Ear Damage

here is an idea, DONT PLAY THE MUSIC SO LOUD AND UR HEAD WONT HURT

To compensate for the lack of lows you were probably cranking your mids and highs.  You were probably clipping whatever amplifier you have and hitting some awful distorted peaks.  This would give anyone a headache. 

Now that you have some bass filling out the frequency spectrum, you're probably not playing the highs as loud, not clipping the highs as much, and your head doesn't hurt as much.

Pick up a rat shack SPL meter if you're really concerned about your hearing.  Try not to listen at 90db+ for longer than an hour. 

Velocity Motors has been in this field for a long time and I'm just a rookie, but I haven't heard that it was the high freqs that do the damage.  My impression from what I've read is that it is pure SPL, whatever freqs that sound pressure contains.  They could be lows or highs or pink noise or a bomb blast.  The sound pressure damages the hairs that line the ear canal and cause them to be bent, like an old crippled man.  They just don't get upright again.  Sound waves that hit those hairs become crippled, too, and the difference in sound becomes apparent when listening to high frequencies, like the 'sss' sound when a word is spoken in plural.  The 'sss' is hard to hear.

About 10 years ago I was in this local nightclub, standing close to one of the bands rear speaker setups.  The band was one of my wife's and my favorite bands, but there would come a time in the set when the three lady vocalists would get together and belt out some Pointer Sisters kinda stuff together...and I was standing at the wrong place.  That shrieking sound went right through my head.  Soon after that, everything and everyone started sounding like The Chipmunks.

Things cleared up the next day and I thought I was hearing normally again.  A day or two later, I was driving up the highway, in silence, enjoying the sounds of the summer crickets and cicadas.  Ah, the sounds of summer, I thought. 

Then It suddenly occurred to me that it was early March and my windows were all the way up.  I had ringing in my ears.  The ringing is still there today and there's nothing I can do about it.  And it sounds remarkably like summer crickets and cicadas with some electronic noise mixed in.  And oh,  it's in stereo!

I know it was high freqs from those girl singers, but I also know it was high decibels because of where I was standing.  What I don't know is which one of the two factors caused the partial hearing loss in my right ear.  I just know it sucks.  You just have to adapt.  But realize it can happen at any time...which should be a warning to be aware at all times.