UltraQuiet Therapy

Just as a refresher, what is the science that led the UltraQuiet team to conclude that bone conduction was a better delivery vehicle than normal headphones?

 

@Steve, I'll be happy to help with ideas, UI design, developing, brainstorming.. just let me know..
Thanks for trying the matching with your headphones, I'll wait for your response.
I think that it worked better than regular headphones for me.

your music plan sounds interesting..

where can I find the best info for Notched white noise? I'd like to make a music file that is with ordinary music transposed to the ultra high frequency spectrum and then if I understand correctly, I should remove the sound at the frequency where my T is?.. I can try that. Thanks.

 

I use a band-stop filter with a center frequency equal to my T frequency and a stop band width of 1 octave. Here is a site with the technique: http://www.notchtherapy.com/step-1.html

 

@earflappin, Thanks for that info! I am trying it out right now.
for some reason I didn't have that band stop filter installed as a default, even though I downloaded and re-installed audacity.
if anyone else needs it, I found it here, you'll need to put it in you c:\program files\audacity\plug-ins folder and reopen the program.

Edit: I just tried it for 2 minutes and it made my T go crazy loud like never in recent times.. am I doing something wrong or I'll pass for now?

 

@RoyZ, you are welcome! Glad you were able to find the plug-in. The latest version of Audacity does not include it as a default for some reason. Did you use Analyze/Plot Spectrum to verify proper stop band set up?

Using it has not caused my T to spike. I generally have the volume set so that I can just barely hear my T frequency and I use headphones about 50% of the time and just my Mac's speakers the other times.

 

@earflappin, Thanks.. I did use the analyze/plot spectrum and is showed that all sound in the range between 11260Hz and 19100Hz has been removed. , my T is at 13760Hz and I can't hear anything above 15KHz even with my good ear so it's like I listen to white noise of 1Hz-11260Hz, everything above that I can't hear anyway. do you think that it could help me like that?
I tested the same procedure with a demo frequency of 7800Hz, then the range removed is between 6500Hz-10100Hz which leaves plenty of sound below and above that range.
I wonder why it removed about a range of 8KHz for a T of 13760Hz compared to a removal of about 4KHz in range for T of 7800Hz and both should be one octave.

 

That's because the frequency doubles for each octave. Concert pitch tuning is to have middle A at 440Hz. The A above that is 880Hz, then 1760Hz, 3520Hz, 7040Hz, 14080Hz. So it takes a different amount of Hz out depending on the note / frequency that you remove an octave from.

 

@Steve, Right.. I was too tired to even think about it.. so it's not the best treatment for high frequency T like mine?

 

Probably not. Instead of notch filtering you effectively just end up with a low pass filter.

 

Instead of using a one octave stop band width....use a fractional one. Here is a plot of a center frequency of 11.5khz with a 0.25 octave stop band width.

 

@SteveH, any further news to report based on your DIY bone conduction experimentation? Thanks.

 

Just got my headphones. Will try them out over the weekend!

@nogood My ETD was caused by both of my eardrums rupturing during a severe cold.

I had moderate-to-severe hearing loss in my left ear and minor hearing loss in my right ear. But the conductive hearing loss did clear up. I was left, however, with a dip in my hearing from 4 to 6 hz. The dip is minor--20 to 30 db--but it was enough to give me tinnitus. And, although both ears dip equally, only the left ear has tinnitus. And that was the ear that had the most conductive hearing loss and the most damage as it bled for several weeks.

I hear fine above 6K but I do drop off around 12K.

I don't know about the prognosis with ETD. But mine has stuck around. I believe my eustachian tubes are scarred from the ear infection and I also have year around allergies. But, before my eardrums burst, I never had any problems with my allergies and never had any ear discomfort.

About your problem, you should regain most or all of your hearing loss. But is sounds like you had an ear infection; this means you may have permanent damage to your cochlea or eustachian tubes.

 

Not yet, been a busy week. Should get some time with them tomorrow.

 

@jazz I also suspect I have damage in cochlea. . Cause I saw note on testing testing for etd.. "low amplitude reflexes in both ears" after googling around found that possible lesions on cochlea.. so far my earing loss is in higher frequency. . Above 8k .. Initially had loss from 4k which came back.. I am also hoping high frequency hearing loss would return slowly. . (Doing hbot now hopefully it will help with healing )
For now mostly I don't notice the t unless its very quite. . Or I block my ears ... if i had a spike sweeping sine wave from android app knocks it out easily with few sweeps..

 

You're still early into tinnitus. There's an excellent chance that you'll make a full recovery. But you will probably always have some damage to your cochlea, which means you'll need to wear hearing protection whenever you go to loud places, do yard work, etc. Many people have very minor tinnitus for years; but then they forget about it and expose themselves to loud noises and the tinnitus comes back, only much louder.

HBOT is good to try. I'd also take NAC. See this thread:

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/n-acetylcysteine.395/

 

Thanks jazz
I ordered some nac online. . Hard to get them in india, and I need to go back to work by end of this week.. four hr flight to Singapore. . I picked my seat right in front of the plane..plus a foam ear plugs. .hopefully it will help..

 

@earflappin, thanks for the last suggestion, I'll try that.

 

@RoyZ Notched white noise is tested up to 13khz and is supposed to be equally effective in all that range. But there is a formula to calculate the notch and based on what you wrote it seems you made it a bit too wide.

This is the whole paper with the data on how the notch is created and the results:

http://www.tinnitusjournal.com/detalhe_artigo.asp?id=48

About the DIY UltraQuiet, any data? Is there just one brand of headphones that we can use, or could we buy any bone conduction headphones with reasonable quality?

 

Hey @SteveH just an FWI---I'm also an t / h sufferer who is a musician/audio-engineer. I'm willing to help in anyway possible. I am fluent in/have a nice protools rig/synths etc and would be willing to do editing work for this or whatever if need be. I'm just throwing it out there.

 

Hey @Steve: I am just passing on this post from @SoulStation in case you missed it (the shout out was not correctly entered).

-Golly

 

Thanks @Golly

 

@Frederick86, Thanks a lot for the info, i am looking into it.

 

Thanks @Golly

@SoulStation That sounds good. I work in Cubase and Reason - more Reason these days as I love the racks and the way you can chain so much together. Any help will be very much appreciated in creating the audio files or fine tuning, pro tools is perfect for that.

What synths do you have? I'm nearly all soft-synth these days but I still have a Korg X5D and Z1.

 

@Steve ---I have an Alesis Micron (Currently in need of a bit of TLC), Novation Ultra Nova, and have an old Roland SH101 with a broken tuning pot (loose), so I don't use very often. I do enjoy the soft synth world as well. I'd say my favorite would be Razor (made by NI) but it uses additive synthesis which is confusing to me but I like the programmable lfo. and the crazy types of filters. My other favorite is M-Tron Pro (more of a virtual instrument though love those old tape sounds). I'll do what ever fine tuning you need. I have Auto-Tune EVO and a elastic time/pitch as well as a nice Massy Limiter for getting everything crisp.

 

Hey, this Ultra Quiet thread is pretty quiet.... @Steve, did you get a chance to do any further experimentation this past weekend by chance? Many thanks.

 

I didn't get to do any. But there's no time like the present so whilst I'm doing other work I'm going to try a few combinations of sound running in the background.

 

@Steve - any update to share? Hate to hound you but I am trying to decide if I want to invest time/energy into this treatment. Thanks.

 

Don't worry, I often need a kick to remind me of things.

I tried to do roughly what I read in one of the papers, using Sine waves from about 6KHz up to 20KHz in patterns. It didn't do anything for me but that isn't to say that it won't work in tandem with extra tones.

I get RI from using tones from around 100Hz to around 10KHz, so for me I feel that it needs to be more like that, just adding the higher frequencies too. I need to experiment further.

I don't suppose that anybody has any idea of what their music sounds like? I can copy pretty much any style.

 

I briefly thought about making an albums worth of stuff based around the frequency of my T and it's divisions...but just haven't had the motivation to do much of anything lately. Hope everybody else is doing better then me!

 

@Steve If I remember it correctly, the paper I read said they used music transposed to the 10-20 khz range. Maybe sine waves are not so good, or including sound less than 10 khz was counterproductive?

What about trying classical music with a broad range of frequencies and transposing it to sound in 10-20 khz? I think that would be more similar to the original paper and could be worth a try.