High Pitched Tinnitus Reacting to Low Frequency White Noise

[Nathan]

I have had reactive tinnitus since my onset in June, although it has improved some since the initial trauma. Last night I put on some white noise for masking with pitches only consisting of 2000hz and below, which I thought would not make my ultra high pitched tone react, yet it was still reacting to the white noise, despite an absence of high frequencies.

Anybody else have this issue where tinnitus reacts despite hearing a noise being nowhere near your tinnitus frequency?

 

[another sean]

I experimented with a Low Frequency Pass filter last week listening to just human speech and only allowed 1khz and below to pass through and it still mildly spiked my tinnitus which is at 11khz then stopped. I was surprised as well. I used a spectrometer to see if anything else above 1khz was getting thru and it showed there was. so my guess is the speaker itself was creating background electrical noise that couldn't be stopped and that might be what your ears are picking up as well. this is why I can't listen to anything from a speaker without a major spike and possibly raising my base line. electrical noise is a problem. that's also why if im next to a tv or monitor that's more than 30" big, even with no sound, it will spike my tinnitus.

 

[Nathan]

I experimented with a Low Frequency Pass filter last week listening to just human speech and only allowed 1khz and below to pass through and it still mildly spiked my tinnitus which is at 11khz then stopped. I was surprised as well. I used a spectrometer to see if anything else above 1khz was getting thru and it showed there was. so my guess is the speaker itself was creating background electrical noise that couldn't be stopped and that might be what your ears are picking up as well. this is why I can't listen to anything from a speaker without a major spike and possibly raising my base line. electrical noise is a problem. that's also why if im next to a tv or monitor that's more than 30" big, even with no sound, it will spike my tinnitus.

I just measured the white noise using a dB app, and it showed a small amount of high frequency noise was still slipping through. It could also be other factors, such as the heaters going off in my house from time to time.

 

[frischky]

Interesting, I just had what I believe a similar issue pop up yesterday. Have a Bose Sound Link II bluetooth speaker, and played an 8-hour low-pitched fan loop from YouTube the night before.

The volume on my laptop was low, but the bluetooth volume was high... but resulting sound was at no more than 40db overnight. Yesterday morning, both ears were spiking hard... and it's apparently common that BT speakers will have a hiss... I could not hear any when i stopped playing the music, but it could be there above what I can hear and given the volume of the BT speaker... ultra-sonically loud... speculation but only thing I can fathom.