type of sound or volume? - masking question

[Fish]

I wanted to ask your opinion - what matters for you when masking the sound of your T, is the sound type more important or is it volume?

I am back home after very long, extensive tests and one of them was measuring a level of my subjective T. Problem is, they tried to mask my T with some kind of a white noise that, simply put, did not work until it was very loud. As a result I was diagnosed with whooping 75 dB tinnitus. I cannot believe this test was accurate.

 

[Karl]

Fish -
When you use maskers, you don't turn them up to cover the sound of your tinnitus. You keep them at a volume lower than your tinnitus.

I don't recall having a test that measures the loudness of my tinnitus. Not quite sure how that can be measured.

 

[Fish]

You wear headphones, the doctor turns on a white noise and slowly raises it's volume. When you no longer hear your T, you need to press the button. Then it is repeated several times.

A second test was playing some tones at different volume and I had to say which is louder - my T or real tone.

But do you think such tests are accurate? I cannot believe my T could be that loud!

 

[Markku]

Little something about loudness matching here: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/tinnitus-pitch-and-loudness-matching.242/

If your tinnitus was measured at 75 dB SL, then it would be something like this:

(80 dB is twice as loud as 70 dB, so you are in the middle here...)
Passenger car at 65 mph at 25 ft 77 dB... living room music 76 dB... vacuum cleaner 70 dB...

I don't know if the test that measured your t loudness was accurate though. Do you think your tinnitus is louder than a vacuum cleaner?

 

[erik]

Tinnitus matching I believe is recorded in (SL DB) sensation level DB which is different from audio meter DB (HL DB. Sensation Level DB is the difference between a person's threshold of hearing based on the stimulus sounds they hear or the sensation level above the hearing threshold for a given sound. Everyone's levels can be vastly different but I believe I read the average was 6 dbSL or less for Tinnitus.