Poll: Do you have tinnitus?

I don't hear any ringing or tones, but when things are silent, I seem to notice a very slight hush that I don't remember always having (but then again, I might just not have been aware of it in the past). If it is tinnitus, it's very minor. If not, well, I have no way of knowing it's normal unless someone wants to borrow my ears.

Oh, and for those interested, This American Life had a bit on tinnitus this week (the streaming version should be up by Monday morning).

I'd have answered sooner but that ringing in my ears is so annoying.

I grew up in a house with central air/heat... and at night my parents would put the fan to "on".

So... I can't sleep without white noise.

but I've found that when there is absolute silence... there's this metallic sort of ring in my ears. However, this is not due to my mistreatment of my ears.... because it's always been the case. when I was a kid it used to drive me nuts to be in complete silence because that ringing would overcome my thoughts.

end ramble.
nate, signing off.

Only after really good concerts. I think the ringing just stopped from front row at the GBS show on Monday.

actually, that could be an effect of the the fan being on, long term exposure to noise, even at low amplitudes can cause tinnitus.

welp, then, that's my problem too :P i've always had the ringin'!

but sometimes when there's silence, i will hear a ringing, or a high-pitched sine wave (at least that's what it sounds like)

of course, there's also the option that that high frequency is coming from electronics around us. we're basically always surrounded by electricity and machines. It could be low amplitude vibrations from just about anything.

How can you tell it's not a high-pitched cosine wave?

hee :) i suppose it could be, but then, what disrupted the phase?

well, the cosine wave by definition indicates the presence of a sine wave.

so how you know whether it's a sine wave or a sine wave and a cosine wave is this.

if the amplitude remains steady--it's just a sine.

if the amplitude goes up and down, it's a sine and a cosine and the apparent increase and decrease in amplitude is an effect of the phase difference.

I was going to say that a cosine wave is a sine wave, the only differ by a phase shift; cos(t) = sin(t + pi/2)

If you are discussing the amplitude changing then it is a more general wave and doesn't neccessarily mean there is a cosine component to it. What you can say is that it can be expressed as a possibley infinite sum of sine and cosine waves of the form sin(nt) and cos(nt). I never remember which is which but the reason a piano sounds different than a harpsichord is that one has both sine and cosine waves and the other just sines. < /discussion of Fourier analysis >

yah, what i was trying to say is that there is no real amplitude change, but there is an interaction between the phase shift of the two waves and our brain.

our brain ends up interpreting the phase shift as changes in amplitude.

for there to be an apparent amplitude change without a change in the energy output, that would indicate two waves of the same frequency (or close to it) interacting and tricking our brain.

yah, i'm trying to represent the Fourier analysis, but it's hard with just words >.< and also without going into like WAY too much detail.

Yes symbols are much better.

i had an instructer who wrote a program that performed fourier anaylises. We spent two whole hours listening to different wave shapes. the square wave sounds cool! we never listened to a semicircle :p

yup.

it varies in amplitude... but it's always there.

We never listened to a semicircle: good name for a short story or novel.

You know, I didn't think that my comment would have brought out the big guns.

*L* oh yah, you couldn't have known.

this is one of my (not-so-secret-anymore) loves. sound waves. and the way the brain interprets them. it's absolutely amazing the way it all interacts. *swoons*

Reason #492 to love the Swoonable Renita.

that could be you hearing your pulse in your ears. when i was little I always thought it sounded like leaves crunching. I thought people were hiking in my ears.

teeeheee! me too!

Big guns... another reason one might have tinnitus.

Size doesn't matter!

I feel like there should be a requisite Dick Cheney joke here.

How many Dick Cheney's does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Sorry I can't tell you for reasons of national security.

I wish mine was only subtle. In dead silence, the ringing is like a screaming train crashing through the gates of hell...

too many concerts and walkman use as a kid...