Tinnitus Masking features. Do they work for you?

The ringing in your ears is our brains way of feeling in the sounds that our ears are not giving it. I guess you could say it is an illusion that our brains are doing to keep it busy.

I went to a free online wave generator at audionotch.com18. It was pretty good. It helped me determine (to the best of my ability) that my left hear tinnitus was around 8500 Hz, while my right ear was closer to 7800 Hz.

I’m hoping that HA’s will be able to provide my brain with enough of a signal in these areas to trick it into not ‘producing’ those frequencies to fill the void. From what I understand, I have about a 50-50 shot. If regular old HA’s don’t work, I may try a HA with the masking feature that produces these waves at a low level, and perhaps force feeding my brain these particular sound waves will temporarily stop the tinnitus.

Of course, the irony being that I don’t hear ~8K+ sounds worth a darn in the real world. But they are produced in absolute stunning clarity in my brain’s made-up version.

Fingers crossed here!

No irony at all. That’s the cause of the tinnitus.

I guess the true irony is…with Tinnitus being such a pervasive issue, (Three years ago Scientific American published a report that stated “Tinnitus is suffered by one in ten U.S. adults and by 40% of all veterans.”) how come we don’t hear more about it?

You would think that with the staggering amount of money to be made, the healthcare industry would throw more dollars at an actual and marketable therapy/solution be it surgical or external. I’d pay anything to be rid of my Tinnitus.

I sure hope HA’s work for me.

First week with Oticon Nera 2Pro MiniBTE with TI feature. Given the level of tinnitus I decided it was worth the small extra to get a TI masker and I’m glad I did.
Audiologist repeatedly stated that she doesn’t normally turn on the Tinnitus masker on the first fitting.
However after fitting the Nera she was surprised that it hadn’t altered the tinnitus at all, so the feature was activated that day.
At this stage its activated with a white noise masker. We are going to review as we learn.
In general the HA is providing relief from the tinnitus. You don’t notice it until you take the HA out of your ear and then suddenly the TI commences.
However when its bad the masker is definitely a relief.
The setup was quite simple, the audiologist just turned up the volume of the masker until I said it was loud enough to distract the mind from the tinnitus.
I also can adjust the volume of the masker by the buttons on the HA.

In summary both the normal program of the HA and the TI feature has definitely helped.
My ringing is around the 6000Hz range.

Tinnitus masking seems to be working for me. Sometimes I feel like I should change the volume but I don’t have that option enabled. Over time the tinnitus goes away at the volume that it is currently set for. In fact, I recall my Audi saying to leave it at the same volume and I wouldn’t hear it after a while. That seems to have happened. Only rarely do I now hear the Tinnitus when my HA’s are in but even then it dissipates over time. Tinnitus is nowhere near what it was before I got my HA’s and I’m happy with that. If I make the masker louder it would interfere with what I should be hearing I think. Sounds like a breeze blowing much of the time or listening to a shell at the ocean.

@Demiles said:

I don’t have aids with this feature yet but following this on another forum it’s seems that some have success and some don’t. Everyone’s perception of tinnitus is different so I would suggest a trial of HA that have it and see if it works for you.

Hi, I have read almost each of the reply here:
according to research and opinion, all that matters is the correct use of the sound masking technology:

I am currently researching on this topic and have found plenty of information
some info about sound masking through whitenoise specifically for tinnitus patients can be found here:
http://tinnitusreliefinformation.com/white-noise-for-tinnitus15

also some useful products are listed here

http://www.whitenoisejudge.com/1

hope that helps.

Notice that this is a first time poster. Might just be spam. Note the signature.

Could be… I don’t even see a signature.

I have had severe to outrageous tinnitus for 30+ years. For the first year or two it was very distracting, but I have good attentional focus and am not conscious of the tinnitus when I’m paying close attention to something else (even reading).

When I was about 5 years into the tinnitus, I had some dental work that involved drilling, and was amazed and thrilled to have the experience of no tinnitus – my hearing was so clear! (except for the dentist’s drill, that is)

I wear Bolero V70s for now (still trial period), and they have no effect on my tinnitus.

My audi suggested that tinnitus can improve with increased input to the brain: if the tinnitus is caused by lack of neural input (so the brain generates its own), then giving the brain neural input in those frequencies might result in the brain having to generate less of its own “input”.

Does anyone have experience with tinnitus improving over time using HAs?

Some people’s tinnitus drifts around to different frequencies so maskers can’t really help with that. I’ve seen it work wonders with others though. Also depends on the brand. Some are better than others. Phonak and Unitron are, by far, the best thought.

I’ve had my Widex Unique Fusion 220 for about 1-1/2 weeks and really like the Zen programs for help with tinnitus. Zen is the main reason I chose to wear hearing aids and the Widex brand. The fractal tones are great and I’ve been using it daily and have experienced a decrease in perceived ringing without the hearing aids when going to sleep. With the fractal tones on with a little noise I don’t notice ringing at all. Widex has a document that explains how to use the Zen programs to help habituate to the tinnitus. So far it’s working for me.

@KenP said:

Notice that this is a first time poster. Might just be spam. Note the signature.

Is that the same Rachel from “Cardholder Services” who calls me about once a week?

I have been clinically diagnosed with tinnitus and high frequency hearing loss. Attempted to utilize hearing aids more for tinnitus relief vs. high frequency loss. Just used as demo unit as they can be quite expensive. For me they were a waste of time. My tinnitus tone is 8500Hz. I am actively trying lots of so called “cures” and open to try anything.

One thing I am having a bit of success is something called frequency notch therapy. The concept is to remove the frequency from normal listening. So each day, I spend a few hours listening to music and remove the 8500Hz frequency from it. This is done on my PC/Laptop with an application called Peace EqualizerAPO. It allows you to define any frequency for its bands and notch it out. To add to this there are presets for all popular headphones that have been defined by professional sound engineers. Another plus is that I am working at home because of pandemic and the audio for my video conference sessions passed thru this EQ as well. Best of all, it is free. You will spend a bit of time configuring, but one set, very simple to adjust for different headphones, speakers, etc.