Plain answers · no jargon

What is a tinnitus frequency?

Your tinnitus frequency is the pitch your ringing sits at, written in hertz — cycles per second. A higher number is a higher sound. 440 Hz is the A that orchestras tune to; 6,000 Hz is far above that, a thin electronic whine near the top of human hearing.

Why most tinnitus is high-pitched

Most people describe their tinnitus somewhere between 4,000 and 8,000 Hz. That is not a coincidence: it is the region where hearing tends to be lost first, whether from age or from noise exposure. The prevailing explanation is that tinnitus often appears at or near the frequencies where the ear is sending the brain less than it used to, and the brain fills the gap.

That is also why tinnitus is usually loudest in a silent room. There is nothing else at that frequency for your hearing to attend to.

Is it a single tone?

For some people, yes — a clean tone with an identifiable pitch. For others it is hissing, a kettle, cicadas, or several sounds at once, and a single number only approximates it. Pitch matching still helps: you are looking for the centre of the sound, not a perfect description of it.

What knowing yours changes

• Sound therapy can be built around it. Masking is more comfortable when it is shaped to your tinnitus instead of simply louder than it. See notched sound therapy.
• It is a useful thing to bring to an appointment. An approximate pitch and a record of how your days vary is more use to a clinician than "it's been bad lately".
• It makes change visible. Tracking loudness and impact over weeks tells you far more than how today feels.

What it does not tell you

A pitch match is not a hearing test, not a diagnosis, and not a measure of how severe your tinnitus is. Two people with the same frequency can have completely different experiences of it — distress and loudness track each other far less closely than you would expect.

You can find yours in about a minute with a tinnitus 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.

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.