Ok, this turned into neurology 101, so bear with me...
I think its increased hyperactivity plain and simple.
Every T sufferer notes that as the T gets very loud as it happens in spikes, other symptoms begin to appear - actual T sensation, ears turn red, fullness, tenderness, increased hyperacusis, and so on. No sufferer with soft tinnitus complains of these disturbing symptoms- at least not that I've ever seen.
What the Swiss neurosurgeon explained to me during my consultation a year ago- ie. it is a neurological manifestation as a result of abnormal hyperactivity in the auditory brain regions.
The pathway in laymans' terms is as follows-
Cochlear trauma/auditory nerve lesion(neuroma etc)-hearing loss-DCN hyperactivity-auditory brainstem hyperactivity-auditory thalamus hyperactivity-auditory cortex edge effect (neighboring frequencies become hyperctive)
Yes this is a result of hearing loss, but the brain has to become hyperacitve on auditory scale.
2/3rds of deaf people (?) don't have severe tinnitus at all, many have not even an inkling of T just stone deaf, yet logic dictates that they should be afflicted with excruciating T, yet this isn't the case.
I might add that this auditory hyperactivity works on a feedback mechanism. The thalamus forms a thalamocortical dysrhythmia with the auditory cortex and brain stem. The the DCN gets feedback from the thalamus the brain stem, so its a looping vicious back and forth cycle. One poster mentioned I believe rtwombly, that this state is like the "new norm", the brain does not know how to bring itself back to homeostasis. This is due to they hyperpolarization of Calcium channels in the thalamus as a result of hyperpolarization of Potassium channels in other parts, sort of like a cascade failure on a Borg Cube. Now this of course manifests itself as bullshit sensations in our ears, because that's where the brain correlates auditory malfunctions. I know this sounds really laymany, but maybe
@attheedgeofscience can say from what he understood in Switzerland, if what I'm saying makes sense.
p.s.If I may hypothesize what happened to you
@Telis , when you first developed tinnitus. Your brain tipped into the unbalanced state due to sudden high frequency hearing loss, but instead of taking it easy and let your brain adjust, you forced yourself into very noisy situations, which in turn pushed those poor K channels into overdrive and once they could no longer go back to normal state, the hyperactivity got deeper and penetrated the thalamus where its own channels also got polarized. You got the wrong advice from doctors because they know nothing about neurology.
Its like telling a new epileptic patient who just had an attack, to buy a strobe light and stare into it for 1hr a day - what do u think his poor K channels will do? They will blow a fuse and his epilepsy will get worse and worse.
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