Is distorted sound causing hearing damage, while playing piano?

Hi Dolivian!
I am afraid cannot comment any tinnitus issues (mine being exclusive hyperacusis). As to your question of possible progressive future damage -
I really don’t know what to say…Even the brightest scientists who have discovered this purely neural ailment (as recent as 2010!) are lost for establishing a diagnosis let alone forecast for individuals, with the main argument being the ever-confusing variability of human brain.
I can only speak for myself, and am afraid to bore yourself to death telling you my story… Still I am compelled to do this, yourself being musician and thus understanding things a neuroscientist might not necessarily do.
So this is how my hearing fared after 13 initial years of impeccable service.
Phase One.
Very gradually, in fact without my registering it first, the world ambiance, speech and music started losing its “colours” and also the dynamic range. I am referring here to the loud end of sound. When I was in a quiet environment, or played quiet passages I wouldn’t notice the difference, but as soon as I played out or else ventured into a noisy outside world it was unmistakable: metaphorically speaking it was as if someone was very gradually cranking down the volume and those treble/bass controls (or you know how the old hi fi’s used to have several equalizers?) Rich was getting poor, crisp - hazy, bright - dull. My natural ampflifier seemed broken. My whole life hitherto I had been enjoying all that - for instance listening to the sound of a piano performed by someone else in a hall would send me literally bathing in the sound all around me, now it was a remotely sounding instrument! The meaning of music didn’t change for me, but the esthetic perception, and to say the truth - a great deal of inspiration and the “positive intoxication” I used to enjoy so much were dealt a heavy blow.

Phase Two.

Sudden onset of hyperacusis. It happened with in a space of a second, in fact with a single sound, which wasn’t a gun explosion or a firetruck blaring away in a close proximity. It was a single note - an octave quite high in the piano treble. We pianists sometimes repeat things - that’s what practice is about… So I was repeating this octave quite loudly (as should be in the context) and it hit me hard - from the moment on and for quite some years every loud high note of the piano would be amplified tenfold and also a single attack would cause 5-6 repetitions - all happening directly in my head! In the first month’s it would only be the left side, and then it spread on to the other one as well. In retrospect (and now I am giving myself away), it felt as if someone was pouring scalding hot liquid into my ears or simple stabbing them with a sharp knife. I once had a tooth pulled out without anaesthesia - it is comparable to that. Of course, that single octave was just the last drop that spilled the glass, and not the actual trigger.

Phase Three.

This is when our stories merge (of to put it more accurately - the start of your story could be congruous with the continuation big mine).
To tell the truth it was a bit of a salvation for me - my painful perception of the piano treble started tapering off, ever so gradually. And at some point I literally experienced the jangling parasite with every loud treble piano tone, and sometimes it would sound strikingly similar to a overwhelmed loudspeaker that was fed music too loudly. Now YOU might be really annoyed by the jangling, but to me it was this attenuation that made my further career as a concert pianist possible. Had I been stuck with the severe hyperacusis of the Phase two, I’d go insane!

By no means am I suggesting, that having experienced the same phenomenon as myself in Phase three, you will go through the remaining phases. But this is what happened later (about 10 years after the initial S**t.)

Phase Four.

Hitherto, my intolerance of sounds (hyperacusis) would only apply to loud piano treble or environmental sounds of extreme intensity (firetruck, jackhammer, fireworks,), in other words - I would suffer as musician, but else live fairly normally. My integrity as musician would prevent me from wearing earplugs or musicians earplugs (sound is crappy with both!) In phase four my hyperacusis took an unexpected turn. All of a sudden my life was inundated with “intolerable” sounds - barking dogs, crying babies, throwing glass bottles into recycling bin, every fathomable fire-detector going off, clanking of cups, applause of the audience in a concert hall - all of that would make life hell. Even worse - pee wee tiny electronic sounds, like the microwave finishing its cycle or an item being scanned at a check-out - a bomb for my ears. At this point ( luckily! ) They had set up a hyperacusis network, and finally my condition had a name! Before that not only would ENTs send me home with a “sublime” pure tone audiometry test, but would tell me that my case was unique (what a bs!, With all the hundreds reports online, the statistics must be monumental) tell me it probably is obsession, imagination, self- programming and etc. Now I knew the problem was for real and went to the biggest neuroscientist dealing with hyperacusis AND Tinnitus! (Mostly with latter!) While conceding the fact that the research on both h and t is in murky embryonic stage, he advocated what he called TRT Tinnitus Retraining Therapy - you put on sound generators and they emit static noise that desensetizes your ears. Same works with just listening to a CD or music through headphones. A large group of hyperacusis sufferers advocate against use of earplugs, even suggesting those worsen the condition. I was never disciplined enough to do TRT properly, what I did was to try to live through environmental sounds without earplugs. I my ears did in fact desensetize to a vast majority of sounds. But the “price tag” was hefty. My hearing story at this point goes into Phase Five.

I am sending this message off at this point as I dear it might otherwise fail to save. To be continued