The Truth About Hearing Loss

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Hearing and hearing loss are topics which are ironically rarely discussed in the hi-fi space. Despite their extreme importance when it comes to sound quality perception, everything you hear has to go through the lens of your sensory organs being whatever is inside your cookia. And you know the cookia which consists of the inner ear hair cells is extremely complex. Um it's the hardest bone in the human body. Actually scientists are trying to better understand what's going on. Why the hearing hair cells do not regenerate like they do in certain animals like birds. But yeah, as of right now, there is no cure for sensory neural hearing loss or noise induced hearing loss. And it's commonly said that as you age, you will naturally lose hearing. But most of the studies that have looked into age- related hearing loss have not accounted for confounding variables like noise induced hearing loss or um metabolically induced hearing loss such as by taking antibiotics which are autotoxic meaning they cause damage to the inner ear hair cells or alcohol which causes damage to the inner ear hair cells. I personally don't drink any alcohol. Um and you know I try to protect my hearing as much as possible but um I have also undergone some hearing loss. But before we get into that I want to talk about this article hearing loss and old age isn't due to normal aging from the acoustical society of America. One study in the 1960s compared hearing loss versus age for males living in industrial societies versus females living in industrial societies versus a study of hearing in the isolated maban population in Sudan.

[00:02:05]And it was shown that up to like people in their 70s there's barely any hearing loss at all in these isolated populations. And it's commonly said that by the time you're 70 you're going to go deaf this and that. But it's really not true at all. Um if you stay away from things like alcohol and antibiotics which can cause um damage to the inner ear hair cells as well as avoid um really loud sounds you can preserve perfect hearing until you die. And compared to other you know organs it's like you know there there's various theories like why doesn't hearing loss progress the same way as like you know aging like for example I'm going bald in some way like why doesn't this necessarily apply to hearing and one theory is that the inner ear hair cells do not undergo cell division so there's not actually an inherent aging process but at the same time because there's no cell division occurring. There's no pathway for the hair cells or inner ears to repair themselves when they do undergo damage.

[00:03:16]So, it's really important to protect your hearing. Onto the state of my hearing. So, what you're looking at right now is an audiogram. Um, my right ear and my left ear. This dashed line below 20 dB around like 25 dB is considered the threshold for mild hearing loss. Um I don't have any thresholds in the mild hearing loss category right now. So I still have normal hearing but you can see that relative to the zero dB line at 8 kHz u my left ear is at a 10 dB threshold. So it's 10 dB worse than like a zero dB um ideal line. And my right ear is around minus 5 dB at 8 kHz. And I also had an extended audiogram done. So this is not included in this. But at 16 kHz, my hearing is better in my left ear than it is in my right ear. And if I do a sign sweep and tone generator, um my hearing gets better around like 17 to 18k in my right ear and it's worse in my left ear there. And as far as tonitis, um, in a quiet room, I can clearly hear tonitis in both ears. But I would say in my right ear, I I mostly hear tonitis around like 16 kHz, where it's worse than it is in my left ear. And in my left ear, I mostly hear tonitis around like 17 to 18k, where it's worse than it is in my right ear. And as for like how I developed these like forms of hearing loss, I still remember when I was like 19, I was trying to better conceptually understand the distortion I was hearing with the Bodnamic DT880 and I was just like blasting the music trying to like understand like what the distortion was that I was hearing. And after that I noticed that I couldn't hear as well in my left ear in the sense that sound was slightly biased to the right side. And I went into my closet and, you know, like plugged my ears and I could hear the very slightest tonitis in my left ear. I thought it was like over then. And you know, it's funny thinking back because my hearing was still basically perfect as far as like the hearing loss standards go, but you know, in my mind, I had only experienced the world through the lens of my sensory organs being basically perfect, not having any damage at all. And you know, since then, I've undergone quite a bit more hearing damage. And one example of that was in like 2024 when I went to this nightclub in San Francisco called Audio. And like the sound quality was mind-blowingly good, but it was around like 97 dB. And you know, after spending some time there without earplugs because like, you know, wearing earplugs reduced the volume too much. It wasn't one of those scenarios where it was super loud where wearing earplugs would make it like a good volume. It was like too quiet for earplugs but a bit too loud for um you know not wearing earplugs but like the sound quality was just mind-blowingly good at this club. I still remember it. Um like the high frequency detail was unbelievable. Like the way you could feel the bass was just so satisfying. And you know, I walked out of that club and like the outside world was just super quiet. And you know, I recovered most of the hearing loss from that, which you know is called temporary threshold shift. But I had some residual tonitis in my right ear after that. And I was really down and about after um that event. And yeah, so that was the first time I started developing some tenitis in my right ear or the first time I developed some tenitis in my right ear. And things were fine um for a while after that. But I think in like early February of this year, I um was doing a blind test for a 20 kHz upper hearing limit, which was a test I was actually easily able to pass like a few years ago. But, you know, I was struggling to do this test. And out of my frustration, I turned up the volume trying to like, you know, just pass the test. And after that, I noticed that I had quite a lot more tonitis in both ears, particularly my right ear. And that's where like the 16 kHz titis I have in my right ear, which is fairly high, came from. And since then, my hearing has not progressed any further. But you know [snorts] people ask me why don't I have like tone generator on peek db studio and the reason is that the human ear is not meant to receive high sound pressure level sine tones at like any frequency let alone high frequencies where the ear is more most sensitive. I'm not trying to put listening tests into my software, which will likely cause hearing loss to unsuspecting users when my goal is for you guys to experience the best sound quality you possibly can. And you know, I think that honestly it's practically impossible to achieve a complete understanding of audio without undergoing some form of hearing loss because you don't really understand how the sensory organs are working on a fundamental level. Like yeah, you can read about hearing loss, but without like actually experiencing it, you're not going to have any understanding of what it's like. And I think I'm at a point where I've undergone enough hearing loss where I have the context for what it is like and can understand now what it would be like for it to be much worse. But at the same time, it's not like I have perfect hearing. And I can still enjoy audio, um, listening to music, all these things. But like the high frequency clarity in terms of like resolving the finer details of the S's and T's and and sounds are definitely not as good as they used to be. And like yeah, tinitis is something I'll always have to live with. But, you know, I have to also remind myself that it could always be worse. Um, you know, I've seen examples of people getting an ear infection, then like overnight their hearing is dramatically worse and there's nothing they can do about it. I mean, I'm still thankful that my hearing is in the normal thresholds. I'm not really praying that there's going to be some cure. Um, I don't think there will be a cure, honestly, in my lifetime or, you know, for for a really long time. You know, there's like hundreds of millions of dollars of funding going into research for hearing loss every year.

[00:09:58]It's not like people are not trying to resolve it, but it's just super complicated what's going on inside the cookia, the hardest bone in the human body. How you would even administer a drug to it without damaging the cocoa even further is a major challenge. But the ironic thing is when I had basically perfect hearing, um, I was listening to slop compressed music most of the time and didn't really appreciate good sound quality when I was listening to bad audio gear as well. And now [snorts] when my hearing is like not as great as it used to be, the fidelity or quality of the music I'm listening to is way higher. The dynamic range is way better.

[00:10:34]The audio equipment I'm listening to is way higher quality. So, you know, there's trade-offs to everything. But yeah, um definitely avoid um high sound pressure level listening tests, especially with high frequency sounds.

[00:10:51]Um, I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that listening to really high dynamic range music at around like 80 dB is bad for you if there's like um high sound pressure level peaks, especially in the low frequencies because the frequencies which are most likely to cause hearing loss are the high frequencies because they the hair cells which interpret the high frequencies sit um closer to the outside of the um baselor membrane. I'm not a complete expert when it comes to the inner ear architecture, but um that's the gist of it. And yeah, so wanted to make this video on the state of my hearing. Um it's definitely not perfect by any means, but it's still within normal thresholds, I would say, and I'm still able to understand like speech and stuff perfectly fine. Um, but you know, having [snorts] undergone the hearing loss I have, I think like at this point, I'm willing to fully appreciate the level of hearing I currently have and also have a good context for like, okay, let's say I'm showing like these headphones to some 60-year-old, why aren't they as enthusiastic about it as I am? And now at least I have some context as for why that is the case. But yeah, um I think that, you know, if I avoid loud sounds and I'm careful about like what drugs and stuff I consume, I can preserve basically the same hearing I have until I'm 70 based on the evidence I've read. So that's my goal at least. Whether that will happen is um extremely doubtful, but um yeah. So, the state of my hearing, um, you know, hearing the most important element for sound quality perception for sure.

[00:12:34]Without hearing, you're not going to be able to interpret sounds at all. And you know, I wish this was a topic more discussed in the hi-fi space, but um yeah, I will see you guys next