Tinnitus and sound generator

[romft123]

Had a thought the other day. I have been reading about sound/noise generators like waves crashing....thunder etc to take your mind off the effin effin noise in your head. So I thought, could you get one of those tone generators as an app on your phone, then with a pair of cordless bluetooth ear plugs/buds match the tone to your head noise then flip it....reverse the pitch and try and cancel it out???

Or do I have too much time on my hands this morning?

[xx99xx]

As tinnitus isn't an actual noise, no sound waves are present so introducing actual sound waves through earphones won't cancel anything out. As you know though, white noise can mask it.

[romft123]

Not too sure thats right. If the sound we hear is a certain tone/pitch/frequency, surely a opposite sound could cancel it out?

[bangerhoarder]

Not really, that's with an anti-wave that's 180 degrees out of phase with a sound wave cancelling it out. Tinnitus isn't a sound wave - it's caused by several factors but effectively you're sensing the sound and it's being converted to an electrical impulse to your brain, so not necessarily from an external source.

Masking the sound can work though.

[romft123]

bangerhoarder said:

Not really, that's with an anti-wave that's 180 degrees out of phase with a sound wave cancelling it out. Tinnitus isn't a sound wave - it's caused by several factors but effectively you're sensing the sound and it's being converted to an electrical impulse to your brain, so not necessarily from an external source.

Masking the sound can work though.

With some sort of tone generator thats cancelling that internal noise...............

[xx99xx]

romft123 said:

With some sort of tone generator thats cancelling that internal noise...............

I think your confusing cancelling with masking.

Masking just overrides the tinnitus usually because the introduced sound is louder. Cancelling can only happen when one sound wave meets another.