a constant ringing in the ears. I attribute it to using a hammer drill for too many years at close range. Often it is hard for me to go to sleep at nights because that is really when I notice it. It sounds like a thousand crickets on a summer night.

Most times when I watch TV I need the captions on or I have a problem hearing talking on the screen. The volume of the TV is loud enough but the dialog is hard to understand.

I am afraid that the next generation is going to have a lot of these same problems. Heavy bass levels in closed cars and ear buds are going to cause a lot of damage to young listeners.

According to the latest brain research, this lack of understanding is the kind of brain unlearning that happens when not enough sound signals get into the brain. I first heard it when a hearing aid person said I should have a hearing aid on my worse ear in order to keep from losing perception. It didn't make sense to me, until I remembered the brain plasticity thing, and then I got it: it's keeping the brain perception... area exercised.


Sad but true.

I sometimes hear something that almost sounds like pink noise, but with some area around maybe 2500 Hz a little louder than the rest. Does anybody know what that is? It's similar to the rushing sound I heard when I could sit in the center of the Marantz anechoic* chamber for a half hour back when I worked in loudspeaker engineering there around 1980.



*perhaps anechoic but nowhere near perfect. Measured frequency response depended heavily on speaker and mic placement in the space!