6 ms·

I'm 43 years old, and in my 20s I went to a few loud rock shows. I had the same experience as you for days afterwards, but at the last one I attended without h

by dvtv75 9y ago

I'm 43 years old, and in my 20s I went to a few loud rock shows. I had the same experience as you for days afterwards, but at the last one I attended without hearing protection, something funny happened in my right ear. It was like someone turned the tone control right down, and loud noises would distort so badly I couldn't make anything out. A while later, I was watching a Scrubs episode where one of the characters ruptured an ear drum. That sound closely matched what I remembered hearing, so I've worn hearing protection to every concert since. Even had people make fun of me for it, but as soon as I say "probably ruptured an eardrum at a concert," they stop laughing. I have tinnitus from a different cause, though. When I was very small, 5 or 6 years old, one of my mother's boyfriends would haul me around by my ears. I remember that my ear started ringing one day, and it never stopped. I have two tones in one ear, and I think three in the other. 37 years later and it's as bad as it ever was, sadly. I have learned to just tune it out, but I can still hear it if I choose to - annoyingly, when I choose to hear it, I have to wait until I forget about it. edit: Forgot to note, the ringing is very, very high pitched. Remember what CRT televisions would sound like when you turned them on? Higher pitched than that.

toothbrush 9y ago
I literally cannot understand the mentality of people who'd make fun of you for wearing hearing protection at gigs. I go to a lot of gigs (like multiple times a week) and "simply trusting" that the sound engineer won't push the volume up into hearing damage territory is... naive at best. Please folks, use protection. I like Etymotic earplugs, but to be honest i'm not even sure if they're "heavy enough", but my pain threshold is pretty low i think. In any case since i've been consistently using ear protection i've almost never had the ringing thing after concerts, which makes me rather glad.
- projektir 9y ago
  It seems to be in the same bucket as people not wearing seat belts and making fun of you if you ask them to wear one in a car with you. If it's not something everyone does, and if you mention you do it for safety, the reaction is often rather negative. I think people don't like the idea that they might have been doing something very unsafe this whole time.
  - tripzilch 9y ago
    Well if I'm passenger in a car with someone who won't wear seatbelts then my reaction will become rather negative until they put the damn things on. If we got in a car accident, I may be secure with belts, but I don't want their body parts flopping in my face either.
pmarreck 9y ago
> one of my mother's boyfriends would haul me around by my ears. what in the f*?
- dvtv75 9y ago
  Yeah, he was an abusive piece of crap, and we were the children of another man. Think that pretty much covers it there.
  - pmarreck 9y ago
    the abuse rate of stepchildren is something like an order of magnitude higher than of biological children, for whatever reason (correction: at least TWO orders of magnitude!) https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/200906/do-parents-favor-natural-children-over-adopted-ones https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/2009... "The Cinderella effect is well substantiated in crime data. Children growing up in step families are about 40 times as likely to be abused and 140 times as likely to be murdered as children growing up with both natural parents (murder still being a low probability)." I'm really sorry you had to go through that. I was also physically abused by my bio mom up till about 9-10 years old (but she in turn was abused until she was 18, so she arguably reduced the snowball effect). All we can do is try to not repeat the same mistakes for our next generations. The problem is, I have temper issues to this day...
tripzilch 9y ago
> Even had people make fun of me for it What? Who does that? Whenever I see someone wear earplugs I think "good for them" (and occasionally "shit I forgot to bring mine"). I saw loads of people wear them at the psy festival I was last summer (and wore them myself, too). And the music wasn't even that loud. While I can hear the music just fine, it does, however, reduce that feeling of "sound presence" during a live show or set. The space feels "emptier" too, like, a huge crowd of people jumping to sonic vibrations (even stronger if it's in a darkened club with just a few bright white lights and smoke), it's pretty weird behaviour if you consider it. But the sound sort of blankets and normalizes this, at least, that's my feeling when that veil falls away when I put in the plugs. I kind of wonder about the custom-mold plugs. I don't use the cheap yellow foam ones, but reusable ones about €20 I got at a hearing-aid store (asked for ones suitable for concerts/festivals), which I'm fairly pleased with. Does the "presence" effect get better with the custom-molded ones? Because afaik they're about €300 or so. If they don't restore that "presence" compared to the €20 earplugs, but just some better quality (which is nice, but is it 300 euros nice?) I'm not sure if it's worth it. But if they do and they are also much more comfortable, it might be a nice present for myself :)
- bradstewart 9y ago
  What brand are they? I wear Etymotic ER20XS earplugs (also cheap, about $20) now and don't notice any lack of "sound presence". I completely forget I'm wearing them after 20 minutes or so.

by dvtv75 9y ago

toothbrush 9y ago

I literally cannot understand the mentality of people who'd make fun of you for wearing hearing protection at gigs. I go to a lot of gigs (like multiple times a week) and "simply trusting" that the sound engineer won't push the volume up into hearing damage territory is... naive at best. Please folks, use protection. I like Etymotic earplugs, but to be honest i'm not even sure if they're "heavy enough", but my pain threshold is pretty low i think. In any case since i've been consistently using ear protection i've almost never had the ringing thing after concerts, which makes me rather glad.

projektir 9y ago
It seems to be in the same bucket as people not wearing seat belts and making fun of you if you ask them to wear one in a car with you. If it's not something everyone does, and if you mention you do it for safety, the reaction is often rather negative. I think people don't like the idea that they might have been doing something very unsafe this whole time.
- tripzilch 9y ago
  Well if I'm passenger in a car with someone who won't wear seatbelts then my reaction will become rather negative until they put the damn things on. If we got in a car accident, I may be secure with belts, but I don't want their body parts flopping in my face either.

pmarreck 9y ago

> one of my mother's boyfriends would haul me around by my ears. what in the f*?

dvtv75 9y ago
Yeah, he was an abusive piece of crap, and we were the children of another man. Think that pretty much covers it there.
- pmarreck 9y ago
  the abuse rate of stepchildren is something like an order of magnitude higher than of biological children, for whatever reason (correction: at least TWO orders of magnitude!) https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/200906/do-parents-favor-natural-children-over-adopted-ones https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/2009... "The Cinderella effect is well substantiated in crime data. Children growing up in step families are about 40 times as likely to be abused and 140 times as likely to be murdered as children growing up with both natural parents (murder still being a low probability)." I'm really sorry you had to go through that. I was also physically abused by my bio mom up till about 9-10 years old (but she in turn was abused until she was 18, so she arguably reduced the snowball effect). All we can do is try to not repeat the same mistakes for our next generations. The problem is, I have temper issues to this day...

tripzilch 9y ago

> Even had people make fun of me for it What? Who does that? Whenever I see someone wear earplugs I think "good for them" (and occasionally "shit I forgot to bring mine"). I saw loads of people wear them at the psy festival I was last summer (and wore them myself, too). And the music wasn't even that loud. While I can hear the music just fine, it does, however, reduce that feeling of "sound presence" during a live show or set. The space feels "emptier" too, like, a huge crowd of people jumping to sonic vibrations (even stronger if it's in a darkened club with just a few bright white lights and smoke), it's pretty weird behaviour if you consider it. But the sound sort of blankets and normalizes this, at least, that's my feeling when that veil falls away when I put in the plugs. I kind of wonder about the custom-mold plugs. I don't use the cheap yellow foam ones, but reusable ones about €20 I got at a hearing-aid store (asked for ones suitable for concerts/festivals), which I'm fairly pleased with. Does the "presence" effect get better with the custom-molded ones? Because afaik they're about €300 or so. If they don't restore that "presence" compared to the €20 earplugs, but just some better quality (which is nice, but is it 300 euros nice?) I'm not sure if it's worth it. But if they do and they are also much more comfortable, it might be a nice present for myself :)

bradstewart 9y ago
What brand are they? I wear Etymotic ER20XS earplugs (also cheap, about $20) now and don't notice any lack of "sound presence". I completely forget I'm wearing them after 20 minutes or so.