Buzzing Sound in Right Ear After a Concert / a Cold with Sinus Congestion

Hello.

This has been happening to me since May 2022. I went to a concert (stupidly without earplugs, I know better now) and then I immediately caught a cold with quite big sinus congestion. To this day I don't know which one caused my symptoms.

The first time I started experiencing symptoms was when I was calling with someone on the phone. Their voice felt unclean and "buzzy" compared to my other ear, where they sounded perfectly clean. When I googled around, I saw a lot of "hearing like a broken speaker" posts, and I feel that would match my description as well. However, it doesn't happen with all sounds. Weirdly enough, calling with somebody on the phone is really where I can hear the sensation the most, there's something about the typical mobile voice quality which makes the sensation much more prominent. Also, when I say certain words, I can hear my voice "buzzy" too in that ear. It also happens often when I suddenly hear a loud sound.

Now, after some months I accidentally found a temporary solution which gets rid of the problem COMPLETELY. It's actually 2 things:

1) Pressing on the ear flap momentarily (as if I wanted to mute my ears).
2) Valsalva maneuver, where I hold my nose and try to slowly breathe out, which pops my ears. The right ear, where my problem is, always pops much earlier than the left one.

After either of these, my hearing in the right ear is 100% clean, I tested it numerous times during calling with someone where it was uncomfortable listening to them. I pressed my ear and then immediately their voice was totally clean, however it always comes back after a while. During the calls, I also noticed that if I yawn or burp, the buzzing sound when listening to somebody comes back immediately 100% of the time.

I described all these symptoms to ENTs and they all agreed based on the symptoms it must be some form of Eustachian tube dysfunction but it never really got any further as if it wasn't serious enough.

I have been to a lot of ENTs already. All my hearing tests came perfectly normal. I have no tinnitus.
My middle ear pressure is perfect in both ears. My earwax has been cleaned out numerous times but it didn't help.

But this sensation is still driving me crazy sometimes, especially when I don't know what caused it/ what it is and if it will ever get worse/better.

I'm afraid go to to new concerts and I feel like I put my life on hold because I just keep stressing over it all the time and I'm desperate for some proper diagnosis and treatment. I certainly developed anxiety due to this but I just can't help it but be afraid about the problem.

 

It could be a slight displacement or slight fusion or slight damage of the bones in the middle ear?

When you perform the Valsalva maneuver, you could be forcing the eardrum, tiny muscles and tiny bones back into their optimal position?

But due to some sort of malfunction, the system is falling back to a non-optimal state which causes the (likely middle ear apparatus) not to pass the sound energy waves correctly to the inner ear (cochlea) correctly.

I don't think this is an inner ear issue. If it was, you would likely have some tinnitus.

It is a while you have had this problem.

An MRI would be the best way for an ENT to see what's going on. Just make sure your ears are in the 'malfunctioning' state before going into MRI.

If it's loud noise that caused this then I'd recommend you avoid loud noise, including concerts, for the time being; preferably until you get an MRI scan.