I Invented a Sound That Knocked Out My Tinnitus

I just invented this therapy, I did not set up the booklet or create the test group, the Facebook group moderators did. I don't use any apps, I recorded it to a Sony UX-560 and use that.

 

I find something about all of this very fishy:

First of all the OP claims that you need Koss headphones specifically because they extend to 24 kHz. Let's ignore first the fact that there are dozens of transducers that extend to 100+ kHz, and that 24 kHz is child's play by today's standards. Here's a spectral analysis of the sound file created in Adobe Audition.



Notice how almost none of the sound aside from several momentary tones in the beginning exceed 20 kHz, nevermind 22.05 kHz. What exactly is the need for people to buy these Koss headphones?

Second of all, I read talk about the Koss headphones having titanium diaphragms or having some sort of unique EMF resonance blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda. Diaphragm material in headphones shouldn't really have any sort of implications for these set of purposes (although they do matter, beryllium and biodynamic diaphragms are all the craze in the audio world these days) and let's not even get started on the notion that headphone EMF is supposed to be remotely significant. So I guess if I used an electrostatic headphone these would have no effect since those run purely on static electricity huh? But they frequently extend to over 150khz so they would be good then? The lack of knowledge on basic electrical engineering here is astounding coming from someone who's supposed to have built a solar panel car.

Thirdly, how has no one, absolutely no one brought up the fact that many of these testimonials, if real, could be attributed to placebo? It’s well documented that placebo happens to everyone and can operate in all sorts of manners (it can even happen to people fully aware that they’re being subjected to a placebo), and I’m supposed to believe that this miracle cure isn’t just a case of that?

Another point, why does this have to be done while sleeping? What sort of neurological function is supposed to be going on during sleep that makes it superior to use while waking? If this is supposed to repair damage to the inner ear how is sleep relevant to the equation?

Finally, I speak this as someone who operates a lot in music especially around experimental/noise music: this sound file is obnoxious. The high pitched tones are generally uncomfortable to listen to and the various monetary stops in the second section (the one beginning around the 16 minute mark in my spectral analysis) are jarring. I've heard countless noisy and harsh albums and live performances in my time and this is just generally unpleasant for me to listen to. How exactly is the general consumer, one without a background in harsh noises like mine, supposed to sleep to this?

I'm not going to talk at all about whatever conspiracy theories the OP seems to believe in. I'll let other people handle that.

 

1. What makes these sounds any different from any other waveform? Any notion of “order” we have in audio is mostly conditioned, theoretically speaking all sounds are chaos that do not follow logical rules any more than your sound file. Let’s ignore music, which, to the untrained ear, will sound like chaotic noise. How is this different from say the noises of traffic or the shower? And what does this have to do with Koss headphones or titanium diaphragms?
2. That’s not how feedback works. The amplitude of the disruption introduced into the feedback loop is incredibly important to breaking it.

 

@animus Thanks for coming here today and posting your viewpoints in posts above.

 

Koss are actually a fairly famous company in the audio world, if I’m not wrong they were large contributors towards the modern stereo headphone and the PortaPro and KSC75 remain as some of the most recommended low cost headphones. But the absolute insistency on otherwise standard headphones is baffling to say the least.

 

Hi David!

I read the full thread (50 pages, what a journey lol!)

I have to admit that I'm curious. And as naive as I can be, I don't think you're a scammer. It would make no sense. I would eventually give it a try.

I'm Jimmy and I'm 23.

My tinnitus appeared 3 weeks ago because of acoustic trauma/stress, probably. It is mainly (hard to say) in my right ear.

Do you think it's too soon to expose myself to such noises as your sound therapy after my trauma? 100% safe?

 

@animus I do not see any positive contribution in your post. 50 % of rate success could not be attributed to placebo effect.

@R. David Case do not worry.... the history has many episodes of persecutions. Just wait and see if it is effective in a large scale of people.

 

You can say 50% percent success rate all you want, where is the PROOF?

 

It's been brought up several times, always answered with an anecdotal testimonial that could be exactly that.

 

People have cured themselves of cancer via placebo and you're telling me something as relatively inconsequential as this is exempt? If anything this is exactly the kind of cultlike, uncritical thinking that's often associated with placebo. No offense but if you genuinely think 500+ (if this is really 500+ people and not like 15) people is a large sample size of any sort you don't know how peer reviewed studies work. Where are the control and variable groups here? Running around and screaming that you're not under the effects of placebo, you're just being persecuted, screams of some sunk cost running through your head. No, this can't possibly be! I can't possibly have just been fooled by snake oil! I'm being persecuted! Do you see how absolutely inane this is? Get a hold of yourself and try to think about this straight.

 

Not to sound overly dramatic or to destroy peoples' hope, while I would love for something like this to work, my extended knowledge in both sound engineering, and the way hearing loss induced tinnitus works (to some degree, considering the scientific community doesn't know that much about it in the first place) lead me to believe that this is very likely to be snake oil.

That said some therapies such as bimodal neuromodulation works to some degree even with sounds alone as they use the auditive persistence phenomenon to "distract" the auditory cortex from the tinnitus frequency, that said it would take more than sound alone to have a lasting effect as the persistence/distracting effects only last from seconds to a couple of minutes (depending on individuals) and is in no way permanent, this is why such devices as Lenire are more complex than just playing specific sounds to you.

For instance, the sounds from the video below work to silence my spikes for roughly 20 seconds using the persistence phenomenon alone, after which the spikes resume. It can provide temporary relief but that's about it. Of course this particular video/soundtrack may not work on your own tinnitus, considering the frequency and pitch is likely different from my own.

High Pitched Tinnitus Masking

 

I would avoid using any headphones even at low volume, until at the very least 4 months post trauma, unless you really have to (for instance, while performing an audiogram). If you do use have to use headphones, make the duration as short as possible.

Once your ears have healed enough, you may resume (at your own risks) the use of headphones (not that I would recommend it), only at low volume, over short sessions (one hour or less), preferably open back headphones rather than closed back, I would also never use earbuds/IEMs ever again.

 

The sooner the better, and Tinnitus Mix has worked best on sound induced tinnitus. You want to use it on low volume for a few hours each day and when you get used to the sounds you want to switch to all night every night until the tinnitus is gone. it should only take a week or so since you have only had it for a short time. Good luck!!

 

Well I know that is what is normally recommended, but this is not music, this is sounds that will heal. Many who were helped by Tinnitus Mix were told not to use headphones and it stopped their tinnitus. Tinnitus Mix blows all of the common knowledge out of the water. Read this testimony, she states the same thing, she was hesitant to use headphones because that's what she was told. Thank god she did use the Koss and Tinnitus Mix!!

 

No this is not snake oil, this has helped hundreds of people, even many on this thread if you will take the time to read. We are even getting reports of HEARING IMPROVEMENTS after using Tinnitus Mix for a few weeks. Here is the scientific basis explained from a scientist in Canada who is testing Tinnitus Mix.

 

Yea nobody just can believe it, they are always skeptical, then they see the results and they are dumb founded like you.

 

In the court of law all of these testimonies would be submitted as evidence. This is real proof. If it was only a few people I would agree, but this is now 522 people with good results.

 

Yes we are up to 522 with great results, we now have 1600 in the test group so I will be glad to see the results as will all of you. I am surprised how many of you WITH tinnitus (?) are actually banking on this not working. You would think all of you would be encouraged.

 

We believe that the coil size and construction of the Koss KTX-PRO1 are what makes them work so well with Tinnitus Mix, in other words the headphones are putting off a small amount of electromagnetic waves that work WITH the sounds to awaken the neurological pathways to work properly. This article could shed light on the HOW Tinnitus Mix works.

 

Think of a singer on stage, if he gets the mic too close to a speaker a loud squeal will occur, it will continue forever until he induces sound into mic or moves it away. Tinnitus Mix with its BROWNIAN (randomness) characteristics and the 7 kinds of interference that make up Tinnitus Mix jam this continuing cycling in the tinnitus structure. There are many shaped pulses and other wave forms also in Tinnitus Mix that overwhelm the tinnitus.

 

1. It doesn't really make sense for damage induced hearing loss and tinnitus, to me at least.
2. It is weird that he posts images of text messages and hand written letters from adults and children and like none of these people have accounts here themselves.
3. He also seems to have nothing to gain here.
4. He is giving away the sound file for free.
5. He seems very adamant.
6. The first MuteButton was sorta like this, right?

The only thing that I can think of that would make him a fraud with something to gain would be if he is from Koss and trying to sell headphones. Otherwise, there is no other rational explanation for his efforts, other than mental illness.

I'm still on the fence about this. Maybe these sounds just light up the auditory system in a way that induces regeneration????????? This is the most oddball thing on this website next to eating raw sea anemone but I'm not totally ready to dismiss it.

 

When I invented this I had to use things that were low cost so people could afford it. The Koss are very cheap but go into the ultra-sonic range. And you are not considering very short pulses in Tinnitus Mix that will not register in your app. If you cut off the upper half of a 24 kHz sine wave it will not show up on that equipment but it is still there. Your equipment (app) has to have many cycles of a frequency to LOCK ON to the frequency to display it. So in summary you are not using the right equipment to analyze all that is going on in Tinnitus Mix. So it is well known that streaming sounds while in alpha state (sleep) helps tinnitus, you should do your research and then post, read this.

 

Uh, it depends on what he has his sampling rate set to, it very well could pick up higher frequencies. Many audio interfaces can sample at 192 kHz. The Nyquist frequency thing states that the sampling rate has to be twice the highest frequency that is being recorded. At 192 kHz sampling rate you could record audio wave frequencies of 96 kHz. Is that not enough?

 

The "mix" is distributed on a CD (or wav file), which is sampled at 44.1 kHz. I wouldn't be too hopeful to find much energy above 22.05 kHz in that sound, no matter how high you sample it.

 

Sigh... lol.

 

What is the relevance of this?

 

What is amazing? Your accounts of the people cured?
Seriously?

 

If you think testimonials from randos is empirical undeniable evidence then I have a bridge to sell you.

Dude, the “app” you are talking about is a professional audio software for analyzing audio files. You’re telling me Adobe Audition, used by professionals around the world to analyze audio spectrograms and to mix down quadrophonic and stereo channels is not good enough to read your magical cure-all file. You’re delusional. Your audio file does not sample a single frequency above 22.05 kHz, and it contains absolutely no data above 20 kHz. You are a fool who denies hard objective fact and should feel bad about calling yourself any sort of engineer. You’re just a bad liar.

A court of law would laugh your pseudoscientific ass out of the courtroom. You exist on about the same plane as flat earthers and antivaxxers. You deny science and seek circlejerks and ingroups to confirm your biases. You don’t care about seeking objective truth, you care about proving yourself right. And that’s what separates you from actual scientific research.

 

Just because this kind of actual denial of science and confirmation bias entertain me I'm going to do a very concise breakdown on exactly why our friend R. David Case here is wrong.

Fun fact: When Koss (or any other company) list their product's frequency response range as, say, 10 Hz - 24000 Hz, it means that there is a major rolloff at the ends of these frequencies (that is, the SPL from say, 40 Hz down to 10hz gets quieter very rapidly) that's hidden in the fine print. More likely than not, the Koss rolls off starting at 10khz (most transducers, especially small ones, do) and by the time you reach 20 kHz it's practically inaudible, assuming you can even hear 20 kHz. At 24 kHz? Probably has an amplitude of less than 1dB.

Any spikes that extend beyond 20 kHz are extremely visible even in the full view of the entire file's spectrum, like the 3 or so in the first section that last a fraction of a second long. You're just telling the world how much you don't know about Adobe Audition, an industry standard audio analysis program.

Which isn't present in your file anyways since the sample rate is 44.1 kHz.

Are you sure about that? Would you like to test that theory? I'll do you one better and prove to you that my software can detect audio up to 96 kHz.

Here is a spectrogram of a 24bit/192 kHz copy of John Coltrane's Blue Train. Notice how it is capable of displaying frequencies above and beyond 80 kHz, all the way up to the Nyquist sample rate of 96khz. If I inputted a 384 kHz file it would show me frequencies up to the limit of 192 kHz. If I inputted a 768 kHz file it would show me audio at 384 kHz, well above the hearing of most living organisms. What does this mean? It means you're full of shit.

Tell me more about these cycles, chief. Cycles of what, big guy? Since you seem to pride yourself on engineering genius I'm sure you can educate us philistines using technical terminology and not just vague tomfoolery.

Please, tell me more about how universally acclaimed industry standard software is "not enough" to handle your amazing cure all file. Please tell me more about how objective data is wrong because it doesn't prove you right.

Well known by who? Are there peer reviewed studies and published papers on this? Show me some scientific journals proving this. That is, if you have any, and aren't just peddling around your homeopathic bullshit cures as usual.

To summarize, R. David Case has displayed:

• A severe lack of knowledge on how sample rates work, what the Nyquist frequency is, and why his audio file does not contain ultrasonic data.
• A severe if not nonexistent lack of knowledge on how transducers and audio hardware work.
• Consistent advertising of a specific Koss headphone that's incredibly unnecessary and contradictory for his supposed ultrasonic uses.
• Consistent denial of any objective data shown to him that contradicts what he peddles as a guaranteed cure all for tinnitus.
• Use of testimonials as empirical evidence. I wonder if I compiled screenshots and handwritten letters (Doctored or not, who knows? As far as anyone here should be concerned the legitimacy of any of these testimonials should be in around the same area as the mortality of Schrödinger's Cat.) of people claiming that R. David Case raped them, would he consider himself a rapist and hand himself over to law enforcement?
• Belief in government conspiracies and other dubious and questionable opinions that delegitimize his already highly unscientific work.
• A strong confirmation bias, in which anything which may tangentially relate to his work automatically proves it right. Some obscure questionable neuroscientific article about brain waves in sleep? Must be empirical evidence.
• A god complex/savior complex/cult leader like behavior, in which he is the savior of all tinnitus sufferers because he fried two 555 timers and recorded them dying.

One wonders, with all this plainly in sight, why should anyone, anyone, believe a word of this con artist, malicious or not?