Same here, although it's probably not helped by years of six-hour watches in submarine engine rooms, even with a variety of earplugs.I have had Tinnitus for as long as I can remember. It doesn't normally bother me and most of the time I don't even notice it. But mention it (or post something like this) and there it is ringing away. I can imagine that a sudden onset would be hard to ignore.
I can still hear high frequencies and I can pick out transients from the background noise, but I'm having a lot of trouble distinguishing conversational frequencies from the background.
Some of tinnitus seems to be just system noise-- your pulse, fluid sloshing around in your ears, even "bad" neurons firing from faulty stimuli. At least it's relatively constant instead of getting your attention every few seconds.
When my father-in-law developed tinnitus, ironically as a CBS audio technician, it manifested as the noise of gushing water. For the first few weeks he used to get up every night convinced that a faucet had been left on or a pipe had burst. I'm glad I didn't have that symptom.
That's a completely different ear worm that's going to be with me for the rest of the day!Mine plays in-a-gadda-da-vida.