My guess is, the nervous system dampens the signal from the middle ear when it sees obvious noise coming in. IIRC tinnitus also gets diminished in a noisy envir

My guess is, the nervous system dampens the signal from the middle ear when it sees obvious noise coming in. IIRC tinnitus also gets diminished in a noisy environment. (Afaik it's a pretty well-known feature of the nervous system, an example being how the ‘pins and needles’ fade out in a previously-sleeping limb.)