I'm no expert, but audiologists have suggested I may have recruitment since hyperacusis is very rare. From my understanding recruitment is when adjacent or nearby hair cells to the damaged ones, for folks with acoustic trauma like myself, will pick up the sound from frequencies our damaged hair cells would. Since they are not tuned to that frequency it takes a louder sound for them to detect it, but when they do it sounds loud.
Practically speaking this would be akin to someone playing a sound through a speaker, at a volume a normal person could hear but you cannot, and gradually turning up the volume. For a person with recruitment the difference between threshold of hearing at that frequency and uncomfortably loud would be very narrow. Similarly if someone was calling your name and you didn't hear it, calling slightly louder each time, then suddenly when you hear it it is uncomfortably loud and you tell them to stop shouting.
Personally that does not match my symptoms. Sound that a normal person considers quiet is somewhat loud for me. I can clearly understand speech on a TV at low volume where a normal person misses parts of dialogue. I seem to perceive most sound as louder than others, as dB increases I sense a steady increase in volume, there is no sudden threshold where sound is uncomfortable or painful such as how recruitment has been described to me.
I very well could be mistaken, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
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