So, you are keen to get out there, play it loud and bask in the joys of 120+ dB sound systems. Lets hope it is a truly rewarding and life changing experience for you. We know it will be and have listed below some of the extra conditions you are likely to be allowed to enjoy in your old age because of it.

Tinnitus
This one is the real killer. It is a common mistake to assume that having a hearing loss is like permanent silence. You see, most people view hearing loss as being akin to the fade out at the end of a broadcast, recording or live show. That wonderful fade to a point where the gain structure is set to zero and silence rules. Sadly, with hearing problems, this is seldom if ever true.

Unfortunately, hearing loss is often accompanied by unwanted noises in the head also described as the sound of cicadas. This is Tinnitus. It is a physical condition, experienced as noises or ringing in the ears or head, when no such external physical noise is present. Tinnitus is not a disease in itself. It is a symptom of a fault in the auditory (hearing) system, which includes the ears and the brain. The word 'tinnitus' is Latin in origin and means 'tinkling or ringing like a bell'.

Tinnitus will not cause a hearing loss but is certainly associated with a hearing loss. Approximately 17 to 20 per cent of Australians suffer from some degree of tinnitus, varying from mild to brutal. The percentage of people overall, who are severely affected, is small but the incidence is high in the audio industry.

Tinnitus can be caused by a number of things including degeneration ('wear and tear') of the small bones in the middle ear and ear problems, such as otosclerosis (fixation of the tiny stirrup bone in middle ear). It's suggested that other causes that can make tinnitus worse include; large amounts of aspirin, excessive amounts of caffeine, excessive alcohol consumption, smoking. But really, the number one biggest reason, by a mile, still comes from people who give their ears a thrashing from loud noise.

Now the funny thing about tinnitus is that, no two people have the same sound. If you ask anybody who has tinnitus what it sounds like, you will get varying descriptions that might include ringing, buzzing, whistling, roaring, humming, etc. The reason for this is simple.

Tinnitus is predominantly caused by the small hairs in our cochlea (C).

If you took note of our electronic ear you will have remembered we had a multicore with more than 15,000 channels. Each of these channels has it's own pre-amp and signal processor. Now what would happen if when we damage the input feed to one of these pre-amps. An open channel and a bit of line noise. No big deal. But if we damage a few of them the line noise would start to increase and because each of our 15,000 channels is a different frequency, the random breakage would create a line noise that would be quite different to the sound of random breaks in another system. Then take into account we get harmonic overtones from frequencies that beat and the overall tone starts to become a more complex signal. The variation of these signals is the reason why everybody has a different sound to their tinnitus and the varying extent of damaged (open feeds). It is also common for tinnitus to fluctuate slightly with stress or tiredness because of pressure and moisture content (impedance) changes with the open feeds.

However you look at it, common sense tells us all to look after our multicore and in this case especially so because we can't purchase a new one.

Physical (mechanical) ear damage
The ear is in some ways very similar to your average ribbon or condenser microphone. Want to know how well they survive? Go to any quality studio, ask the owner for his most prized condenser microphone, and then tell him you're going to shove it in the kick drum cavity. The only way he will let you do this is if you are paying an absurd amount of money, because we all know that ribbon and condenser mics usually do not survive a long life if hammered like that. The ear behaves in a similar way.

Over time, the eardrum becomes less flexible, similar to the mylar membrane in a quality condenser. Savage repetitive flexing of a microphone capsule will result in damage. The mylar tends to harden with age and over flexing causes fissures around the edges. The capsule will start polling and serious damage will occur. In your ear, ruptures cause eardrums to become scarred and thickened and the result is the same as the capsule. It's stuffed and unrepairable. But in the case of the microphone, you can purchase a new capsule. Sadly this is not possible with your ear.

Physical damage can also occur when the noise actually damages the delicate hearing mechanism within the inner ear. Savage acoustic levels dramatically harm the delicate bones and membranes that make up the ears gearbox.

Cochlea damage
Even though it is not mechanical, the cochlea is still a very delicate instrument. It's where vibration is picked up by a small, spiral shaped organ. Hairs on the cochlea sense the vibration and pass on the message to the brain via the cochlear nerve. These sensitive hairs can become bent, damaged and broken by excessive noise. The resulting scar tissue will not conduct sound. As expected, the parts of the ear that process high frequency sounds are usually the first to be affected.

Ear Grease
The lining of the ear canal is coated with wax. It acts as a type of lubrication to stop the tissues from drying out. But like old capacitors, this sometimes dries and goes hard and crusty. The result in the ear is similar to the capacitor drying, a faulty circuit and increased noise.

Recruitment
This is another (and possibly the worst) condition gained from excessive noise induced hearing loss. Recruitment is the phenomenon where people with sensorineural hearing losses find sharp, sudden or very loud sounds distressing or painful. Not only can you not hear but what you do hear hurts you.

For most normal listeners levels between 130dB and 140dB are at the upper limit of comfort. For people with recruitment this level is a lot lower. Sometimes in severe conditions, where the condition includes severe hearing loss accompanied by dramatically reduced ULC (upper limit of comfort) , the ULC is so intolerably close to the gain required for hearing that simple communication becomes painful.

Masking
It is well known that when a certain tone is present it can hide or mask another tone, normally of slightly higher frequency. For most clients with a sensorineural hearing loss the threshold of sound increases as the frequency does, so this effect is exacerbated. The result is that lower frequency information easily masks that of higher frequency information (of similar intensity). This effect is called the Upward Spread of Masking. It is detrimental to the upper frequencies and obviously reduces speech recognition because if it.