Ive had wax build up too a few times , one time it got so conjested I was down pretty much to one ear ,
The day the doctor syringed it out it happend to be raining , the sizzle of the car wheels in the rain was like sensory overload when I stepped out of the surgery , my brain had compensated and when hearing was restored its was one of the most bizzare sensations of my life . Took a day or two for perception to readjust .
Theres a few different methodologies to ear cleaning , mucrosuction is the new one but it doesnt even require a medically trained person to do it , I just have the doctor syrynge them out if nessasary , much of the loss in terms of frequency ,level and volume of tinitus goes way down after a proper clean .
For me lately I dont have build up issues , I stopped using cotton buds to clean ,which was creating a wax ball that leans against the ear drum, The doctor took a pea sized lump of wax out of my ear that time , with all that mass leaning on the membrane how could it sound any good . The other thing is low frequency or loud sounds cause painful intermod distortion .Sleep disturbances is another factor ,as you shift around in your sleep the wax ball shifts around creating low frequency signals .
If I feel a build up what I use the odd time is use a stainless M5 threaded machine screw with a rounded tip ,
I just put it carefully into the ear without touching the tympanic membrane move it against the side wall and withdraw , with a little practise its fairly effective , obviously the thread needs to be throughly cleaned after use
Obviously Im not a doctor and this isnt medical advice so be extremely careful . an adjustable stopper mounted on the thread might be safer way to do it ,
You could always do it the traditional Aussie way , get the witch doctor to find to your own custom set of widgidy grubs
and have them go to work .
Just one other thought , if theres signifigant unbalance from ear to ear , localisation abillity is seriously impared , something like a blob of wax causes phase shifts from ear to ear that messes things up completely. Best listening position of the head may not correspond looking directly at a screen or a person across the room. Seems lip reading to some extent may play a part as we get older and harder of hearing .
Seeing as their was mention of smart phones the other day I saw a mini acoustic horn in the equivalent of dollar general , its clips onto the case of the phone , two apertures lead into the throat of the horn , Im not sure precisely how many DB boost it gives but in similar experiments previously where I coupled mobile phone speaker to the air in a flower pot I got a surprisng acoustic gain Was easily 10 db in that case , with a reasonable well constructed horn it should be a good bit more ,might save a bit in battery life and allow the amp in the phone run a bit cooler or if you want to rock out with a mini reggae danchall style rig you can too , a small battery powered sub could easily be added .
I might purchase a pair of said mini horns and try in ear headphones to drive them .
Theres other reasons I wont go into why I cant make as much noise as Id like these days ,
Anyway Ive decided not to bother using my large class AB power amp to run my monitors ,
instead Im going to hook them up to my tube headphone amp which is wired for 4 ohm output , its less than 1.5 watts per channel so around 85db spl max with loads of distortion from the single ended triode,
I have a nice pair of c core single ended output transformers I like to try but realestate on the chassis is almost maxed out . I'll have to look at it again original transformers came from a tube stereo dansette phono player . I put the unit toghether nearly 20 years ago now , the mil spec EL84's I put in originally are still going strong , its got well in excess of 10,000 hours on the clock at this stage , anode voltage is only 220 volts as per the reccomendation for single ended triode working ,pure class A of course .
Its built using an old Philips bakelite radio as a donor chassis.
