Comment by ddingus

It seems to me your ability to discriminate has been impacted.

I have always pictured it working this way:

In the Cochlea, we have all the fine hair like sensors. The spread of them determines our range of frequencies, and this declines with age. Usually not too much, but could be as much as half. 10 to 12khz.

Good news in that is all the good stuff we crave is below 10khz. Don't sweat age related hearing loss too much.

The number of these sensors determines our ability to hear concurrent sounds, or complexity.

The shape of them impacts how loud sounds need to be to be heard.

Chances are, your loud exposure had harmonics that impacted many of these sensing hairs, but not in one place. The result is a loss of discrimination of concurrent sounds.

There are plenty to cover the frequency range, so things do not seem muffled or low. Their shape is good, not worn so you hear faint sounds well.

The lower number of them is the issue. Or, they are still there, just bent-- something prevents them from contrubuting.

Another way to think of this is in reverse:

Say you had 30 oscillators you could start at any frequency and time. How complex of a sound could you make? Now cut that in half.

What is lost?

The most complex, concurrent sound cases.