To me, regular tinnitus (which I also had for a few days after concerts) could be matched and recreated with a tone generator, and is much more “in your face” despite being the same volume by the end of my ears healing.
Aether noise on the other hand sounds multi tone, not a buzz or a hum. I have not yet managed to recreate it. I can hear it all the time if I can focus on it, but it only calls attention to itself in dead silence.
Do you have visual snow by chance too?
- A faint multi-tonal background "hiss", only apparent during silence, never goes away but is quite relaxing. I'm hesitant to even call it tinnitus - Visual snow. I have early memories from at least 5 or 6, staring at the blue sky and noticing it's not pure (I see blue as everyone else, but with a very transparent layer of static)
I have attributed it to something "off" in the sensory filtering part of my brain
I wondered this myself too. One thing I do know is nobody was able to relate from friends and family when mentioning this. Visual snow syndrome (which according to affected people online can be very disabling) was only first described as late as 2015 according to wikipedia. So we may never know at this pace.
Not quite tinnitus, much less drastic than anyone describing their diagnosed visual snow symptoms. Could be a very mild case of VSS or an yet to be named condition.
I remember reading a long time ago that it was caused by "the neurons in your ears occasionally randomly firing" but I cannot find any source for that, so assume that it's untrue :)