Tuning in my T

[GDJTAM]

Hi all,

T is bothering me a little today, It's a hight pitched hissing sound. Three questions if I may, 1) How do I know what khz my T is? 2) from that reading, do I adjust my app noises accordingly.

3)I have noticed that when I go to bed and put white noise on in the background, my T not only hisses but a 'flat line' type tone blasts in my ear. Last night I turned the white noise off to experiment and after 5 minutes the 'flat line' tone stopped and left me with my hissing. Is this all to do with khz?

[JohnJopp]

Hi GDJTAM.

There are a number of so-called therapies which are claimed to be tailored to your specific tinnitus frequency. They do say though that your tinnitus must be tonal rather then just a white noise type hiss. Two of the better known ones are Acoustic CR Neuromodulation (as offered by the Tinnitus Clinic) and Notched Music Therapy. With Acoustic CR Neuromodulation your tinnitus frequency is determined and an audio file is generated consisting of a series of beeps and tones based on your specific frequency. You are supplied with an audio player and earphones and you are required to play the sounds for a set number of hours each day. With Notched Music Therapy again your T frequency is determined and music files are then modified to have that frequency removed from them. Playing these music files via earphones over a period of time is said to reduce your T.

I don't believe that there is any sound medical evidence that either of these therapies will give any benefit at all. I've not tried Acoustic CR Neuromodulation but I did notch my own music files myself using a pc program called Audacity and I got no benefit from playing them.

There is a company called Audionotch which offers a paid for music notching service. They do have a free to use tinnitus frequency utility which can be found here.. audionotch.com/app/tune/

A word of warning though if you want to try it, if you use headphones on your pc turn your pc volume down low to start with as the default volume seems very loud to me. The utility is basically a simple slider which raises or lowers the generated tone and you adjust it until the tone frequency matches that of your T. Sounds dead simple but it is notoriously hard to do in practice.

I personally don't think there is any point in trying to adjust your sound files depending on your T frequency. It doesn't hurt to experiment though. Instead of just white noise you could try brown noise or pink noise or different natural sounds like rain, a river, the sea, electric fan etc.

John

[GDJTAM in reply to JohnJopp]

Hi John,

Pardon the pun but that's sound advice, I will certainly look at the audionotch and I will try an alternative bedtime background noise. I've just downloaded a T app that plays all the noises you suggest. The favourite so far is the fan but I'll soon know tonight if it suits me if I get the 'flat line beep' sound in my head again.

Many thanks

Graham

[JohnJopp in reply to GDJTAM]

Hi Graham, just to be clear, I'm not suggesting you try the Audionotch service - just use their free tuning utility if you want to try and determine your T frequency.

John

[GDJTAM]

Hi John, Blimey, thank heavens you told me to turn the volume down when using Audionotch. I could hear all the dogs barking when I used it!

I've now got a rough idea of my T sound (Sawtoothwave 3028 hz). No idea what to do with this information now other than I now have a new tool to tell people what I'm hearing.

Graham