Jim Frohoff wrote:
> Can a DSP system help me? ... I have been diagnosed with severe tinnitus
> (ringing in the ears) and hyperacusis (sensitive to loud noises). After
> attending a play last night with earplugs in to prevent further injury and
> pain, and not being able to hear anything anyone was saying, I thought
> there must be a better way.
>
> I have some experience with microcontroller programming and with simple
> audio circuits and understand the concept of digital processing, but am
> certainly not up to speed on it. This all leads me to ask and start the
> research ...
>
> Can a DSP device be programmed to simultaneously provide : ???
> - Compression - To amplify low level a bit and bring down the
> high-level

Easy.

> - Absolute max noise limiting - To protect from further damage

Easy - a non-linear version of the above can do this.

> - white noise generation (2 or 3 seperate, tuneable white-noise
> generators would be desired. One way to deal with severe tinnitus is to
> "mask" the noise with white noise of matching frequencies,

That wouldn't work, since white noise is random. Hmm, or would your brain
just learn to ignore that frequency band? If it does, then why can it not
ignore the tinnitus? My undrstanding of the ear and related systems falls
down here :-)

> then use sound
> augmentation, "a-la-hearing aid" to bring the normal sound up a few db to
> make it heard. These are used long-term in an effort to retrain the ear
> to ignore the tinnitus noises.

Ahh - I see :-)

> - multi-frequency equalization (6 band or so) - to adjust for limited
> range hearing damage.

Yep. This can be easily achieved in the fourier domain.

> I cannot find a device out there that contains all of these components in
> a single headphone and I need to know if I should pursue building my own.
> I have had this problem for many years and it is getting worse, so I don't
> mind putting a bunch of time, money and learning into this project to help

> myself.

I can't see any fundamental problems with this approach - I suspect that the
tweaking to make it just right would be hardest.

Anyway - those in the know will follow this up with more detailed and
positive advice, I suspect.

Ben
--
I'm not just a number. To many, I'm known as a String...