EarLabs Tools

Find your tinnitus pitch

Pure-tone matching takes about 3 minutes. Headphones, a quiet room, and you. Your matched pitch tells you which part of your cochlea is involved and what hearing-loss pattern your tinnitus correlates with.

Free, no signup Volume capped at safe SPL Works offline (PWA)

Educational tool, not a diagnostic test. Pitch matching is one input into clinical evaluation. It does not detect hearing loss, rule out medical causes, or replace seeing an audiologist. Sudden hearing loss is a medical emergency, see a doctor within 72 hours.

Before you start

  1. 1
    Headphones are essential. Speakers will not give you an accurate match.
  2. 2
    Quiet room. Background noise masks the test tone.
  3. 3
    Start at low volume. The volume slider in this tool is capped, but your device volume is not. Begin quiet.
  4. 4
    Stop if anything hurts or your tinnitus gets noticeably louder. Pitch matching should be quiet and brief.

Step 1 of 4

Set your volume

Tap and hold to play a reference tone (1 kHz). Adjust your device volume to a level that is clearly audible but not loud. About the volume of a normal conversation.

Hard-capped at -12 dBFS regardless of slider. Use your device's volume for the rest.

Step 2 of 4

Which band is closest?

Tap each frequency to hear it. Pick the one nearest to the pitch of your tinnitus. Most tinnitus sits between 3 and 8 kHz.

Selected band: none yet

Step 3 of 4

Fine-tune the pitch

Adjust the slider and hold the play button. Get the tone as close to your tinnitus as you can. Slide a bit, play, slide a bit, play.

Current pitch 4000 Hz
2000 Hz 8000 Hz

Step 4 of 4

Octave check

Octave confusion is the single most common error in tinnitus pitch matching. Compare your match (top) with one octave lower (bottom). Pick the one closer to your tinnitus. If they sound equally close, keep the higher one.

4000 Hz

Your match

2000 Hz

One octave lower

Your result

Matched tinnitus pitch

— Hz

What this means in plain language

Population context (where most tinnitus pitches sit)

Bars: self-reported tinnitus pitch distribution from clinical samples (Henry et al. 2013, BTA tinnitus registry summaries). Your match shown in cyan.

Read next

What your pitch reveals about the source

Tinnitus pitch correlates with the frequency of cochlear damage.

Why hearing loss causes ringing

The central-gain hypothesis explained.

High-frequency tinnitus (4-8 kHz)

Why this band is the most common pattern.

Evidence-backed therapies

CBT, TRT, hearing aids, sound therapy.

How this tool works

This is a browser implementation of standard pure-tone pitch matching, the method audiologists use in tinnitus assessment (Goodey 1981, Henry & Meikle 2000). You compare your tinnitus against pure sine-wave tones until you find the closest match.

The Web Audio API in your browser generates the tones directly. Nothing is uploaded. Your matched pitch is stored only in your own browser if you save it. The volume is software-capped to keep the tones below typical conversation level even at slider max, but your device volume is still your responsibility.

Limits: a single pure tone rarely matches tinnitus that is hissing, multiple-tone, or noise-like. For those, the closest "centre of band" match is still useful. Pitch matching does not detect hearing loss or screen for medical causes, see an audiologist for that.

References: Henry JA, Meikle MB. Psychoacoustic measures of tinnitus. J Am Acad Audiol 2000;11(3):138-55. Goodey RJ. Drugs in the treatment of tinnitus. Ciba Found Symp 1981;85:263-78. Roberts LE et al. Ringing ears: the neuroscience of tinnitus. J Neurosci 2010;30(45):14972-9.