TinnitusPlay — Mix, Modulate & Notch Sounds Tailored to Your Tinnitus

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Dear Tinnitus Talk members & visitors,

We are proud to announce the launch of our very first app to help tinnitus patients! It’s called TinnitusPlay and is now available for free at the App Store – iPhone only for now.

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What Does TinnitusPlay Do?
TinnitusPlay is a sound generating app. But it does not just offer standard masking tracks like water and cricket sounds (though we do offer those too). It also includes sound techniques that are based on science and that offer some tinnitus patients longer-term relief; although more testing is needed on this.

The sound techniques featured are:

• Notched Audio – Your tinnitus frequency is “notched out” of a sound sequence
• Neuromodulation – A tonal repetition centered around your tinnitus frequency
• Amplitude Modulation – Sounds that vary in loudness according to a certain cycle

TinnitusPlay includes a feature that matches your tinnitus tone and pitch, and also checks your hearing, so that the sound modules can be customized to your personal hearing and tinnitus profile.

What Does the Science Say?
You can read about the supporting evidence in the Information section of the app. In short, there is some preliminary evidence that such sound techniques can have longer lasting effects to reduce tinnitus in some patients. But a lot more research is needed to find out for whom it works and how to optimize these effects. The sound modules of TinnitusPlay were validated by a scientist knowledgeable on sound therapy for tinnitus.

Who Funded TinnitusPlay?
TinnitusPlay was conceived of and funded by a philanthropist who wishes to remain anonymous. He suffers from severe tinnitus and wants to put his money to use to help other tinnitus patients. To this end, he frequently donates to curative research, but he also wanted to make something available that could help patients in the short-term, by providing sound techniques that are often marketed to patients commercially entirely free of charge.

How Was TinnitusPlay Developed?
The philanthropist mentioned above approached us, Tinnitus Hub, about two years ago. He asked whether we would partner on this project and release the app under our brand; we gladly agreed.

A development team was hired by our philanthropist for the technical side, while we were responsible for supplying both the content of the app and instructing the developers on what the app should look and feel like. As you can imagine, this has taken up many hundreds of hours of our time over the past two years!

All sounds in the app were created by our very own @Steve. Our scientific advisor has been Patrick Neff from Regensburg University.

Availability/Cost
Currently, the app is only available to iPhone users; we hope to release an Android version in future, but we don’t yet know when.

The app is completely free. There are also no hidden costs, e.g. there are no ads, and we don’t collect your personal information. In short, we are not seeking to sell you anything or profit from this in any way.

We would however very much appreciate your financial support to keep this forum, and all of our projects, up-and-running.

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Plans for the Future
Apart from making it available to Android users, we hope to expand on the functionalities of TinnitusPlay over time. One major step forward would be to log user data that could help assess treatment effectiveness. In an ideal world, we would collect all kinds of data (with user consent of course) that could point to new/improved sound-based treatments or combinations with other treatments or help define for which patient groups certain treatments are more/less effective. To this end, the app could for instance be linked to other apps like Track Your Tinnitus, or to web-based platforms, for more enhanced features.

 

Unbelievable. Just downloaded it and I’m trying it now. A beautiful GUI.

Thank you so much to the anonymous benefactor and to Tinnitus Talk! You guys are amazing!!

 

Excellent!

 

Awesome, thanks for releasing this. Just shared it on the tinnitus sub (Reddit).

 

Some feedback - one of the best features of the app is that it can overlay simultaneously with other sounds such as a video or music playing in the background. (Generally that does not happen with iOS.) I’m not sure if the developers consider this a feature or a bug but please keep it!

Also, great selection of features and sounds. Really impressive app.

Finally, perhaps it could be considered to add a button for play/pause in the Notification center dropdown.

Thank you again!

 

This is awesome. If only there were more people like this philanthropist.

He has my gratitude. We need more people like him in this world.

Just please release on Android soon.

 

Interesting! Can't wait for the Android version!

 

Honestly the best tinnitus app so far. It has so many features and they all work. I know it’s early but my two feature requests are:

1. Ability to cycle between silence and tone based on time interval. It gives the ear a rest and also shows effectiveness of the tone.

2. More sound selection.

 

Super!

I hope that the next step is connecting a TENS device to this sound machine. There are iPhone and Android controlled TENS devices as you probably know. This would effectively make this a bimodal neurostimulator.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/omron-tens/id1225437437
https://itens.com/

 

Very nice work on the app. I went to sleep using it last night and it helped.

Thanks.

 

Thanks a lot! Can't wait for Android version. Is there an estimated date?

 

I have tried many iPhone apps... This is BY FAR the best in variety of therapies and it’s really amazing that you can play your own music mixed with the therapy you choose.

Congratulations for the user interface, it's really simple and intuitive.

I can suppress and forget my tinnitus for hours and have used it everyday since it was published.

And it’s truly free, there are no hidden ‘in app’ costs!

Thank you so much! Super!

I have one question though: What is the best/recommended way to use the “Match and Test” feature? The information screen says “Please make sure you follow the instructions about the use of headphones” but I can’t seem to find any…

 

Thank you so much for this. Still learning my way around it, I love the crickets! Now I need to get a high quality over the ear headset.

Also great not having ads popping up.

Well done.

 

Sounds interesting. Hoping for an Android version soon.

PS: and of course I hope that the philanthropist can get some relief from their tinnitus, too.

 

Downloading this now and planning on using it when I go to bed, can't wait!!!

 

There is a bug that should be fixed.

There is no way to load previous hearing test results. You can only save hearing test results but loading appears to be impossible. I could not figure out any workaround.

 

Love this app already.

I really appreciate how customized you can tailor it to your needs. Admittedly I have a difficult time matching my tinnitus, but that's obviously no fault of the app.

The best feature is that you can keep this playing in the background and still listen to audio on other apps. Since my tinnitus started I've started listening to audiobooks, and the layered sound of the audiobook plus the noise from TinnitusPlay is great.

Great work on this and thank you so much!

 

Just gave it 5 stars!

 

I haven't had the chance to get my hands on this app so far as I am an Android user.

Is it intended to mask your tinnitus? Does it work like Lenire in the way that you have to have daily sessions in order to have a decrease in the volume of your tinnitus?

 

Thanks so much for publishing this app, and thanks to the benefactor!

Already used White Noise with Apple AirPods (one at a time) to assist with masking but now I am trying out the therapies to see if I can get any mid term improvement. I invested in some Kokoon headphones which have 11 hours battery lifd, and so I can sleep with the treatment / noise running.

As someone above said, hardest part is matching the frequency, as my tinnitus is quite atonal and every time I try matching it (in app or other website), it tends to stop the tinnitus for a very short time! I will keep trying.

Really good that it plays in the background as it means, for example, that I can play masking noise quietly, mixed with YouTube or other apps, which makes it far more enjoyable.

As someone mentioned, it would be great if it linked to the iOS Control Center so you could stop and start etc from the lock screen.

Plus some more high frequency masking noises would be cool such as violet noise, as currently I mainly have to use one or two crickets options.

I have told friends about this app who also have tinnitus. Thanks again!

 

Thank you to everyone involved with this app, Tinnitus Talk, the developers and not least the philanthropist who made it possible, it’s a very kind gesture.

I really look forward to using this app and greatly appreciate everyone’s time and effort.

Thank you so much.

 

If you’ve used TinnitusPlay and are happy with it, please rate it on the AppStore!

 

Thanks @Hazel!! A lot.

I think I am not the only one craving for the Android version. Looking forward to it.

 

I downloaded TinnitusPlay but, unfortunately for me, the masking sounds (Sound Mixer) aren’t high pitch enough to mask my tinnitus.

Not sure if this is doable but, I wonder if it’s possible to add a feature to where after we match our tinnitus, the app suggests masking sounds based on the pitch of our tinnitus?

 

A sincere thanks for this app and to @Hazel for checking in here for feedback. I also am really looking forward to the Android version. Is there a date for that yet?

I have found the Tonal Tinnitus Therapy app on Android to be helpful - not for its intended use as I'm not really betting on unimodal acoustic retraining therapy to work from a free app but it did help, if only to be able to record the tone of my tinnitus on different days, which offered a lot of confirmation of the pitch. Maybe others would find that useful.

I would also be very interested in the scientific basis and and reports on long-term benefits for this app. Thanks again for this much needed resource!