this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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If you have really bad tinnitus, you can use your iPhone and Airpods Pro to get some relief. (lemmy.ninja)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/apple_enthusiast
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As many tinnitus sufferers like myself know, the never-ending ringing in your ears can become unbearable at times. Sometimes white noise can help by making it harder to distinguish the ringing from other sounds. I know I've run fans in my bedroom while falling asleep to help distract me, for example.

You can use the iPhone's Background Sounds feature to generate this noise for you. And with Airpods Pro, you can deliver the sound directly to a single ear and let external sounds in so you can still hear what's going on around you.

Here's how you do it.

  1. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Accessibility > Audio/Visual > Background Sounds
  2. Turn on Background Sounds
  3. Select the sound you want to hear. I like balanced noise for tinnitus relief.
  4. Insert your Airpods Pro to get them to connect to your phone.
  5. Activate transparency mode on the Airpods Pro to let environmental sounds through.

The background sounds will play continuously, but will be suspended for announcements from Siri and phone calls. ~~Interestingly, background sounds are just reduced in volume by about 90% when you start playing Apple Music~~. There's a setting in the Background Sounds pane that will disable the background noise while media is playing. Otherwise it will continue playing but will be reduced in volume. Background sounds resume normally after stopping any of those activities.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can also add this to the control center for easy access.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is a great idea! I just added it, but it's tricky. For anyone coming across this who wonders how it's done, here are the steps:

  1. Go to Settings > Control Center
  2. Scroll down to Accessibility Shortcuts and tap the green + on the left to add it to the included controls
  3. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut (all the way at the bottom in the General group)
  4. Tap Background Sounds. A checkmark will appear on the left.

Now there will be a generic accessibility icon on the control center that will toggle the background sounds on and off.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

There is a much easier way, go to settings, then control center, add Hearing. Then just long press the hearing icon in control center ;)

[–] LordOfTheChia 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

If they add Fractal Tones then it'll do what the really expensive hearing aides can do.

Study on Fractal Tones:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6197965/

Example of the fractal tones Windex uses:

https://youtu.be/LTPCn749iFc?si=a1PNAq-6p9Gy5TBb&t=2m10s

Edit: Should be Widex, not Windex. Do not spray Windex in your ear!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

+1 for Windex.

On a more serious note, as a wearing of a hearing aid (singular), I have to constantly take it out to put my AirPods in to listen to high fidelity music, gain noise cancellation, or have a phone call for work. I long for the day that one decide can do it all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

While they’re nice tones, I wouldn’t buy them just for masking tinnitus.

Hearing aids are expensive yes, but I’d only buy them to be hearing aids. The masking is a nice bonus feature.

Most research has found almost any sound can be an effective tinnitus masker. A lot of people that are bothered by tinnitus also have anxiety disorders and the calming tones are likely helping in other ways, like helping those people relax.

I fit hearing aids all day. Very rarely use the masker settings.

[–] LordOfTheChia 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Of course it varies by tinitus sufferer.

I absolutely would not recommend dropping $7000 on a pair of hearing aides just for masking. That said, I've found that the fractal tones and nature sounds (not from the hearing aides) with various levels of sounds help me where simple white noise wouldn't.

My T can be masked by white noise but in the 85-90dBm range. It's also complicated with the fact that it's only in one ear.

Until I discovered the right nature sounds track to help me sleep, I was barely getting 3-4 hours of sleep a night.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

For sure, I tell my patients there’s no right or wrong when it comes to the type of sound.

If a certain sounds works for you, use that sound!

[–] Mbourgon 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Dumb question - which Widex app? I came across this post, and am looking in the App Store. There’s a bunch: Widex Tonelink, Widex Beyond, Widex Zen, Widex Evoke, Widex Moment, Widex Enjoy….

[–] LordOfTheChia 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know on the hearing aides themselves it's called "Zen" which includes white noise options, narrowband white noise, and the fractal tones. I also think there's an option for combining white noise with fractal tones. Don't know if there is a "notched therapy" option (play white noise or other sounds but excluding the frequency of your tinnitus.

The fractal tones can also be tuned by average frequency and the number of tones played per time period per channel. I know mine plays more tones on the ear opposite where my tinnitus is.

I'll post another reply if I can confirm a good fractal tones app. I did a short search in the past but gave up when I came up empty.

[–] Mbourgon 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Appreciate it!

[–] LordOfTheChia 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Still looking. Closest I've found so far aside from the Widex app is this web page based generator:

https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/acousticPianoSoundscapeGenerator.php

They also have other background noise options:

https://mynoise.net/

It's free with optional donations.

They have an android app but it's out of date.

Edit: Theres also Nature space but likewise, their android app is out of date (unsupported on newer devices)

http://www.naturespace.org/

[–] Mbourgon 2 points 1 year ago

I’ll give a dig into that, thanks for the effort, dude!

[–] slug 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

i wonder if doing this habitually would make tinnitus worse

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Not unless you have it too loud. You don’t need loud sound stimulation to help control tinnitus.

Sound masking is the general treatment for tinnitus.

(I’m an Audiologist)

[–] Ataraxia 5 points 1 year ago

For me nonsense sounds make it so much louder. Your brain can't make sense of static, white brown grey whatever noise so it definitely can make it worse.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know this is an apple community, but does Android offer something similar to this? My partner has pretty server tinnitus, and this would really benefit her I think...

[–] Tangent5280 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As long as you have ANC ear/headphones; noise apps on Android are a dime a dozen. There isn't an inbuilt noise generator on androids though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah I guess I mean the combination of it being part of the os and the transparency mode of the airpods. I'll look into it further.

[–] ScoobyDoo27 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Holy shit. I normally use my HomePod as a white machine but right now I’m on vacation and have been trying to find an app but they are all subscription based. A fucking subscription to listen to white noise…. I love that apple has this built in.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not sure if background playback is a thing on iPhone, but if it is I'd run https://mynoise.net/ in the background for the white noise

[–] stooovie 2 points 1 year ago

Background playback depends solely on the developer and the method they use. It's very much possible. This applies to both video and audio.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

A few tips for Android users.

Sometimes the sound generator apps have a repeating pattern that you might be able to detect. Instead, try the Brownian noise from https://archive.org/details/TenMinutesOfWhiteNoisePinkNoiseAndBrownianNoise - perhaps best loaded into a media player which does crossfading on repeat, such as JetAudio etc.

If using it for sleep, you may want to silence apps on your phone. However, you may find the occasional app (such as WhatsApp) which will not silence itself in DnD mode. In that case, try Alertify - it can take over the role of generating notification sounds for such apps, and obeys DnD.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I don’t have tinnitus, but I have somewhat chronic Eustachian tube dysfunction that causes mildly painful ear pressure, and wearing my AirPods (or any in ear headphones) helps a ton, so on bad ear days I’ll wear them in transparency mode with nothing playing

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting. I find most pass-through (including the Airpod Pros) to accentuate the higher frequencies, which both makes speech less intelligible and my tinnitus worse. Background noise does mask the phantom sounds somewhat, but I've mostly learned to tune out the whine (since literally none of the popular "tricks" work for me). In noisy environments (airplanes, for ex), I find the ANC of the APpros to do a good job of filtering out everything and letting enough speech through it's actually clearer than w/o ANC.

[–] robmexx 2 points 1 year ago

There’s an App called Mimi Hearing Test It’s self explanatory and you’ll get a sound profile for your AirPods. It’s like HD hearing after you saved it to your phone. It levels out your frequencies. Once done you can’t go back.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

so you can use any headphone with any cellphone, and any background noise, or any sound in general, not so apple enthusiastic

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can do that, but it's provided on iPhone without any internet connection, it integrates seamlessly with system events, there are no download or install requirements, and if you use Airpods Pro, you can mix in environmental sounds. Plus, as another user mentioned below, you can add a toggle for this setting in the control center. That's a stellar implementation!

[–] EmperorGormet 2 points 1 year ago

I have tinitus and never though to use them this way, thanks for the post! Im going to try it out right now.