My Ear Sounds Like the Adults in Peanuts... Wah Wah Wah Waaaah

[greatFox]

Hi all,

My right ear generates overtones to sounds I hear, especially women's voices and music around the mid frequencies. When someone talks, I hear their voice plus a waah waaaah waaaah sound like the adults' voices in the Peanuts cartoons. The overtones go right along with the sound I hear, and they go away when it's quiet. It's like another note or even a resonant chord is being hit along with the one note being played. I also have a fullness feeling in the ear. This is very irritating because I make music and mix songs as a hobby, and these overtones are messing with my hearing.

This happened a couple years ago and went away, but now it's back and it's not going away. It's not consistent either, it's worse some days than others since a couple months ago.

ENT found nothing so far. Supposed to get an MRI at some point to check for tooomahs.

Anyone else have this kind of warbling overtone (not in the high frequencies), only when there is sound present? Loud environments like crowds in bars generate so much more imaginary sound that it makes it difficult to hear voices. Female voices on the phone sound like a robot, like a Star Wars droid talking.

Thanks much

 

[Michael B]

The sound you're describing preceeded my tinnitus. I would hear it whenever a female coworker talked to me. It was on my left side, the same side as my tinnitus. It lasted about two weeks. I thought I had a cold. Two months later I developed tinnitus.

 

[greatFox]

The sound you're describing preceeded my tinnitus. I would hear it whenever a female coworker talked to me. It was on my left side, the same side as my tinnitus. It lasted about two weeks. I thought I had a cold. Two months later I developed tinnitus.

That's.... really not cool. I'm hoping that it's just a spike from an ultrasonic dental cleaning I got just before. After reading some posts on here, I think it might be a possibility. Other people have complained about it. My ENT did say that the ultrasonic cleaner vibrates through your jaw to your ear and can disturb nerves and such. Never again with the bzzzzzz cleaning!

 

[HCR123]

Hey @greatFox I was going to post about my experience, but thinking back to when I started hearing weird noises, I think this is why. I also had a dental cleaning about 10 days ago, went to dinner and wore plugs...had some slight acid reflux...that evening I noticed that if I tilted my head left or right, I could hear the hissing from my T a little bit more.
I just went to bed and the next morning I noticed my fridge was making a weird noise, and figured it's broken.

Fast forward to last Tuesday and I had a spike at work and the ring didn't go down. That night I decided to take some klonipin and knock out. The next morning the hissing was much louder than normal, and the tone was more prevalent. Throughout the week I was noticing a lot of electrical things were giving me a bit of feedback...then I knew something was off because when I tried to mask my T, it would rise just above it. The warbling you mention seems to get distorted for certain sounds. They are not as crisp. Luckily so far nothing too noticeable with music, tv, or people's voices but I'm anxious about that changing because of this. My ears have been more full of late, after thinking I had gotten over the hump.

I'm more conscious of protecting my ears in the car now. I was at a point after two months that I could live w/how my T was but at the dentist I wore ear plugs. Who knows maybe it could have been worse without them. Next time only manual cleaning. I hope this is just a T and/or H spike. There is debate whether this is caused by T or H. I can live with tones, but distortion would not be cool.
Btw, my T is hissing, a slight high pitch that gets louder as the day goes by, and a small morse code type in my head. This spike brought on an 'uuuu' type sound that causes the distortion.

All the best.
Hugo

 

[greatFox]

Hey @greatFox I was going to post about my experience, but thinking back to when I started hearing weird noises, I think this is why. I also had a dental cleaning about 10 days ago, went to dinner and wore plugs...had some slight acid reflux...that evening I noticed that if I tilted my head left or right, I could hear the hissing from my T a little bit more.
I just went to bed and the next morning I noticed my fridge was making a weird noise, and figured it's broken.

Fast forward to last Tuesday and I had a spike at work and the ring didn't go down. That night I decided to take some klonipin and knock out. The next morning the hissing was much louder than normal, and the tone was more prevalent. Throughout the week I was noticing a lot of electrical things were giving me a bit of feedback...then I knew something was off because when I tried to mask my T, it would rise just above it. The warbling you mention seems to get distorted for certain sounds. They are not as crisp. Luckily so far nothing too noticeable with music, tv, or people's voices but I'm anxious about that changing because of this. My ears have been more full of late, after thinking I had gotten over the hump.

I'm more conscious of protecting my ears in the car now. I was at a point after two months that I could live w/how my T was but at the dentist I wore ear plugs. Who knows maybe it could have been worse without them. Next time only manual cleaning. I hope this is just a T and/or H spike. There is debate whether this is caused by T or H. I can live with tones, but distortion would not be cool.
Btw, my T is hissing, a slight high pitch that gets louder as the day goes by, and a small morse code type in my head. This spike brought on an 'uuuu' type sound that causes the distortion.

All the best.
Hugo

Ugh. I wonder how many people's hearing is getting damaged by ultrasonic cleaners. Another reason to hate the dentist!

 

[shasta0863]

The sound you're describing preceeded my tinnitus. I would hear it whenever a female coworker talked to me. It was on my left side, the same side as my tinnitus. It lasted about two weeks. I thought I had a cold. Two months later I developed tinnitus.

Hi Michael, if you wouldn't mind could you go into some details of this. I'm trying to figure out what has occured to me yesterday at work. A little background, I've been battling Tinnitus/H from noise for some 9 years. Yesterday at work, I noticed my ear starting to get full. It was as if I was deaf, but could still hear. But my good ear and the bad right ear, made me feel very off because of this pressure or sound difference. I also noticed when I rubbed my bad ear, or even the opposite ear, the bad ear would now create a weird echo like tone. I hear it when I chew, talk loud, or rub my ears. It activates it. I believe this tone is slightly there on a very low, low level when I get into extremely quiet environment, otherwise it's just when triggering it's increase to I notice it. If you've ever got water into your ear you can't get out, you know that echo type of sound you get inside the ear? The tone is similar to that sound. I also experienced very slight pain/throb in the ear.

I went to the story shortly after during lunch, quite in a panic. When I got inside, I noticed the cold section island they have with pre-packaged means, well that vibrating hum was insanely loud in my right ear, and vibrated in my ear and head. I couldn't stand it and had to get away.

I then called my mother to tell her what's going on, and to my stunned surprise, her voiced sounded robotic. It was semi-clear, but there was this weird pitch at the end of it, like Eve-a in Wall-e, the way she talked. I switched ears and it was crystal clear on the phone. I knew I had a real problem.

I was able later on to get into the emergency clinic. A nurse practitioner was there and she looked into my ear and said my right ear was inflamed, on the outer ear area, and that it seemed it was an outer ear infection, but mild (she said about a 3/10 on severity). I had a hard time believing that this supposed mild ear infection and inflammation had caused these serve symptoms. Especially when I look online for symptoms and outside the fullness/pressure nothing else matched up.

Today my pressure is down 40/50% but the tone lingers. Whatever this is, is not at all my tinnitus or anywhere near it. My actual tinnitus in both ears seems the same. I hope to god this isn't some new random bizarre tone I've never experienced before that's hear to stay, but I'm wondering if your situation has any insight on what I might be experiencing.

My head is going through SSHL and other things trying to figure this out. And I won't be able to get into an ENT for a while, so I'm really in the unknown here.

 

[Michael B]

@shasta0863
First off I'm sorry it's taking so long to see an ENT. I did not experience what you described to that degree. Again I am sorry. Sounds entering my left ear, particularly female voices, sounded tinny for a week or two. I thought I had a cold or congestion at the time, but I had neither. I never figured it out until 2-3 months later when I realized it was a precursor to the tinnitus. There are still times when voices sound tinny but I've given up on trying to figure it out. Good luck with your appointment and please keep us posted.

 

[cedd]

Hey @greatFox, I woke up early this morning experiencing that snoopy teacher "wah wah waaah" resonance in my left ear as you describe. I've experienced a similar thing where each ear would hear the same sound at slightly different pitches (a semitone or less) which would create a phasing effect, but never this lower resonant buzzing that's heard in parallel to the actual sound. The phasing one would be most noticeable listening to music (sometimes making it unlistenable) and not so bothersome for unaccompanied speaking voices. This buzzing one though is most prominent when hearing unaccompanied speaking voices. I don't notice it as much when listening to music but I suspect the reason could be that I'm hearing a narrowly "scooped" version of it.

Usually any of these hearing alterations are accompanied by me being very tired or focusing for a prolonged period of time, and this is the case here as well. I think I might be chronically tensing a muscle in my throat and it's affecting the ear. It was also noticeably colder last night and it's quite humid as well so maybe that's related somehow? I also sometimes hear "wings flapping" in that ear when I move my jaw after first waking up. I do think I feel some slight blockage (feels like air pressure) in that ear as well that's noticeable when I move my jaw or burp.

Did you ever resolve this issue or learn more about it?