The AudioNotch Tinnitus Treatment Blog

Below, I’ve reproduced a e-mail from one of our users. This user provided some really good feedback and I wanted the chance to discuss it.

It’s important for us to stress that we don’t have a 100% success rate. Anyone who makes ridiculous claims like that is selling you snake oil.

Below is an example of a user who didn’t experience a benefit, but we wanted to be up-front about.

I’ve published his e-mail with his permission.

Thank you very much for enabling people to try your treatment on a ‘refund if no improvement’ basis.

It sounds like you need all the feedback you can get, so I’ll do my best to give a helpful account of my experience.

Before I start, I would like to suggest that an urgently needed warning message is  added to the frequency tuner. You recommend listening to the frequencies an octave below and above the suspected tinnitus frequency. However, lower frequencies are drastically louder than higher frequencies and I nearly shattered my ear drums (or so it felt), by just switching to an octave lower. This is exactly the sort of noise exposure that a tinnitus patient must avoid.

If the tuner volume cannot be set up to automatically reduce as lower frequencies are selected, then a warning message MUST be put on the frequency tuner panel, advising people to start with the volume at 0 and cautiously turn up the volume, especially with the lower frequencies.

Another suggestion which I mentioned before is that all white noise and nature sounds be normalised to a lower volume. Because it is a constant volume level, it need not be anywhere near the normal peak level for music, which usually has a much lower average volume. The peak level is only where the crescendos or drumbeats lie; the rest of the music (unless it is very compressed), is much quieter. When putting the white noise on after music or speech, it was far too loud and it is important to avoid inadvertently blasting one’s already damaged hearing.

I normalised in MP3 Gain to 80db, but intended to reduce it again to 75db or even lower. Initially, the white noise was at 97db!

Normalization and a volume warning are good suggestions to help improve our tuner. We really appreciate user feedback as it helps us to make a better product.

MY EXPERIENCE
A worsening of my tinnitus over two or three weeks prompted me to seek out Notch Therapy. The tinnitus had got to to the point where, one evening, I had been watching TV over the top of my iPod playing the sound of rain, to reduce the apparent tinnitus volume. Of course I had to have the TV turned up pretty loud, too. I realised I had to turn the situation around, without delay.

First of all, I used Audionotch at 12.7kHz, but after no improvement (and an aggravation instead), I retested the frequency and it seemed more like 11.5kHz, so I started again.

I was using Audionotch for a minimum of 3 x 1 hour daily, but sometimes in shorter bursts.

During the trial period  Audionotch, my tinnitus was very troublesome. After the conclusion of each session, I was a lot more aware of the ringing and it was oppressively loud. This may have been due to the sudden return to a quieter environment in contrast to the white noise, making the tinnitus seem louder; or it may have been due to the fact that, having just had the notched white noise playing, tinnitus was on on my mind, so I was listening out for any change – a counterproductive thing to do, when dwelling on tinnitus increases the volume. Or it may have been a Zwicker Tone.

I am inclined to think that it was a combination of all three factors.

This is an important example of why users should read our FAQ in depth and be aware of the risks of using AudioNotch. Thankfully, this user was aware of these risks and understanding them, still elected to trial the therapy.

My tinnitus is severe enough to cause daily headaches requiring migraine medication –  and when it has been very severe, it has caused suicidal thoughts. One morning, while on the therapy, I actually awoke with a sharp tinnitus headache.

The level of tinnitus while doing the therapy was such that the noise was always in the forefront of whatever soundscape I found myself in. The noise was completely overwhelming, causing constant headaches; I was able to think of little else all day but the painfully loud and very stressful ringing in my head (and my stupidity in allowing myself to be severely overexposed to noise when photographing concerts, which caused the hearing damage). I was very concerned that I was experiencing a prolonged worsening trend in the tinnitus.

Then one afternoon, I returned to my Jon Kabat-Zinn ‘Mindfulness Meditation for Pain’ recording. After an hour and a half of resting and doing the exercises, my stress levels had reduced and my tinnitus level and headache had, too. Thankfully, it is now back to a level I can cope with, due to using the guided meditations twice daily.

This goes back to something I’ve said earlier – meditation is a great tool for coping with tinnitus.

I think that the escalation in my tinnitus which led me to try Audionotch was due partly to having taken a break from those guided meditations, which I can’t recommend highly enough as a stress management measure.

Before I ask for my refund, I’d like to ask if you can see anything I might have done better, in order to achieve a happier result.

Right now, I don’t want to go back to the therapy, as it was an extremely stressful and unhappy time while I was trying it.

I hope this feedback helps, because I think your product is a very worthwhile project. You seem to be guided by science, not profit, so I am keen to help you to help others.

Thanks again and best wishes,
Richard Smallfield

www.richardsmallfield.com

We did end up refunding Richard’s payment for the AudioNotch software program. Unfortunately, he was one of the people for whom it didn’t work.

If you’re interested, we published some of our survey results on-line here for people to review.