Best wishes on the medical front Nigel!
As to the UQ2, if I may be so bold, if you have any interest in a “better” UQ2 system, a speaker upgrade is in your future. The UQ2 really does ‘punch above its weight.’ If I lived in say a 800 ft2 flat, and only had room for a “little system” my UQ2/NAP100 would do it for me. It’s quite capable.
Nigel. Sounds vaguely familiarish to something I went through a few years back with my right ear. I have lost some hearing on the RHS at the lower frequencies. I was told it was damage to the nerve endings possibly from infection and they tried a steroid injection but to no avail. As @NigelB suggested you just get used to your hearing and pretty soon things begin to sound “normal”. It doesn’t stop me enjoying listening to music just as much as I did before, I go to gigs and I still have one reasonably good ear. So I hope your experience progresses the same way and wish you all the very best!
A different problem,…i suffer with ear congestion on the LHS. I tried a number of medicines and was offered a gromet…i declined. But as you mention, we often forget we buy a digital analogue converter for our hifi…to get sound to our ears and then from there a very little understood analogue to digital converter, our brain takes over. We all hear differently, it can compensate over time.
Thank you, and to everyone for your supportive comments. It means a lot to me. The consultant didn’t seem a particularly jolly chap so I thought better than telling him my brilliant ear joke.
How many ears does Davey Crockett have?
His left ear, his right ear, and his wild front ear.
I love that joke!
Not heard that one😁
At least he didn’t diagnose custard in one ear and jelly in the others. A trifle deaf.
Bruce’s idea of room filling speakers is a good one. I have a pair of Sonab OA12 and can confirm these fill the room with sound. Very impressive.
I am currently going down the exact same track as you HH. I lost what I perceived to be about 50% hearing in my left ear at around Christmas time and it dragged on with various medication making no difference. Then the pandemic arrived and this delayed any further investigations. Over the past 3 weeks I too have had a diagnosis of nerve damage, had the MRI to check for the acoustic neuroma (clear) and just been fitted for a left side hearing aid and on the pathway to becoming accustomed to it.
It will be a learning curve I guess. I will say it does balance the hearing so hopefully you may not feel the need to change your treasured system…
I wish you well and fingers crossed 
Sorry to hear of this Nigel & wish you all the best with the MRI and a positive outcome.
Hi HH,
I’ve not posted here for quite some time, this has been because I’ve had severe hearing issues in my only hearing ear. This was bad enough to make listening to music impossible and caused me great upset and tears. My balance was buggered up too ( sitting down often meant I fell over backwards ) so I couldn’t even go for a nice run out on my motorbike; no music, no bike. FFS. 
After being treated for an ear infection and having a hearing test that showed that my hearing was ‘fine’ I said that I believed that I would be deaf in a matter of weeks and was then sent for an MRI scan. The results from this show that I have an Acoustic Neuroma (Vestibula Schwanoma) on the hearing nerve; this is a type of brain tumour call a “low-grade” tumour meaning it isn’t malignant or cancerous, previously known as “benign”. I’ve had telephone appointment with the doctor (a Professor at Salford Royal) and that’s as far as I’ve got so far with the face-to-face appointments cancelled 
and another telephone appointment in October.
Like yourself I thought I’d have to sell my entire system or at least scale down to an ‘all in one’. My missus persuaded me not to sell and to give it some time, in the meantime my hearing has improved, it may be because I have been doing some ‘alternative’ therapy (legal and safe), or it may be because my brain has adjusted. Indeed I deliberately sat through hour after hour of distorted music to hopefully acclimatise myself, funnily enough the last part of the listening session usually sounded better that the first which fitted in with my theory.
I’ve continued the therapy and although my hearing is not what it was it was good enough to keep my system. A Sonore UPnP Bridge and a Roon subscription allowed me to use DSP and correct (cut) for the most aggressively distorted frequencies ( in the 2-5k range) generally making listening to music easier to listen to, mainly unfamiliar stuff so I didn’t have any preconceptions about how it should sound; listening training if you like 
Vinyl presented an issue though so I made contact with my dealer (Moorgate Acoustics) explaining the situation about a demo of a high quality moving coil cartridge to see if I could gain refinement and an easier listen. An dem of an LP12 Akkurate was really promising, much more so that I ever expected particularly as I brought some ‘difficult’ music to play. I’ve not got a Linn Krystal yet 
but I have bought a Kore/Karousel/Trampolinn upgrade when a month or so earlier I thought my, owned since 1988, LP12 would have been sold!
It’s been a pretty shitty time really and I have no idea how long my hearing will last and because I only have one ear this could be a total loss if this happens.
I was given a hearing aid which was helpful at first but is too loud now. I never tried it with music and Roon gave me the option of adding a few dB of lift above 8kHz anyway which was pretty much the prescription installed in the aid.
I’d certainly hold on on selling or changing anything, at least in the short term.
Regards
Steve
Sorry to hear of your problems HH - and all the best for an outcome that lets you forget your ears and enjoy the music as best can be achieved, whatever that may involve.
Hi HH heres hoping this gets sorted out for you. Please do not think your fantastic system is ‘wasted on you’ because it really isn’t.
I have a saxaphone playing friend who is going deaf in one ear, but when he listens to my system says its the best he’s ever heard. I think we use more than just our ears sometimes. Best wishes, Noel.
I’m so sorry to hear that you too are going through this. That’s the thing they will be checking for - an acoustic neuroma. Thanks for the best wishes, and best wishes to you from me.
Hi Steve. Thank you for sharing what seems to have been a truly torrid time and I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you. Isn’t it strange that there are so many of us in the same or similar boats.
Would you be able to share what the alternative therapy is that you are using. My yoga teacher has mentioned the Bowen technique but I’ve no idea of its efficacy. Thanks again.
Thanks everyone for your kind words. I reconnected the speakers to the 272/300 and must say it sounds lovely. Hopefully later today I’ll be able to get an MRI scan booked and then at least I’ll know if I have a neuroma.
Ask her about Neti and Nada Shodahna.
Take care too please.
That’s awful. What a terrible thing to happen.
One thing that springs to mind is whether it is worth running your system in mono - and with only one speaker. I suggest this because I remember my father’s system. It was mono, with a valve preamp and main amp, can’t remember the makes, but the loudspeaker was a wonderful corner speaker, with Wharfedale drives (quite a few of them - treble, mid and a huge bass), and it sounded wonderful. I have often felt that while stereo is indeed excellent, and adds an extra dimension to the music, it never quite had the same sound as that mono system. It was so coherent. Might be worth a go.
Hi HH,
Back when my hearing was particularly bad I scoured the internet for information and found various studies going on concerning the use of Aspirin to reduce the size of the tumour. I decided to give it a try as it was relatively safe and found that my hearing gradually began to improve over a number of weeks, enough to be able to listen to some smooth Jazz.
I wasn’t sure if it was the Aspirin though and thought it may be a load of bunkum so I stopped taking it and a few weeks later my hearing crashed again. Hmm, let’s try the Aspirin again and sure enough my hearing began to improve again, incrementally over say a month or two. It’s the everyday sounds that indicated things were changing e.g the sound of light switches, flushing the loo, the noise of the shower. And my tolerance to clangy, metallic noises like clattering cutlery was getting better.
I also found an “Ear Popper” helped clear my partially blocked Eustachian Tubes giving noticeably better hearing after use. Just yawn afterwards and all became clearer.
Interesting as i confirm what HH finds. Several years ago our 82 HC 250 was in Sheffield for service. I was looking at our not so often used UQ2 as it was going to be for an office system. Anyway hooked it up to SBLs and it was rather amazing.
Hi Nigel
I’m so sorry to hear about your condition. You really have been through it these last few years and I can only imagine some of what you’ve been going through. Any advice from me would be crass in the extreme, but I would echo David Hendon in suggesting you don’t downsize your beautiful system. I know only too well how good the 272 is because I bought mine after reading your enthusiastic comments in the forum and am forever grateful.
Oh, and keep on with the “ear, ear” jokes.
Roger