Tinnitus rehabilitation device and method

A tinnitus rehabilitation sound recording for providing relief to a person suffering from the disturbing effects of tinnitus, the sound recording comprising:

• an audio signal which is reproducible on a playback device to provide the signal to the person, said audio signal including peaks and troughs, spectrally modified in accordance with a predetermined masking algorithm, for intermittent masking of tinnitus, designed to modify at least one of the peaks and the troughs of at least a portion of the audio signal at selected frequencies, and wherein said predetermined masking algorithm is specifically produced to account for the basic audiometric configuration of the person whereby, in use at a comfortable listening level, when the sound recording is heard by the person during the peaks, the tinnitus is substantially completely obscured and the person perceives significant masking of the tinnitus, and during the troughs, the person may occasionally perceive the tinnitus.

A tinnitus rehabilitation device for providing relief to a person suffering from the disturbing effects of tinnitus, the device comprising:

• a signal filter configured to spectrally modify at least a portion of an audio signal including peaks and troughs in accordance with a predetermined masking algorithm designed to modify at least one of the peaks and the troughs of at least a portion of the audio signal at selected frequencies, and wherein said predetermined masking algorithm accounts for the basic audiometric configuration of the person whereby, in use at a comfortable listening level, when the spectrally modified audio signal is heard by the person during the peaks, the tinnitus is substantially completely obscured and the person perceives significant masking of the tinnitus, and during troughs, the person may occasionally perceive the tinnitus.

A tinnitus rehabilitation method for providing relief to a person suffering from the disturbing effects of tinnitus, the method comprising:

• providing a treatment signal;
• modifying the treatment signal to include troughs and peaks wherein the modified treatment signal intermittently masks the tinnitus during at least one of the peaks and does not fully mask the tinnitus during at least some of the troughs.

A tinnitus rehabilitation method for providing relief to a person suffering from the disturbing effects of tinnitus, the method comprising:

• providing a music signal;
• and
• spectrally modifying at least a first portion of the music signal in selected frequency ranges tailored to the person to at least partially mask the tinnitus.