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Notching Music for Tinnitus Treatment
Summary Version of My Question:
Can someone help me figure out how to knock out specific frequencies from music mp3s?Full Version of My Question:
A recent study found that people with hearing difficulties caused by Tinnitus can be helped by listening to music that has had the frequencies at which they hear the tinnitus ringing knocked out. Here’s an NYTimes article about the study:
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/science/05obhear.html?ref=scienceI’d like to “notch” some music for my dad who has suffered from tinnitus for decades. I told him if he would go get tested to find out exactly what frequencies his tinnitus is effecting that I would figure out how to notch music for him.
I have the Adobe Creative Suite but haven’t used Audition much. I would be extremely grateful if someone could help me quickly get going on this. Does anyone know how I could use Audition to knock out specific frequencies from music mp3s?
Thanks in advance.
-Sam
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3 Replies
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I assume you have CS2, You just apply the Notch Filter Effect in either Edit or Multitrack modes, It can filter up to six frequency bands, adjustable in the parameters of the filter
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Fabulous, thank you! While I’m sure I would have found that filter eventually, you saved me a lot of time stumbling through the help documentation.
Yes, CS2 is what I have.
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From my experience the tinnitus will likely only occupy a single frequency, mine is somewhere around 10k, from this point of view you may be better off using a parametric eq as opposed to a notch filter.
Whilst I’m no expert on medical subjects my feelings about this article are mixed, certainly its worth trying anything however what you may end up doing is over sensitising the ear to the exact frequencies you want to treat, I’ll give you an example, if you were to listened to music that had 10k frequencies removed over an extended period of time, (half an hour or so) everything you hear afterwards would appear to contain more 10k than it actually does, this might actually increase the prominence of the tinnitus because your ears would be temporarily more sensitive to this frequency, these “ghost” frequencies are something I come across a lot when eq’ing for extended periods of time.
You can test this yourself quite easily, load a “good” quality piece of music in to your app, add a parametric eq, lower 10k as far as you can with a narrow as “Q” as possible, now listen to the track three or four times through, then remove the parametric and re listen, you will hear a sharp rise at 10k I guaranty.
I can demonstrate something similar using a short video, this is roughly the same thing happening with colour instead of sound
https://www.grand-illusions.com/opticalillusions/colour_illusion/
Well, I hope there is a cure found for Tinnitus soon, Personally it is unlikely that I will ever know the true sound of silence ever again, though as far as I know the human ear can recover (in time) however I’ve had mine for years. Incidentally one thing that did help me (a lot) was chucking out my old cathode ray tv, which was emitting a hi pitch tone at around 10k funnily enough.
Best of luck.
Richie.
Coda – musical selections; in film, the ending or last section of a film (often wordless).
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