My buddy plays drums and in addition to the usual age deterioration curve for age 67 has the static and crackling type of tinnitus due to having had an acoustic neuroma that was zapped with radiation. He reports the noise tinnitus to be far more annoying than the already annoying tone tinnitus. It’s better or worse and he constantly attempts to guess causality, usually determining that what he thought was a cause turns out to be random or otherwise more complicated. It seems consistent that road noise from a long car trip is a consistent trigger. It seemed that having his head under water swimming was a calming factor for tinnitus, but he developed a rash from the chlorine and had to quit. One explanation is that the ear makes it’s own noise when not receiving enough stimulus (different than what happens with road noise). When he first got a hearing aid the tinnitus seemingly ceased almost completely. It has crept back in since. He still seems to think it’s better with the hearing aid, but not nearly as good as when he first got it. It’s all very difficult to isolate and track down. What’s interesting is that I can verify his critical listening skills are completely in tact He makes very detailed accurate observations about music that most people would never be able to articulate. He can’t hear the hihat in many recordings, but it doesn’t change his ability to observe if the tonal balance is off when evaluating gear. I don’t think he fully believes me when I tell him how good his end perceptions are despite his measurable physical limitations. He doesn’t report any reduction in the enjoyment of music, only the fear that overdoing either playing or listening will trigger the noise and crackling, so he still listens with careful attention to how much he thinks he is loading his ears.
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