How the notch works

Notched sound therapy

Notched sound therapy means listening to sound that has had a narrow band removed from it — a notch — centred on your own tinnitus pitch. Instead of a masking sound that covers your tinnitus, you get one that sits around it, with a gap where your tinnitus already is.

Why remove sound instead of adding it?

The intuitive approach to tinnitus is to drown it out, and it works — briefly, and only while the sound is loud enough to cover it. That is a problem, because "loud enough to cover tinnitus" is often louder than your ears should be exposed to all night.

The notched approach comes at it differently. The idea, drawn from research into tinnitus habituation, is that steady stimulation of the frequencies around your tinnitus — while giving it nothing at its own frequency — may over time make the tinnitus less prominent to your brain. Habituation is the gradual process of a signal stopping being something you notice.

What the research does and does not say

Notched sound therapy has been studied for over a decade, most often as notched music, and results are genuinely mixed. Some studies report meaningful reductions in tinnitus loudness or distress over months; others find little difference from unnotched sound. Effects, where they appear, are usually gradual and modest rather than dramatic.

What is much better established is simpler: sound helps. Having something else to listen to makes tinnitus less prominent, sleep easier, and quiet rooms less difficult. The notch is a refinement of that, not a replacement for it.

This is a wellness and relief approach, not a treatment. Nothing here cures tinnitus, and anyone selling you a cure is worth walking away from.

Using it sensibly

• Comfortable, not loud. Set it just under your tinnitus, not over it. If it is loud enough to be tiring, it is too loud.
• Regularly beats intensely. Habituation is a long process; an hour a day for months is worth more than a loud weekend.
• Use it where tinnitus is worst — quiet rooms, and at night.
• Your pitch has to be roughly right for the notch to be in the right place. See the frequency finder.

Try it

Sylence is free to use. It runs entirely on your phone — no account, no ads, no tracking, and nothing about your tinnitus ever leaves the device.

Build my notched sound

Sylence is a sound-therapy and relief tool, not a medical device. It does not diagnose, treat, or cure tinnitus. If your tinnitus is new, sudden, changing, or in one ear only, see an audiologist or a doctor first — sudden one-sided tinnitus in particular is worth urgent attention.