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Comment by big_red | Hacker News Reader

Sorry but this theory is false, I’ll explain. Hearing loss is caused by genetics or a consequence of infection. It’s a part of aging no matter how loud the volume of your earphones. Just some people get it worse than others. I’ve been listening at max (100db+) volume, 5 hours a day, every day, since the mid 80’s. I did recently lose some hearing to an infection in my left ear. I’m not playing down the severity of hearing loss, you don’t know the value of what you have until you lose it. When hearing loss does happen, there’s no cure. I took steroid injections through the eardrum, and orally, and a handful of other drugs but there is no effective treatment.

The loss of happiness from not having music is just incalculable. But I would in a moment give up all my money and possessions to get back music.

Anyway, what they’re blaming on loud music is a consequence of genetics or infection.

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Anecdotally, I somewhat agree with you (infection is a major cause).

I've had tinnitus for most of my life. I still go to loud venues and although it's rare for me to not use earplugs, I'm still aware of the gradual damage I'm causing from this.

I had Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SSHL) recently and I'd liken it to an instant 50/60 years of hearing loss at my current level of deterioration.

I'm extremely lucky to have a doctor on the public health service who gave me an instant appointment prescribed the correct medication. I'd very likely would be near-deaf in one ear if I'd waited for private care.

Sorry, you're incredibly wrong.

Go and talk to older musicians who always wore hearing protection, and then go and talk to musicians of the same age who never did. You'll see the effects very clearly.

Recording engineer here of the same age as the OP: perceived (spectrum summed) volume and associated hearing loss is proportional to the level of distortion (not simple noise) in the signal. I get freaked by footsteps a hundred yards behind me on the sidewalk at night. Fix your mix levels for better hearing.

Edit: lift the noise floor in your print to mask undesirable signal path snr harmonics. This is the technique employed (very non exclusively in this example) by state of the art DACs such as in the CH 1.5 disc player.

> I get freaked by footsteps a hundred yards behind me on the sidewalk at night

This doesn't mean anything.

Hearing loss is directly correlated with listening to audio at high volumes. The amplitude and distance to the speaker is all that matters. It's well-established science.

Much of the apparent distortion in post 83 tracks is caused by the horizontal alignment of near field monitors beginning with the Yamaha NS-10 popularity. Realignment is a octagonal problem.

Edit: just try swivelling your earbuds 90 degrees..

I’m not wrong, I’ve listened to 100db+ for a good 35 years, 5 hours a day, every single day. So how is it I have near perfect hearing? Doesn’t that break your theory? No? because it’s not based on fact.

You're absolutely wrong, I've got decades of live music experience. The older musicians with poor hearing are the most evangelical about using hearing protection because they never did. The older ones with good hearing will tell you that they have always used hearing protection.

It's not a theory, there are numerous studies about this very subject!

Genuinely amazing how wrong you are about this.

I’m living proof it isn’t true

You think you are.

Are you seriously saying that loud noises can't cause hearing damage? Because they can and do and that's been proven

and it's happened to me and to millions of other people

no not really. I mean ok if you stare into the sun long enough you’ll go blind and if you pump 300db into your eardrums with an ambulance siren, yes it can do damage. But your eyes and ears don’t ‘wear out’. For the most part they’ll regenerate continually but for instances where the hairs have been destroyed from infection or where genetics break the regeneration process. The studies reenforce the hypothesis that noise and not age are responsible for hearing loss, in spite of the fact that it’s the older patients that have it worse. its a bias they have, finding the conclusion before the rigor of an objective test.

And this matters. Because if you have a limited window to enjoy your hearing, you shouldn’t be listening at 50db, you should turn it up and get the full immersive enjoyment while you are able.

What are you basing this on?

There's hundreds of studies on this, it's absolute fact that noise causes damage, I can't believe you're trying to argue that it doesn't. And literally every study I've found controls for age because that's a super obvious confounding factor

How do you explain that noise studies on violinists found significantly worse hearing loss in the left ear (closer to where the violin is held) vs right ear?

On the fact I can hear perfectly, what are my ears magic?. No it’s not obvious at all. As we age we accumulate toxic chemicals, take injuries, and genetics become corrupted as the telomeres become exhausted. After the average age our ancestors reproduced is passed, anything and everything goes really.

Look at a violinist play, their neck is held at a 45 degree angle, compressing blood vessels going to… the left ear. If you do that 5 hours a day you might just get hearing loss.

See you’re oversimplifying a system with many layers of complexity. But if noise made you deaf and light made you blind, we would have many more deaf and blind people.

A lot of old drummers out there with a lot of ear infections, eh?

ARe you trolling? read some biology and how the ear is structured.

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