How Sound Response works

What it is — and what it is not

Residual inhibition is well documented: for many people with tinnitus a sound can be followed by seconds to minutes of quieter tinnitus, more often when the sound has energy near the tinnitus pitch. It is short-lived, and repeating it has not been shown to change tinnitus over time. Sound Response simply records what you notice after each sound, in your own words (“a little quieter”, “about the same”, “louder”), and looks for a pattern that repeats. It does not diagnose anything, does not treat anything, and never raises the volume to try to force a change.

Before you start

• Your tinnitus pitch comes first. The sounds are chosen around the pitch you hear, so the app sends you through Find My Tinnitus Sound if you have not done it yet — a couple of minutes, and you come straight back. A pitch you accepted in Personalized Notched Sound counts too.
• Headphones or earbuds, somewhere reasonably quiet. Use the same ones for the whole session if you can.
• A comfortable level, never more. You set the level yourself with a sample sound. It does not need to cover your tinnitus, and nothing in the experiment ever turns it up.
• When not to use it. Do not continue — and get a medical evaluation — if your tinnitus is sudden or new and has not been evaluated, if you have sudden hearing loss, ear pain, fluid from an ear, sudden or severe dizziness, pain from ordinary sounds, or a sudden major change in your tinnitus. The app asks you to confirm this before the first session.

What a session looks like

1. A quiet start. If something is playing in the app, you are asked to stop it first, so every test begins from silence.
2. How noticeable is it right now? You rate your tinnitus from 0 to 10 and say whether today is quieter, louder or about usual. This is the day’s starting point.
3. Set the level. Start low and raise a sample sound until it is clear and comfortable.
4. Each sound test. A quick 0–10 rating, then the sound plays for one minute — just listen normally. It stops, there are five seconds of silence, and the app asks What happened to your tinnitus? — much quieter, a little quieter, about the same, louder, or not sure. You can add a 0–10 rating or skip it.
5. If it became quieter, the app waits with you. Tap the button when your tinnitus is back to its usual level; the time is measured silently, with no clock on screen, so you are not tempted to stretch it. You can also say it became louder instead, or that you are not sure.
6. A short rest, at least 45 seconds, then the next sound. The first session tries three sounds; later sessions try one to three, and from the second session on the app tells you roughly how long today will take before you begin. You can pause a sound for up to 15 seconds in total; a longer pause, switching apps or leaving the screen marks that test as interrupted, and leaving Sound Response ends the session. The test sounds have their own level control: the app’s volume slider does not affect them, but your device’s volume does.

Every question is short on purpose, and “not sure” is always an honest answer. There are no right or wrong results.

Which sounds it tries

All of them are noise, never tones, and each plays for the same one minute at the same matched level:

• Narrow-band noise around your pitch — a third of an octave wide, centred on your matched pitch, and versions centred a little below and a little above it.
• Broadband noise — the whole range, roughly 100 Hz to 12 kHz, as a comparison.
• A pulsing version of the narrow band (40 pulses per second) in later sessions. Small studies found pulsing sounds produced more residual inhibition than steady noise, so it is included as an exploratory condition — no rate has been shown to be best.

Sounds are matched to each other by measured energy at the level you chose, so a narrow band is never louder than the broadband noise. If a sound is followed by a repeatable change, later sessions gently vary its centre, width and pulsing to see what matters.

How it decides what to test next

• One quieter response is only “promising”. Tinnitus fluctuates and expectation is real, so nothing is concluded from a single answer.
• Repeatable means quieter after at least two of the first three separate tests of that sound, in different sessions. That threshold is a design choice of the app, not a medical one.
• Then a comparison. A repeatable sound is paired with a comparison sound — same length, same level, unnamed on screen — in three to six pairs over separate sessions. The only question is whether the quieter response goes with that sound more often than with the comparison. The profile then says one of three things: the response appeared more consistently with that sound; several different sounds were followed by reductions, so it does not look specific to one; or the results are not consistent enough yet to tell.
• Louder responses are respected. A sound followed by “louder” is not repeated that day; twice, and it is set aside for good. If an increase feels uncomfortable, the session ends there, that sound is set aside, and the app suggests giving your tinnitus time to settle.
• Nothing to find is a valid result. If ten valid tests produce no repeatable change, the app says so and stops testing. Your records are kept.

Why a session sometimes ends early

The app stops rather than muddle the next test: when your tinnitus has not settled back to where the day started, when a change lasts fifteen minutes or more, when it does not hear back from you within half an hour, when an increase felt uncomfortable, or when sound could not start on the device. Switching apps or letting the screen sleep during a test marks that one test as interrupted and it is simply tried again another time — nothing from it is recorded as a result.

Your Sound Response Profile

After every session the profile shows the plain counts: sessions, sounds tested, temporary reductions, and — once there is enough to say — the most consistent response, the typical (middle) duration, the observed range and the longest change. A progress line shows which stage you are at, and View experiment details lists every sound with its exact band, what happened each time and the protocol version. There is deliberately no single score: how often a change appears, how long it lasts and whether anything made things louder are different questions, and one number would hide the pattern.

Once a sound is repeatable you can listen to your response sound at any time from the profile. It plays for the same fixed minute and nothing is recorded — it is there so you can hear it, not to treat anything.

Where the results live

Sound Response is part of the Find My Sound section, next to Help Me Find My Sound and Find My Tinnitus Sound. My Sound Profile shows the sound preferences learned by Help Me Find My Sound and the Sound Response summary; your tinnitus match stays with Find My Tinnitus Sound. Everything stays on your device — nothing is uploaded — and Delete my Sound Response data in the experiment details removes every session, test and the profile in one step.

What it cannot tell you

• Whether any sound treats your tinnitus, or whether a change will last. Residual inhibition is temporary by definition.
• Whether you show residual inhibition “at all”. Clinics test at and above the level that masks the tinnitus; Sound Response stays at a comfortable level on purpose, so it will miss some responses that a clinic would find.
• Anything statistical. Three to six self-reported pairs cannot carry statistics, and none are attempted.

Read it as a diary of what you noticed, kept carefully. If you want to talk it over, the experiment details are written so an audiologist can follow exactly what was played and when.

Open Sound Response →

Important: Find My Quiet Sound is designed for sound masking, relaxation and tinnitus management support. It does not diagnose, treat or cure tinnitus and is not a substitute for professional medical care. If your tinnitus is new, in one ear only, pulsing with your heartbeat, or comes with hearing loss or dizziness, see a doctor or audiologist.

Written from the sources above by the Find My Quiet Sound project; no clinician has reviewed this page. See Research & Sources and the medical disclaimer.