Anyone Else Find Quiet Music from a Boombox or TV Hurts Ears More Than, Say, a Loud Bar?

I had an acoustic trauma in Nov. 2017. I developed Morse code type tinnitus in my left ear and more of a hissing in my right. The tinnitus itself has gotten much better over the years. I really almost never think about it. I wake up a lot at night these days, and often I'm aware at some subliminal level that it's there (though certainly quieter than it once was), but I don't really notice it. We do sleep with a sound machine.

The one thing I would say, though, is that my ears remain very sensitive to tinny sound-- that is, most normal-volume sound coming from a TV or, say, a boombox. I find that those kinds of sounds really cause me ear pain and can even cause small, short-lived spikes. At the same time, occasionally being in a loud bar or a setting with much louder ambient sound does not cause these problems. For example, I was at a colleague's home for dinner last week. They had a boombox on quite low playing background music during dinner. After a certain amount of time, I finally had to ask them to turn it lower, even though it was already quite quiet and I knew they probably thought I was crazy. Anyway, this quiet boombox caused a significant short-lived spike where just the background music in the grocery store bothered my ears the next day, and my T ramped up briefly. Fortunately, it is already getting much better. By contrast, we went to New York for the holidays and were in all sorts of louder settings, and none of these problems occurred.

If quality of sound is a bigger issue than volume as such, what is the best course of treatment?

 

I should have added, I do spend a lot of time in quiet. I live in a quiet place and write in the mornings, which I can do only in silence. I do find in general I do better when we go to big cities. This all makes me think that maybe my problem is more too much silence than too much noise. But since sounds from electronic sources are the worst for me, I have been loath to try programs played by my phone or computer to help tinnitus. Even my sound machine is one that just has a fan inside, not one that makes digitized sounds.

 

Are you me? I have the exact same issue with my hyperacusis. I've had it all in all for the past 3-4 years mostly pretty mildly but I've been experiencing a setback that was worsened by my laptop speakers at a low volume (like 14/100). Something about that tinny low-quality speaker sound from a laptop/phone just seems to be absolutely lethal to my ears if I've not fully recovered from a setback. As a result, I've not watched/listened to anything on my laptop for best part of 3 weeks - I did try some 'soothing' pink noise on YouTube but it just aggravated my ears and made them feel really inflamed afterwards.

I think my condition is starting to improve and the inflammation and fullness has diminished a bit over the past few days. I don't really have issues with regular ambient noise and normal, face-to-face conversations etc. It's mostly artificial audio sources. I suspect that it could be something to do with the frequency and compression which perhaps makes it more abrasive?

I'm also struggling to strike the right balance with over/under protecting - I'm just trying to listen to my ears but it's tricky. I also don't really get immediate pain or anything, it's more a delayed reaction.

 

It's not always the sounds, that possibly annoy the tinnitus. Stress can be an issue as well. Possibly you might have felt stress, with so much going on in that setting with the low boombox playing. Bars can be quite loud and annoying to the ears. Nothing is set in stone, when it comes to tinnitus but places with louder sounds tend to not be as helpful to those that have tinnitus.

I play some of my music at very low low volumes on my portable speakers and it's not an issue. I will not step into a place that has loud sounds or music. I once stepped into a sports grill with a major telecast of a sports game on and it got so loud and my ears were not happy

 

Sound from TV's etc can be very compressed. It can also focus more on an area of frequency. The compression makes everything very loud, or prominent. That means a whisper can be as loud as a scream. This balls to the walls level (even with the volume down) can be fatiguing to listen to.

 

I’ve experienced the same exact phenomenon. It varied day to day, and sometimes when something irritated me from my MacBook speaker I would have to switch to airpods and the irritation would go away. I think you’re right that it’s an indication of some kind of inflammation. Lately I’ve started taking a turmeric paste twice a day for about a week and this irritation has completely gone away. I’ve been paying close attention to how I react to sounds everyday to see if it’s making a difference and I absolutely have to report that there is an unarguable difference after consuming turmeric paste.