Tinnitus by frequency ยท 8 000 Hz
8,000 Hz is a very thin, piercing whistle. It is also the last frequency on a standard hearing test, which usually runs from 250 to 8,000 Hz, and one of the pitches people search for most. Below you can hear it, check the octave below, and compare plain masking noise with the same noise notched at 8 kHz.
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.
Up here the ear is less sure of pitch. Above roughly 5,000 Hz, people get noticeably worse at judging musical intervals, so a match landing an octave out is more likely, not less. Before settling on 8,000, play 4,000 Hz and listen for which one sits on the ringing. 7,000 and 9,000 are there for a match that is close but not quite.
Use the headphones you will actually listen with. Earbuds and phone speakers differ a lot at this height, and a tone that is faint on one pair can be plain on another.
Age-related hearing loss usually starts at the highest frequencies and moves down over the years, in both ears. On a hearing test it looks like a slope falling away towards 8,000 Hz, and tinnitus often sits where that slope begins. Noise damage tends to look different: a dip nearer 4,000 Hz with 8,000 better again. Ear conditions and some medicines can also play a part, which is why only a hearing test can say which pattern is yours.
Pink noise has less energy at 8,000 Hz than lower down, so the notched version is subtler here than at 4,000: listen for the hiss losing a little of its top sparkle. For a ring this high, the sounds that cover it are the ones with plenty of hiss, such as rain, running water, a fan or white noise. More on the idea in notched sound therapy.
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.
A very thin, piercing whistle near the top of what many adults hear comfortably. 8,000 Hz is also the highest frequency on a standard hearing test.
It can fit that pattern, because age-related hearing loss usually starts at the highest frequencies. Noise, ear conditions and some medicines can also be involved, so only a hearing test can tell.
Sounds with plenty of high-frequency hiss: rain, running water, a fan, white or pink noise. Low, rumbling sounds do little at this pitch.
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.