How to use it
Tinnitus is hearing a sound – ringing, whistling, hissing, buzzing – that has no source outside your body. It is a symptom, not a disease, and it is common: surveys put it at roughly 10 to 15 percent of adults. Only you can hear it, which makes it hard to describe. This page lets you build a sound that comes close, so you can describe it to a doctor or an audiologist, or keep a record.
Put on headphones in a quiet room and follow the six steps: set the volume of your device with the reference tone, choose the kind of sound, find its pitch, check the octave, match the loudness and read the result.
Controls
- Play sound / Stop sound: the Space key does the same. Esc always stops everything.
- Level: the −5 dB and +5 dB buttons (keys − and +) and the slider in step 5. It is the page’s only volume control: it starts at −60 dBFS, stops at −10 dBFS and rises by at most 20 dB at a time.
- Sound and ear: a pure tone, a narrow-band noise (1/3 octave) or a wider hiss (1 octave), in the left ear, the right ear or both.
- Pitch: a slider from 100 Hz to 16 kHz, step buttons of 10 cents, a semitone and 1/6 octave, and a box for typing a frequency.
- Guided search: plays two sounds (keys A and B) and asks which is closer (keys 1, 2, 3).
- Result: Save, Play my match and Copy as text. Saved matches stay in this browser only.
How it works
The tone is a sine wave. The two noises are bands of random sound with equal power at every frequency inside the band and none outside it. A band w octaves wide around the centre frequency f runs
so the 1/3-octave band around 4,000 Hz spans about 3,564 to 4,490 Hz and the 1-octave band about 2,828 to 5,657 Hz. A noise at a given level has the same average power as a tone at that level.
The guided search is a bracketing method. It keeps an interval of possible pitches, plays the sounds a quarter of the way in from each end and, after each answer, keeps the 60 percent of the interval on the side you chose. Seven answers shrink the whole range to under a quarter of an octave. The note name comes from
rounded to a whole number (69 is A4); what is left over, times 100, is the offset in cents. So 4,000 Hz is B7 plus 21 cents.
Digital audio cannot hold frequencies above half its sample rate. The page therefore keeps every sound, including the upper edge of a noise band, below 45 percent of your device’s sample rate, never goes above 16 kHz and tells you when that limit applies. The level is given in dBFS, decibels below the largest signal digital audio can carry; how loud that is at your ear depends on the device, its volume setting and the headphones.
A match is always approximate. Many people’s tinnitus is not one clean tone but a hiss, a mixture of tones or a sound that changes, so a single frequency can only come close. In studies, repeated matches by the same person often differ by a good part of an octave, and for some people by two octaves or more. Most matches made in clinics fall in the high frequencies, commonly between about 3 and 8 kHz. Picking a sound exactly one octave too high or too low is a known mistake, hence the octave check.
Things to try
- Repeat the match on three different days and compare the saved results. The spread tells you more than any single number.
- Run the guided search twice and compare the two results.
- Try all three kinds of sound at your matched pitch. Which is closest in character?
- Type 440 into the frequency box to hear the note A4, then go up one octave at a time: 880, 1,760, 3,520 Hz.
- If your tinnitus is in one ear, compare playing the sound in that ear and in the other one.
Frequently asked questions
Is this a medical test?
No. It is not a diagnosis, and it cannot tell why you have tinnitus or how serious it is. See a doctor about tinnitus that is new and in one ear only, that pulses in time with your heartbeat, or that comes with hearing loss or dizziness. If your hearing dropped suddenly, see a doctor urgently, the same day.
What is the result good for?
For describing the sound. “A hiss around 6 kHz in the left ear” is easier to work with than “a noise”. The page does not treat tinnitus and makes no claim to change it.
Why does my result change from day to day?
Tinnitus itself often varies, and comparing a sound in your head with one in your ears is hard. Differences of several semitones between sessions are normal.
Why can I not hear the highest pitches?
The upper limit of hearing falls with age, and many headphones are weak above 10 kHz. If your tinnitus seems higher than anything you can hear here, write that down instead of a number.
Can I compare my level with someone else’s?
No. The level is not calibrated: it only means something on the same device, headphones and volume setting.