New Tinnitus Noise: The Sound of a Subwoofer — A Type of Hyperacusis?

[Burnsie]

I got pulsatile tinnitus in February 2015 and "normal" tinnitus (both ears) in August 2015.

I've also had the machine gun ear drum fluttering, but it lasts seconds. My life has only been very minimally affected by tinnitus.

Now I have this new noise, it's confusing and, obviously, annoying.

It's basically the sound of a subwoofer. Sometimes it's constant, sometimes louder, sometimes quicker, sometimes it disappears when I take one step forward, then comes back immediately when still. Posture doesn't affect it nor does pressing on the neck like my pulsatile tinnitus is.

I think it might be a type of hyperacusis? I had hyperacusis when I first got tinnitus as everything sounded tinny for a while, especially over things like the TV and white noise.

Why do I not think it's normal tinnitus, well for the reasons above (my other tinnitus noises are constant)... I was on holiday last week in Scotland and wore earplugs in hotels with lots of banging... It wasn't there then!

I think it must be related to headphones use, even if at a low volume. I'm sure there's some correlation with me getting a bit slack with headphone use.

Any ideas?

 

[Jammer]

I got pulsatile tinnitus in February 2015 and "normal" tinnitus (both ears) in August 2015.

I've also had the machine gun ear drum fluttering, but it lasts seconds. My life has only been very minimally affected by tinnitus.

Now I have this new noise, it's confusing and, obviously, annoying.

It's basically the sound of a subwoofer. Sometimes it's constant, sometimes louder, sometimes quicker, sometimes it disappears when I take one step forward, then comes back immediately when still. Posture doesn't affect it nor does pressing on the neck like my pulsatile tinnitus is.

I think it might be a type of hyperacusis? I had hyperacusis when I first got tinnitus as everything sounded tinny for a while, especially over things like the TV and white noise.

Why do I not think it's normal tinnitus, well for the reasons above (my other tinnitus noises are constant)... I was on holiday last week in Scotland and wore earplugs in hotels with lots of banging... It wasn't there then!

I think it must be related to headphones use, even if at a low volume. I'm sure there's some correlation with me getting a bit slack with headphone use.

Any ideas?

Sounds like normal erratic tinnitus. I've had high pitch catastrophic noise and recently added low hum, thump sounds as well. The low pitch stuff comes and goes (currently not on) and when it appears, I now shrug and think "well, that's new and annoying" and just accept it.

Lay off the headphones; made mine worse.

 

[Burnsie]

I had a few beers last night. In an odd way my mindset was "it might have still been there when in Scotland, but I never heard it because I chose not to, and I can do that again)."

But then I could hear it often last night. Yesterday was the worst it's been...

And today... It's gone. Like I'm sat in a quiet room writing this. It's completely gone...

Ironically, one of the things that tinnitus seems to do is to take away your ability to enjoy the silence... I'm probably more anxious today about it coming back than I was yesterday when it was there!!

Let's hope I caused it by headphone use, because that will NEVER happen again.

P.S. there are some other threads on low frequency tinnitus here, and I found that my experience is exactly the same, i.e. it goes away when moving, like shaking my head, etc.

 

[Burnsie]

Update on update...

It's back. From waking up. Buzzzzzz. After doing nothing of note yesterday when it wasn't there all day!

 

[Ben Winders]

Yeah, lots of us have the subwoofer hum - check the low-frequency tinnitus thread.

It is easily masked by low-frequency noise, even by putting a finger in the ear (reason: finger against ear canal makes noise, so a 'dead' earplug won't work).

My hum is clearly caused by acoustic trauma, and made worse by car rides (temporarily).

 

[RunningMan]

Yeah, I have this in my left ear. It was subtle enough for quite a while, months to year+ that I actually thought I was hearing real low frequency sounds from distance cars, stereos, racetrack, etc. Somehow, it dawned on me that I was noticing these sounds coming from my left, and a simple test confirmed it was just tinnitus. I had not even realized there was such a thing as low-frequency tinnitus before then because I had only noticed the high-frequency ringing for many years. The low-frequency is not a continuous tone, more like subwoofer booming at some distance, but it varies over time, and is more subtle some days.