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Comment by subroutine | Hacker News Reader

> low floating tones would cover [other people’s] speech

This is not my experience. I've had tinnitus my entire life, and it's more of a phantom sound (cf. phantom limb) than a something that competes with sounds in the real world. That is, if there is any real noise like speech it basically gets muted. In a completely quiet environment however the ringing sensation can be comparable to high pitch TV static. The quieter the environment, the louder it gets.

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Same experience. When I was a little kid, I thought the high-pitched whine was just what “silence” sounded like.

My wild hair theory is that it could be due to sleeping with a fan on every night. Looking back, it seems like I always had a box fan, oscillating fan, or ceiling fan running at night. So that's 8 hours of auditory exposure to the same constant frequencies, every night for many years.

Exact same for me. I played drums in rock bands for years, the first few of which I used no ear protection. It's a miracle my tinnitus isn't worse.

I don't notice it in normal day to day life, but at night when it's quiet at bedtime, it manifests as a high pitched ringing in both ears. For this reason I prefer to run a fan or something that generates white noise at night, which masks it somewhat.

I used to feel that way but now I find it really hard to tell if the dog is crying in the next room or I'm imagining stuff in the tinnitus. my partner at this point is already well aware of the dog

Ah, yes exactly the same for me (the description of the sound), for the it started in my twenties though

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