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AirPods causing tinnitus?

discussions.apple.com

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Re: AirPods causing tinnitus?

#61

Post by bl4ckneon »

rajamaka wrote: post #40
grogenaut wrote: post #31

I highly suspect wearing mx3s in my home office with needless noise cancellation on during the first 1.2 years of the pandemic gave me tinnitus... Esp paired with a barely perceptible capacitor wine from a printer. That probably enter frequency is about where my tinnitus frequency is. I don't use noise cancellation anymore. Switched to some Sennheiser game ones ... Noise cancellation was useful in the office... But h…

I have worn mx4s for 4 years in my home office for over 10 each day with noise cancelling. No issues.

Simular situation. For the mx4's they sound so much better when ANC is turned on rather than off imo. Especially the bass/lower frequencies.

Re: AirPods causing tinnitus?

#62

Post by layer8 »

moomoo11 wrote: post #39

I’ve been using ANC headphones basically 24/7 for years. I enjoy the silence. I wish in the future there’s a way to do this via a brain chip or something and maybe even selectively completely filter out noise.

Wishing for the brain chip too. I hate having my ears covered with headphones or clogged with sealing earbuds or plugs, but love silence.

Re: AirPods causing tinnitus?

#63

Post by wtvanhest »

cwales95 wrote: post #32

This is very interesting. I've noticed my tinnitus has seemed to be worse as of late. I exclusively use AirPods Pro. I wouldn't say I listen to loud music, but I'm wondering if the noise cancellation could have something to do with it...

I have tinnitus and AirPod pros and haven’t noticed any difference. I do find that not drinking out of straws or especially camelpak style bottles with straws really minimizes it. Also, more sleep, less tinnitus

Re: AirPods causing tinnitus?

#65

Post by projectazorian »

CommanderData wrote: post #55

A popular YouTube channel recently recommended wearing Airpods with noise cancelling on the London underground because sounds routinely exceed 100 decibels sometimes. Unless my understanding is flawed but the mechanical / energy potential is still reaching your ear drums, cochlear and in turn the hair cells. How would equalising the sound with an opposite sound help reduce the damaged caused here?

If you’re wearing headphones you have a physical object blocking external sound waves from reaching your eardrums. Kind of like wearing earplugs but not as effective, although properly fitted airpods pro probably come close.

Re: AirPods causing tinnitus?

#66

Post by larrykubin »

Any promising cures for tinnitus in the future? I've had it since 2018 and it appeared during a time when I was very stressed out. I have learned how to tune it out and live with it most of the time, but wish I could eliminate it all together. At the beginning I would look up different tricks for dealing with it, but they all seemed to make it worse. The most effective for me was to learn to ignore it.

Re: AirPods causing tinnitus?

#68

Post by layer8 »

If true, it’s probably either defective AirPods or less-than-stellar (but maybe within specs) ANC.

You can get a kind of tinnitus from long exposure to even low-volume continuous noise, because the ear starts to compensate for the noise (in a fashion very similar to ANC, I imagine, just on the level of the auditory neurons or the cochlea), and then continues to compensate even when the noise is gone.

Re: AirPods causing tinnitus?

#69

Post by llanowarelves »

CommanderData wrote: post #59
llanowarelves wrote: post #57

Hearing loss is very serious. You know your body better than anyone else so don't be afraid to be its biggest advocate and protector. Nobody else will. I once had tinnitus for a week after a concert and it was one of the worst weeks of my life, it felt like it would last forever (and for some people, it does). I had pristine, "golden ears" for audio engineering and was afraid about how much I'd be able to recover. I…

There is no cure for hearing damage. Your body can recover from slight damage after a few weeks but generally trauma to hair cells, synapses and auditory nerve is accumulative and overtime they loose their ability to recover. There's currently no way to regenerate these. There was a promising company attempting to do this and they recently announced discontinuation of phase 3 trials as their drug showed no significan…

Thanks for that update, I heard about it only once years ago. Yeah safest thing is to assume it can't come back, and be aware of the accumulation, as you said.

Re: AirPods causing tinnitus?

#70

Post by davesmylie »

CommanderData wrote: post #55

A popular YouTube channel recently recommended wearing Airpods with noise cancelling on the London underground because sounds routinely exceed 100 decibels sometimes. Unless my understanding is flawed but the mechanical / energy potential is still reaching your ear drums, cochlear and in turn the hair cells. How would equalising the sound with an opposite sound help reduce the damaged caused here?

The energy is reaching your ear in the form of sound waves.

The ANC tech (when done correctly) is sending an antiphase (inverse) wave with the same amplitude but inverted phase timed exactly to the original sound wave.

Effectively the two waves destructively interfere with and cancel each other out - it's not 100% but when done well is pretty effective for regular/consistent sounds

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