Temporary Inhibition from a Hearing Aid Masker website...

[Zimichael]

The post about volume reminded me of this...

I stumbled on this website a few months ago as I was once again researching possible things that may help my tinnitus. I knew that hearing aids had made huge gains in sophistication over the last few years, so wondered if maskers had too. [Did not know about this site then].

Well, it was clear that a number of hearing aid companies were in the tinnitus masking business and after skipping through a few that seemed lame, I came upon this one. Somehow Google got me the "Hearing Professionals Only" site as later discovered (to my confusion) that there is a Consumers site that I should have been on…but which does not have this tool below!

OK, go here:

https://starkeypro.com/products/hearing-aids/tinnitus

Then click on; "Hear Xino Tinnitus in action >" in the aqua-blue font just below the left hand AVAILABLE STYLES – RIC 10 picture.

Then click arrow that says "See how it works" and choose an option there. Mine is 4,000 Hz tone because I can't even hear the 7,500 Hz tone (deaf to that!)…OK, then go to Step Two: "Shape the Stimulus" and click your Personalized choice graphic. It should make the sound. Lastly click Step 3: "Fine-tune with Soundpoint" and a gizmo board appears that you can drag your mouse pointer around on to change and personalize the sound…Well I could before, but maybe they have locked that down now as it does not do anything today!?

Mmmmmm, perhaps it is now for 'professionals only???…Anyhow, it was a kinda cool tool to move a little pointer all over a square leaving a trail behind to show where you had been and where you were heading. The tone changed depending on where you went, vertically or horizontally, so you could get closer to your own tinnitus sound. I got pretty close but not exactly. However, what really got me going was when the time ran out on the 'game' (a minute?) I got some temporary volume "inhibition" of about 15 seconds re. my normal tinnitus level. I was stunned…and tried it again. Same thing!!!

Being a scientific type and skeptic, after a zillion medical "go-nowhere's" over the years I figured I would do a "test" on my brother who has tinnitus too. His is very similar to mine, c/o an idiot shooting a 303 Lee-Enfield rifle inside a car at a Kudu (big antelope) when we were teenagers. I already had tinnitus so had my fingers in my ears - thank God!!!

Anyway, back to the "test". I was on speaker-phone and guided him through the site as above. At the moment the time ran out I asked: "OK, listen to your tinnitus. What do you hear?"… "Oh! Hey it's lower by about half!!!" … "Now wait, tell me what happens next!"…I sat there in big time anticipation, then he said: "S..t, it's coming back again!" However, we both agreed it was a potential marvel and may for the first time help.

After trying the exact same test on another long-time friend that also has 'ringing tinnitus' with the same results I promised her, and my brother I would go try one out and report back. For the first time in ages I felt optimistic.

That led to my trip to the Audiologist and another very "interesting" experience!!! Which I will have to write up later. However, I'm bummed that I can't get that Xino fine-tuner to work again, as if they have locked it down it sort of defeats the purpose of this post! SO IF ANYONE CAN MAKE IT WORK (AND ALSO GETS TEMPORARY INHIBITION) CAN YOU PLEASE POST BACK AND LET ME/US KNOW!

Yes, one can of course get a free trial of the thing c/o an audiologist who carries them, but doing it in your own home on your own computer is a lot more convenient. Plus I could have got hooked on the "temporary inhibition"! (Mmmm…maybe it's a good thing it doesn't work!!!)

Best…Zimichael

 

[Karen]

Well, I tried it and got it to work --- I think. However, I don't think it really inhibited my tinnitus. It's late at night right now. I'll try it again tomorrow and see if it works.

 

[Zimichael]

Karen...Hey great, thanks! I can't get to sleep and was lying there wondering if maybe it only works in Internet Explorer, as I switched to Chrome recently.
Anyway, decided to ditch the sleep effort and write the follow-up to this episode first, about what happened when I tried one of these gizmos at the audiologist......Geeez Louise, what a bust!

Will also re-load Internet Explorer later to see if I can get that Xino 'game thing' to work as well.

Ta much...Zimichael

 

[Liesel]

I think this has been posted about once before, I think in relation to finding your tinnitus frequency. A few people, myself included, can't seem to do it because when we get close the tone temporarily stops the tinnitus.

For me it works for 2-3min usually.

 

[Zimichael]

Liesel...Wow that's great! Well in a manner of speaking. Better to not have the darn tinnitus in the first place! However, if you get inhibition from this simple method how come you don't get a masker set for that tone so that it "covers up" the tinnitus all the time you use it??? I would LOVE something like that as I just climb the walls sometimes just wanting a little break from this eternal screeching.
Best...Zimichael

 

[Liesel]

Liesel...Wow that's great! Well in a manner of speaking. Better to not have the darn tinnitus in the first place! However, if you get inhibition from this simple method how come you don't get a masker set for that tone so that it "covers up" the tinnitus all the time you use it??? I would LOVE something like that as I just climb the walls sometimes just wanting a little break from this eternal screeching.
Best...Zimichael

Because my tinnitus isn't that loud most days. I've habituated enough to where I don't hear it most of the time, and when I do hear it, it bothers me way less. I've definitely used masking tones often during bad days but it's not enough to justify the cost of a masker yet.

 

[frohike]

I only found a non interactive video demo: http://video.starkeygroup.com/uvp/SoundPoint/SoundPoint_Demo_Short.html I saw no code for the gizmo in the page.

Sometimes I play with this pure tone tuner: http://www.audionotch.com/app/tune/ to get some residual inhibition.

Here is "residual inhibition" by date googled by date: https://www.google.com/search?q=tinnitus residual inhibition#q=tinnitus residual inhibition&tbs=qdr:y
Some interesting papers, like "Computer-automated tinnitus assessment":

Psychoacoustic measures of tinnitus typically include loudness and pitch match, minimum masking level (MML), and residual inhibition (RI). We previously developed and documented a computer-automated tinnitus evaluation system (TES) capable of subject-guided loudness and pitch matching.

Similar to that starkey thing? Software is like plastic. At one point humankind realised that a whole range of things could be replicated in cheap plastic. Now we are doing the same with software. I suppose that a machine could be built to measure your brain activity when exposed to noise, and find out without human interaction the sound of your tinnitus.

There is an interesting PDF here: http://www.residualinhibition.com/ showing the duration of residual inhibition after listening for 1 minute:

Less than 2 minutes 57%
2 to 4 minutes 23%
4 to 6 minutes 11%
6 to 8 minutes 4%
8 to 10 minutes 2%
More than 10 minutes 3%

The site seems to be owned by http://www.hushtinnitus.com/ It has an online masking tool you can try.

 

[Zimichael]

Frohike...Thanks a lot for all the input here. I have not got to it all yet but yes, that was indeed the Starkey demo place that I found, etc. And correct, it is 'non-interactive' from our end , it's a demo only. However, what got me so excited was the completely unexpected inhibition that happened just by listening to it for the one minute or whatever. (Plus my bother and friend with tinnitus too).
So, of course I thought the real thing would be even better right...because the audiologist setting the device (well me actually in the hearing aid/audiologists' office!) would be able to do much better than a generic demo. That was my hope.
However the reality was "less encouraging", as the device was more limited than it appeared (not my exact tone EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE........) and I could not find my exact "spot" with the moving-boxes-graph-window thing.
The final blow was the conclusion that the device would make me deaf in 24-48 hours at the volume required! Not worth spending $6,000 just to do that dumb thing is it?! [You can read my report in my "Eyes Like Saucers" post].
However, the 15 seconds of inhibition initially were very nice...Sigh!

Thanks again, and maybe I can find more in your written info as the "HushTinnitus" personalized trial thing did nothing for mine at all, though it seemed like a good setup and idea. They wanted $$$ of course and I declined. However, some may get inhibition out of it and could be worth a try as the customized demo is free.

Best...Zimichael