Well, this has been a fascinating resurrection of a thread. As I have some hearing deficit too at least I feel I am in good company!
One thing that stands out in all these posts is no matter what your particular hearing problem might, everyone is still listening to music, and loving it! If one has problems it's better to have it equal in both ears. My mom had only one good ear & she had no sense of sonic direction. Once she called me up to tell me her home thermostat was beeping. Mom, your (ancient Honeywell) thermostat can not beep. Turns out it was a low battery in the smoke detector.
And I think if you can hear pretty much equal in both hears the brain seems to fill in the blanks from past memory. You know cymbal hits or the schiff on a reed instrument sounds almost as crisp as 20 years ago. And the nice thing about Hi-Fi Surround is you can adjust loudness, treble, balance to suit yourself. If only we could do that elsewhere!
My tinnitus started at an anime con that featured a group called The Earthbound Pappas. From Japan the feature music from the Final Fantasy games. Really it's very good & more variety than you might expect.
Problem is it's an extremely loud performance. Louder than I've ever heard in my life. Such deep percussive bass pounding you in the chest it's like audio CPR. Everything else in matching volume. Towards a songs end, they would start to fade out & the audience would start clapping. The combined sounds actually did pain my ears & felt like ice picks were being driven through my ear drums.
Why didn't I move or leave? Because I'm a dumb ass. And I really liked the music & had the perfect sweet spot in the auditorium. I have a friend who is a Dead Head & follows the splinter groups around the country. He always uses ear plugs. Now I understand why.
So now I have some high pitched sine wave constant, some threshold deficit, & I'm sure some high end roll off. Haha maybe that's why CD's sound so good. I only have 10bit ears!!
But I for the last twenty years I wear both ear plugs & over the ear protection when cutting grass, leaf blowers, etc. I always said if I lose my hearing it will be from old age & loud music, not a lawnmower. I guess I've achieved that!