Free · on your phone · about a minute

Tinnitus frequency finder

Most tinnitus has a pitch — a frequency, in hertz, that the ringing or hissing sits at. Finding yours takes about a minute: you listen to a tone, move it up and down, and stop when it sits at the same height as your own sound.

How pitch matching works

A pitch match is a comparison, not a measurement of your ear. You are the instrument: the app plays a pure tone and you decide when it matches. That is why it takes seconds rather than an audiology appointment, and also why it is an approximation rather than a clinical figure.

Most tinnitus pitches fall between 4,000 and 8,000 Hz, which is high — near the top of a piano and well above most speech. If your match lands far outside that range, it is worth doing it again in a quieter room.

Getting a reading you can trust

• Use headphones, and a quiet room. Phone speakers roll off exactly the high frequencies you are trying to match.
• Keep the volume low. You are matching pitch, not loudness. A quiet tone is easier to compare against.
• Expect octave confusion. It is common to land an octave above or below — if 6,000 Hz feels close, try 3,000 and 12,000 and see which is really closer.
• Match each ear separately if your tinnitus is different on each side.
• Re-match occasionally. Tinnitus pitch can drift, and your first attempt is your least practised one.

What the number is actually for

On its own, a frequency is trivia. It becomes useful when the sound you listen to is built around it — which is what notched sound therapy does: it removes a narrow band around your pitch from the masking sound, so the sound sits around your tinnitus rather than on top of it.

It is also a number worth writing down before you see an audiologist. See what a tinnitus frequency is for the longer answer.

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.

Find my frequency — free, in the browser

Then, if it helps: Sylence on Google Play — it takes the number directly, so you do not match twice.

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.