Is There Any Way to Measure the Tinnitus?

Discussion in 'Support' started by issam, May 12, 2017.

    1. issam

      issam Member

      Location:
      Lebanon
      Tinnitus Since:
      2013
      Cause of Tinnitus:
      load voice
      Is there any way to let people know what is the tone and the volume level of the sound in my head?
       
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    2. GregCA
      Jaded

      GregCA Member Benefactor Hall of Fame

      Tinnitus Since:
      03/2016
      Cause of Tinnitus:
      Otosclerosis
      Yes, you can do a pitch and volume matching either yourself or with the help of an audiologist.
       
    3. AUTHOR
      AUTHOR
      issam

      issam Member

      Location:
      Lebanon
      Tinnitus Since:
      2013
      Cause of Tinnitus:
      load voice
      Thanks for the reply, really I am a developer of android applications and I am trying to make an application to measure and describe my tinnitus but I have a problem that is people will hear something else in volume and tone if I have hearing loss :(
       
    4. GregCA
      Jaded

      GregCA Member Benefactor Hall of Fame

      Tinnitus Since:
      03/2016
      Cause of Tinnitus:
      Otosclerosis
      Right... but you can normalize it if you know your hearing threshold at the T frequency (look up dB SL i.e. Sensory Level). It's not perfect.
       
    5. Alue
      No Mood

      Alue Member Hall of Fame

      Tinnitus Since:
      01/2016
      Cause of Tinnitus:
      Acoustic Trauma
      I don't think you can reliably do volume matching by yourself.
       
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    6. GregCA
      Jaded

      GregCA Member Benefactor Hall of Fame

      Tinnitus Since:
      03/2016
      Cause of Tinnitus:
      Otosclerosis
      Why not?
       
    7. maltese
      Batty

      maltese Member

      Tinnitus Since:
      10/2016
      Cause of Tinnitus:
      Club
      To be fair, if you want to show other people how it is to live with tinnitus, you can play the tone way louder than it really is 'in your head'. It will give them a better idea of how bothersome it is than an actual representation. Why?

      The worst thing about T is that it never goes away, not the tone itself...
       
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    8. Jason C

      Jason C Member

      Tinnitus Since:
      29 May 2016
      Cause of Tinnitus:
      Burgler Alarm
      Tinnitus for me is hard to put a volume on, when I am in silence it is pretty quiet, yet if I Listen too music I can hear it on top of the music at times, so in that case it would be louder than 70db or more.
      Before I acquired tinnitus I though it would be a solid tone, not this fluctuating multi tone shit I have now due too acoustic trauma.

      On a plus note, things have improved at almost a year into this. It's still there but my quality of hearing has improved. I am hoping things will get better in time.
       
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    9. Alue
      No Mood

      Alue Member Hall of Fame

      Tinnitus Since:
      01/2016
      Cause of Tinnitus:
      Acoustic Trauma
      Do you have your own sound booth and calibrated equipment?
       
    10. GregCA
      Jaded

      GregCA Member Benefactor Hall of Fame

      Tinnitus Since:
      03/2016
      Cause of Tinnitus:
      Otosclerosis
      I don't, but I don't think I need it. I have equipment that gives me an audiogram within 5 dB of a "professional audiogram" as performed by pro audiologists (at all tested frequencies). That equipment is my iPhone and Apple ear buds.
      That's accurate enough for me. My audiologist tells me that their own audiograms are within 5-10 dB anyways.

      The setup can be a bit annoying to do at home, and I'll admit I've had to do a bunch of "retakes" when an airplane decided to fly over my house during the test, but I'd generally get what I need in less than 20 minutes.

      The lack of properly calibrated equipment has a much bigger impact on the establishment of your hearing threshold in absolute value than it does on figuring the loudness of your T in dB SL, since you only have to measure a difference in signal intensity, which is less volatile across hardware. The calibration is useful to determine the intensity of the electrical signal to send to reach a given dB rating at a given frequency, but that isn't what we are doing here.
      Still, as per my previous paragraph, some "off the shelf" equipment can give you surprisingly good results.

      In term of pinpointing T frequency, it's very rare (I've never seen it) to send an electrical sine wave at frequency f and get a sound wave at frequency that different from f, given the way speakers work (assuming no clipping from an amp stage, etc). It's possible that the frequency response of the hardware is different (in terms of gain), so you'd get a sound that has a different volume across hardware, but unlikely a significantly different frequency, especially in the traditionally audible bands.
       
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