I'm really skeptical of this. I've been dumb enough to fire a decent amount of ammunition without hearing protection, and I've had my (undiagnosed) tinnitus get

I'm really skeptical of this. I've been dumb enough to fire a decent amount of ammunition without hearing protection, and I've had my (undiagnosed) tinnitus get worse over time in a way that seemed related to this. I'm also very aware of background noises (like 60 cycle hums), and get annoyed by them frequently. The tinnitus sounds very different than those, and I can concentrate on other tasks way easier with my tinnitus acting up than I can sitting close to flourescent lights and other appliances that emit noticable 60 cycle hums. Sometimes it actually helps, by masking out other background noises. Edit: I'm not saying that personal annoyance doesn't factor into who notices that they have tinnitus, I just suspect that there is actual hearing loss (and subsequent over-amplication to correct for this) involved.