I have something similar - or rather I thought I did.
An incredibly high frequency sine wave noise almost inside my head.
I remembered when I was younger (a long time ago - early 80s) that I used to be able to “hear” when a computer CRT was on in my school computer room (uk, so BBC micro, with the standard monitor).
Ultimately I figured out I could hear the switching frequency of poorly designed / made power transformers.
specifically 110/220v to 5v or 12v transformers and cheap USB outlets.
I spent a day up close and personal around all my power outlets and now my head is clear of that super-sonic ultra high frequency nightmare.
I could hear flyback transformers growing up, too—-I could often tell from outside when someone had their TV on, even when adults couldn’t hear it at all.
Unfortunately, that frequency is a pretty accurate comparison to my now ever-present tinnitus. It’s not fun.
Well, this is interesting. I was going to respond: I hear it even when I'm outdoors so it can't be transformers.
However, then I decided to check if my phone could hear it, so I fired up my DB Meter app. And funnily enough, there is a little spike right around 12kHz, which seems to be right around where my tone is. It's not a huge spike, but it's definitely there.
It's possible that the spike shown on my phone is some kind of artifact. I'll need to get another device with a DB Meter app to verify. But proximity to my phone doesn't affect my perception. I can hear it even when I'm outdoors without my phone with me.
I started getting tinnitus shortly before moving from upstate NY. They were in the process of plastering the town with 5g every block or so. Since I've moved to rural MO in an area where even Verizon drops calls it is completely gone. Gotta wonder...
That… doesn’t really make any sense to me. Tinnitus is a ringing - call it a thin buzz, a whine, a whistle, but it’s a tone isn’t it? How could you not tell whether you were matching the pitch?
Because I can't actually hear that frequency. If I play sine waves through ear buds and increase the frequency, the highest pitch I can hear through the earphones is lower than the pitch I "hear" through the tinnitus.
You can actually hear the beat frequencies like tuning a guitar. So intervals like the fifth or an octave are definitely 'in tune' when you try it. Interestingly if you play a pure sine in each ear with one slightly detuned, your brain will also hear the beat frequencies as if the waves were interfering despite each ear getting separate pure signals! There was even an open source program Gnaural for experimenting with this effect - binaural beats.
I can’t hear a beat frequency against my tinnitus tones, and I really wish I could. (I’ve tuned my guitar with beat frequencies for decades.) The tinnitus tones are very elusive when I try to pin them down with a sine wave, but I can get close by alternating a sine wave on and off while I vary the frequency... the memory of the tone from a second ago has been more reliable than trying to hear if they’re close when overlapping.
Interesting suggestion. But no, I don't think so, and I'm having a really hard time describing why. It sounds like a pure sine wave, but it's so high I have a hard time relating it to any real auditory input.
Also, interestingly, since I started focusing on this it has gotten less intense.
Is there some kind of resonance or something that happens at half/quarter that lets you identify it?
I experimented real quick and wasn't able to do a great job estimating half of a frequency from playing with the slider on the lower one. Wasn't _totally_ off, but nothing magical seemed to happen when I got to half.
You could have tinnitus at a frequency you can't hear if the tinnitus arises downstream of auditory issues that reduce hearing sensitivity.
For instance, if someone couldn't hear a certain frequency because the corresponding hair cells in their ears were damaged, they could still have tinnitus at that frequency arising from parts of the brain that process that frequency.
They can hear the tinnitus, but not real sounds at that freq.
IANAD, is there any kind of "gain correction" theory for tinnitus? ie, the brain notices your ear can't hear this frequency very well, so it pumps up the volume ... maybe too much.
That would fit this data point, at least.
Weirdly, maybe not so different than when a hearing aid starts ringing.
Go back to the old question of if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound if no one hears it?
Tinnitus isn't caused by actual waves of air pressure on the eardrum. We'd not call that tinnitus (unless it was actually inescapable, eg. a perception of rushing blood flow), that's just an annoying real-world sound.
Hearing is connected to eardrum vibrations by a complicated system of the outer ear, eardrum, tiny auditory bones, the fluid-filled cochlea, tiny hair cells with sensory neurons, the auditory nerve, and eventually the brain.
When all these work properly, the brain gets accurate information about sound waves.
When those hair cells are damaged (or wherever the stimulus arises) to send bogus information up the auditory nerve, the audio perceived by the brain as a result of that stimulus is not necessarily correlated to any accurate frequency data that could make it through that pathway.
Hearing loss is a physical problem. Tinnitus, often, is a signaling problem. The signal can represent a sound that the physical sensors can't produce anymore.
It's a fair question, and it's hard to describe. What I perceive is a very high pitched pure sine wave. When I take a hearing test, my ability to hear real tones drops off long before I can hear anything approaching the pitch that I perceive. Does that make sense?
It’s two different sources, and a subjective tinnitus source is perceived but not “heard”, if that makes sense. You might be able to experience something perhaps similar: many people can hear much higher frequencies when the speaker is in contact with their skull than through the air.
You're not actually "hearing" anything. For one, the sound (usually) does not actually exist. In many cases it's more like an inappropriate signal from a damaged nerve or some of the teeny tiny "hairs" within the ear that sense sounds.
