Research & sources

Find My Quiet Sound’s guidance is written from the sources below. The app does not claim to treat tinnitus; each experiment shows its own evidence level. Last reviewed 2026-08-22.

In plain English

• What sound masking is. Adding a steady, pleasant external sound so that tinnitus is partly covered and easier to ignore. It manages the experience; it does not change the tinnitus itself.
• What is reasonably established. Tinnitus is common and usually linked to the hearing system; a hearing evaluation is the standard first step. Sound at a low level is widely used, low-risk, and valued by many people; clinical guidelines say it may be offered for bothersome tinnitus. Counselling approaches such as CBT have the best evidence for reducing distress. Slow breathing is well supported for relaxation.
• What is still uncertain. Whether any particular sound (white, pink, brown, nature) is better than another; whether sound alone reduces tinnitus severity over the long term; notched sound, pulsed tones and "neuromodulation" patterns (mixed or inconclusive trials); and everything we label experimental here.
• Why individual preference matters. In the studies that compared sounds, responses varied widely between people and preference predicted whether someone kept using a sound. That is why Find My Quiet Sound is built around discovery and comparison rather than one recommended sound.
• Why experiments are labelled experimental. When the evidence for an idea is limited, mixed, or borrowed from another field, the label says so, and the experiment asks only how it felt to you. That feedback stays on your device.

Guidelines and organisations

• NIDCD — Tinnitus (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders)
• American Tinnitus Association — Sound Therapy
• AAO-HNSF Clinical Practice Guideline: Tinnitus (2014)
• WHO-ITU standard: Safe listening devices and systems
• InformedHealth.org — Chronic tinnitus: what helps and what doesn’t

Reviews and trials on sound

• Sound therapy (masking) in the management of tinnitus in adults — Cochrane Review (2018)
• Tinnitus retraining therapy: mixing point and total masking are equally effective (JAAA, 2012)
• A mixed-methods trial of broad band noise and nature sounds for tinnitus therapy (2017)
• Clinical trial on tonal tinnitus with tailor-made notched music training (BMC Neurology, 2016)
• Systematic review of sound stimulation to elicit tinnitus residual inhibition (ASHA Evidence Maps)
• Harvard Health — Sound therapy is one option for tinnitus (2021)

Pitch matching

• Self-administered tinnitus pitch matching versus a conventional audiometric procedure (2017)
• Evaluation of iPod-based automated tinnitus pitch matching (2015)

Attention, relaxation and sleep

• Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for chronic tinnitus: RCT (2017)
• Auditory and visual inputs for relaxation during VR stimulation (2022)
• Sleep Foundation — How to sleep with tinnitus

How to read the evidence labels in Experiments

• Well-studied principle — multiple trials or guideline support for the underlying idea (not necessarily for the app feature).
• Promising research — at least one controlled trial, modest or short-lived effects.
• Experimental — research is limited — pilots, mechanism papers, or evidence only from a neighbouring field.
• Experimental — evidence is mixed or limited — conflicting or sparse results.

A fuller internal write-up, including ideas that were deliberately not built, is in the project’s RESEARCH.md.