Hearing a 'Rringgg' When Playing the Piano → Reactive Tinnitus or Hyperacusis?

Hi there,

I've been having tinnitus for 5 years now. I completely habituated to it and actually don't 'suffer' from it anymore, only when having a lot of stress.

Today something weird happened, in my opinion. I play the piano, and during the last 5 years I never had any problems with my tinnitus when playing. Today I suddenly kept hearing a 'rringgg' in my left ear when playing certain tones. It's like my left ear reacts to the sound of the piano and creates a 'rringgg' sound on top of my baseline tinnitus. I've never experienced this before. So when playing a full song, I keep hearing my normal baseline 'beeeeeep' and on top of that I hear 'beep, rrringg, beep, beep, beep, rrringg, rrringgg'. As soon as I stop playing, the reactivity immediately stops.

It kinda scares me because life with tinnitus finally became peaceful.

Does this thing sound familiar to someone? And if so, did it subside or go away eventually? Would you consider this reactive tinnitus or hyperacusis?

Would love to hear from someone!

 

Sounds like what happened to me when I played my guitar. I believe this is primarily hyperacusis showing its face. Even though my hyperacusis has slowly lessened over time, I still don't play my guitar because of it. This has been going on for eight years now and I really miss it.

 

Sounds like the first signs of reactive tinnitus.

If it progresses, the ringing will play-on for longer when the external sound (for example piano) ceases.

Perhaps give the piano a rest for now? The less damage you do, the easier it will be to subside.

 

I hate that I realized this might be true for me as well. Music is literally one of the only things keeping me sane and for me to not be able to play instruments like piano and guitar is extremely depressing for me

Why is this condition so deliberately awful?

Update:

It got even worse. The piano sounds out of tune, I really hope this isn't permanent. I hate this so much, music is/was my passion.

 

Were you using the sustain pedal? If so that could be the cause of your problem. I had to stop using the sustain pedal altogether after I ended up with reactive tinnitus. You also should be careful of the decibel levels as they may be too high at times.

I couldn't play the piano for many months after I ended up with reactive tinnitus. So I was using my midi keyboard instead. In fact for very first few months I had my headphones plugged into the keyboard & kept the headphones on top of the keyboard & put the volume to near the top in order to hear myself playing. The sound was faint but enough for me to hear myself playing.

 

I mean I play on a digital piano where I can adjust the volume but it still sounds off to me, it doesn't sound right. It's distorted and wrong and just made me not want to play anymore.

And I have had reactive tinnitus before but it wasn't so bad that the piano sounded awful but now it is and it sucks.

 

Same with electronic drums. I rented a Roland drum kit last week. I was playing with the volume just above the pads in Yu6 powered speakers, with my custom 0.15 musician OTO earplugs in my ears. I may as well have been in a jam space on a regular drum kit without any hearing protection, from the reaction I got. Yet I can go to a local gym or watch my surround system. This condition is nuts!

 

Sounds a bit more dysacusis/diplacusis.

Definitely take a break. Is there any reason why this would have happened suddenly? Loud noise exposure? Any other symptoms?

 

Thanks but it's actually better now. It could've been a cold symptom or something, but my hearing is back to semi normal now, at least nothing really sounds so out of tune or distorted anymore. So that's good. Going to still be careful of course.

 

That's great. How long did it last? How long has it been back to normal?

Don't take the fact it's gone for grated, at least for a while - simply because you want to make sure you don't aggravate it again. Hopefully it never comes back again, but like you said - be careful!

 

It lasted a few days I think, under a week, and it's been back to normal since middle of August. So yeah, feeling pretty alright now. And yes, I won't take it for granted. I'm going to be careful.

 

I am also having this for the past three months. I have ETD only in my left ear where I also hear moderate humming. But my right ear is clean. However, I hear ringing and hissing in both ears. I think this asymmetry between the right and left ear is causing the diplacusis in my case.

Before I was hearing crickets over white noise type of sounds. Then it changed to intermittent ringing and nowadays it is 250 Hz intermittent beeping which I hear over mechanical sounds like engine/motor, fan, pump etc.

I don't have hyperacusis but I can't leave home because of these annoying distortions.

 

Stop all sound exposures.

Do dry fasting for 3 or 4 days at a time. Do your best to eat clean.

Protect your ears 24/7.

Don't take any drugs or meds.

Your only chance is letting things die down and keeping the level of damage you have now and hoping it lessens.

Live in your new sound tolerance levels. Do not push through anything.

 

4 months in and nothing has changed positively. A few days ago an annoying cicada/cricket sound was added to the mix which is also reactive. I am not sure but probably inhaling acetone caused this new sound. As it started one day after working with it for 30-40 minutes.

I still can't understand how I managed to f*ck up my ears like that. My tinnitus is 100% not noise induced. It is either somatic (still having crackling and popping in ears after 6 months onset) or SSRI induced but still having it on par or worse than noise induced tinnitus sufferers in terms of reactivity.

 

It's a b!tch I know. I am pretty sure I got mine from an SSRI and have reactivity, high-pitched buzzing 24/7 and a low bass tone that comes and goes all day long. I have come to the point where trying to figure out wtf went wrong is meaningless. It doesn't change where I am currently, it doesn't change the treatments and it doesn't help. If anything, it holds me back from moving forward.

I will say your cracking and popping sounds like ETD, not SSRI induced, though the SSRI might have exasperated it.

 

I have the same thing. I wonder if we have hyperacusis for a single cochlear hair or something.