The leading theory is that tinnitus is a "brain problem", or generated in the brain, most often as a reaction to inner hair cell damage. That's why it can move around or be heard more inside the head rather than the ears.
I'm currently experiencing this with my new tone: it sounded very localized to the right ear at first, but during the last few days it has moved gradually to the leaft ear and now it sounds very localized to that side. The auditory system gets "summed up" pretty early on in the neural path that sounds travel once it has been transduced into electrical signals.
I have this same question. If I have damage in one ear but the other is fine, why do I have tinnitus in the damaged ear? Isn't my brain getting enough sound information from the healthy ear? I thought they worked in pairs.
