I’ve read in several places that individuals with hearing loss and tinnitus may experience relief when their hearing loss is treated, but haven’t found many details and first hand accounts of that.
I have mild hearing loss (my audiogram is in my profile) and unilateral tinnitus at about 5kHz. I’ve been programming my hearing aids (Starkey Livio 2400 purchased on ebay) myself after getting the audiogram at an audiologist. The masking features work, but I’ve also noticed that amplification only helps a great deal - better than masking. I don’t have very aggressive amplification - the compression ratio is 1.2 for “moderate” and 1.4 for “quiet” with a bit of gain around 5kHz (where my tinnitus is centered.
That is enough to completely remove the perception of tinnitus while I have my hearing aids in. The relief when I put them in is almost immediate, and sometimes lasts for a few minutes after I take them out. It works even in a quiet environment.
Why does this work? I’m not complaining, I’m just curious. Is there just enough background noise even in a quiet environment that the 1.4 compression ratio provides enough background noise to help mask the tinnitus? Is there something else going on?
Like I said, I’m not complaining - I just didn’t expect what seems like a relatively simple solution to work so well.