this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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Just want to chime in and mention those tiny hairs aren't protective. They're hair cells, named because they have tufts of stereocilia, and are what your ear actually uses to hear. When they die, you lose hearing. There are two types, inner and outer, and while the outer can influence the amount of sound detected by the inner hair cells, they can only amplify, not reduce.
The ear protects itself against loud sounds by contracting the tensor tympani and stapedius muscles, dampening the eardrum and tensing and shifting back the ossicles, the small hearing bones of the ear. This all serves to reduce the amount of force transmitted to the inner ear but takes time to occur, so it can't protect against sudden loud noises, like a gunshot.
Oh, thanks for the correction. I seem to have misunderstood the injury when I got it described to me.
No worries! From your comments, you seem to be a bit of an audiophile. Just watch out, because audiophile forums are FULL of authoritative sounding BS.
Haha, uh oh, I will try to not take offence. I'm in no way an audiophile, though I do have a nice stereo system for listening to music rather than listening to the equipment. I did venture into doing sound based arts and installations and stuff when I was younger though so I do have some insights of how sound works. It was a "colleague" l knew back then that had the injury mentioned from an incident in a sound studio. If memory serves me right it was an accidental digital feedback loop that hit the ears like a brick wall and despite it was less than a second it was enough to cause permanent damage.