As an orchestral musician, in the woodwind section, I've wondered about hearing damage due to sitting in front of loud brass instruments most of the time. There have been times when I have felt an actual puff of air against the back of my head when a trombone player came in on a very loud note.
But I never experienced it as pain, specifically. I can't really wear common earplugs while playing as they interfere with my ability to hear other instruments clearly and they increase the sound inside my head, which makes it even more difficult to hear others and creates kind of a false version of one's sound (tone, intonation, etc.)
I know there are special earplugs out there, made for musicians, but most of us kind of just get by without them.
Anyway, back in 2010 I had a gig where I was sitting next to the principal clarinet player (he was to my right) and he had a solo on an E-flat clarinet, kind of like the piccolo of the clarinet family, and he had a very high, very loud note at one point. When he played it in rehearsal, I felt it like an ice pick in my right ear--an actual physical pain that really startled me as I've never felt anything like that before.
Then after that weekend I began noticing a stuffy feeling in my right ear--like I would "feel" sound like pressure and my ear felt like I needed to pop my ear, or like it was plugged up. I don't know if that was related to the AN or not. My PCP doc felt it was a blocked eustachian tube or something and I did seem to get some relief from over the counter decongestants.
Since then that stuffy feeling kind of comes and goes, but my right ear does often feel like it won't clear completely, but I haven't had the level of "stuffiness" I had that summer.
Now, my hearing tests in April were very good and my hearing is essentially normal in my right ear, with the exception of a minor loss of high frequencies, and I had 100% word recognition.
The only odd thing is that louder sounds, like a high, loud trumpet note, or higher-pitched singing voices or the full choir in choir practice, make my right ear kind of "overload"--like my ear is a cheap speaker with the sound turned up too loud.
I assume that's related to the AN. I know that when I had the word recognition part of the hearing test for my right ear, I asked the technician to turn the volume down a little bit when she was checking the settings just before the test. When her voice was coming over the headphones, I felt like I was starting to get that "cheap speaker" crackle, and when she turned the volume down it wasn't as bad, and I was still able to hear the word recognition recording.
But listening to my iPod or using headphones with my iPad doesn't bother me at all, and I don't have the sound turned down low or anything, so...
