Years ago there was a consumers advice column in one of the daily newspapers. They would help you sort out any problems you had with goods that you had purchased. One young reader complained about a record player that he had bought. His uncle would tell him that it was faulty, everything was out of tune, he would get it replaced with the same result. It turned out that the uncle was a professional musician in the symphony orchestra and no cheap record player could satisfy his ear. They were all out by tiny percentages.
Perhaps there really are folks like Peter Sarsgaard’s character in Sounds of Silence that you can turn to?
I once had an ear infection. I went to the doctor and got some antibiotics. That night I was watching TV. An episode of Star Trek came on, and I was startled by the theme song. It sounded horribly, ridiculously out of tune. Could it be my hearing? I listened to some other music and sure enough, everything sounded really wrong. Not faint or muffled, just WRONG, like the instruments were tuned incorrectly. Thankfully it went away in a couple of days. I’ve had other ear infections before and since then, but that was the only one that affected my hearing in that bizarre way.
That happened to me once. I could tell that the ear that was infected was hearing a slightly higher (IIRC) tone than the other ear. My guess is pressure in the infected ear temporarily distorted the cochlea very slightly just enough to change the pitch I heard. As with you, my hearing returned to normal in a day or 2.
I hear all of the hums, whines, and rattles in our house. Back in the days of CRT televisions, I could tell whether a TV was on anywhere in the house even if it was muted because I could hear the high-pitched whine of the flyback transformer. I can tell when our heat is about to come on because the furnace starts humming a few seconds before the fan turns on.
None of this bothers me. I like being in tune with my environment and knowing what’s going on. And since I know what things sound like when they’re working properly I get advanced warning when they’re going bad.
It’s not just a matter of hearing or not hearing things. It’s that some people are seriously bothered by some specific noises; though not all of them are bothered by the same ones.
Apparently you’re not bothered by any of the ordinary noises of your life. This is good.
I once shared a very small office with a guy who enjoyed instant oatmeal. Specifically, he enjoyed swishing each spoonful around in his mouth before gulping it down. It was horribly distracting; I would end up sitting there with rage building until I could hear him chuck the container in the trash. This same guy would comment on every little sound I made - clicking the lock on the chair’s recliner, adjusting the straps on my shoes, getting some tape from the dispenser, a little sniffle after sneezing…I nearly quit my job over it.
Also in misophonia / tinnitus camp. Always hearing hums and electrical frequencies that no one else hears. Nightmarish when trying to sleep. Usually it’s the whining roof fans from neighbouring apartment buildings that’ll keep me up. Gone through about 700 different “noise cancelling” machines - they just simply created more noise. If I hear nothing, then I’ll start noticing the loud c-note whistling in my right ear.
I can no longer sleep deeply.
At all.
Really really really really super crummy.
I empathize with you. My hyper vigilance with sound has ups and downs. I have not yet figured out the mechanics of it all. But sometimes I am able to “not hear things” and sleep well.
Though I don’t have misophonia like Mr. brown, I do have tinnitus. I’ve had the constant high-pitched hissing for as long as I can remember, but have recently also developed pulsatile tinnitus and a new, low-pitched roaring hum (or humming roar?) in my left ear. So that’s three types going on. Luckily, the two recent kinds come and go, so I’m not hearing them constantly. Fatigue seems to bring them on.
Docs don’t seem concerned about it, and the advice seems to be “you’re old - get used to it”.
Mr. brown has installed some kind of power regulator that he claims makes the humming and whining of the newest recirc pump go away. But the power regulator has a low-pitched buzz that I can hear but he apparently does not. Damned if I’m going to say anything about it, though.