Tinnitus by frequency ยท 10 000 Hz
Above 10,000 Hz, tinnitus is a faint, very high whine or hiss that people often call “electrical”. These are real tinnitus pitches, but they are the hardest to match and the easiest to get wrong, so this page is mostly about checking. The box below plays 10, 12, 14 and 16 kHz, plus 5,000 Hz, an octave below 10.
The listening box needs JavaScript and a browser that can make sound. The frequency matcher explains the same thing in words if it cannot run here.
Tone — press again to stop
Masking sound — one minute on this page
Level
That was the minute a browser tab gets. The app plays this all night, built around your own number, with rain, fan, ocean and noise.
Get Sylence on Google PlayStart at the quietest level you can hear. Stop if it makes your ringing louder or uncomfortable. If everyday sounds hurt, stay at the bottom of the ladder. Nothing loads until you press a button, and nothing is uploaded.
That is common, and usually not a fault. The top of human hearing falls steadily with age, and by middle age many people hear little or nothing above roughly 14,000 to 15,000 Hz. Equipment matters as much: phone speakers, many earbuds and some Bluetooth connections reproduce very high frequencies weakly or not at all. Try wired headphones before deciding a tone is silent.
Pitch judgement is at its least reliable up here, and matches above 10,000 Hz are often an octave too high. Play 5,000 Hz against 10,000: if the lower one sits on your ringing just as well, it is probably the better number. The same goes for 6,000 against 12,000, which you can check on the 6,000 Hz page.
A standard hearing test stops at 8,000 Hz. Testing above that, called extended high-frequency audiometry, exists but is not routine. So a normal result and very high tinnitus are not a contradiction: the test may simply never have looked up there. If this matters to you, ask the audiologist whether they can test above 8 kHz.
Pink noise carries very little energy above 10,000 Hz, so the notched button sounds almost the same as the plain one here. That is honest physics, not a broken button. What covers tinnitus this high is bright hiss: white noise, rain on a hard surface, running water, a fan. Deep sounds such as brown noise or ocean rumble barely reach it.
Search for this frequency and you will find hour-long videos of the tone. There is no good evidence that listening to your own tinnitus pitch makes it quieter, and at any real level it is one more high sound for an ear that may already be tired. Use the tone to check your number; use steady background sound to live with it. That is why the tone here stops by itself after 30 seconds.
Yes. Very high tinnitus is real, though it is harder to match accurately; try the tone an octave lower (6,000 or 8,000 Hz) before trusting a very high number.
The top of hearing falls with age, and many adults hear little above about 14,000 to 15,000 Hz. Phone speakers, many earbuds and some Bluetooth connections also reproduce very high frequencies weakly.
A standard hearing test stops at 8,000 Hz, so it does not look at the range your tinnitus is in. Extended high-frequency testing exists but is not routine.
If none of these tones sits on your ringing, the matcher on the home page sweeps from 1,000 to 16,000 Hz and gives you a number in about a minute, free, in the browser.
Then, if it helps: Sylence on Google Play builds rain, fan, ocean and noise around your number, synthesised on the phone. Masking is free, there is no account, and nothing about your tinnitus leaves the device.
Sylence is a sound-therapy and relief tool, not a medical device. It does not diagnose, treat, or cure tinnitus, and this page is not a hearing test. If your tinnitus is new, sudden, changing, pulsing with your heartbeat, or in one ear only, see an audiologist or a doctor first — sudden one-sided tinnitus in particular is worth urgent attention.