"Ben Pope" <spam@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:blqc2m$f8d15$1@ID-191149.news.uni-berlin.de...
> Jim Frohoff wrote:
> > - 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 :-)
>

I believe he means that the white noise only needs to be around the
frequency he is trying to mask. I believe it would be white noise band
passed filtered to the size of what's called a critical band (roughly
1/3-octive) with the center of the band matching the frequency of the ring
he's trying to mask. This way other sounds of different frequencies aren't
affected anyway near as much.

So I believe the answer is that you need to filter the white noise source to
a tunable bandwidth. (Filtered 'white noise' I believe is referred to as
'pink noise', but I digress). This should be very doable.

In general what you're asking for probably couldn't be home-made as a normal
sized hearing aid.

Good Luck.