Tinnitus Pro : Music Therapy app for iPhone and iPad

4.8 ( 9008 ratings )

Music Medical
Developer: ProMedical Audio

19.99 USD

Current version: 1.2.2, last update: 7 years ago
First release : 21 Mar 2012
App size: 32.02 Mb

Tinnitus Pro Music Therapy is the result of scientific research undertaken by Okamoto, Stracke, Stoll and Pantev at the Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis and the Department of Otorhinolaryngology in Muenster, Germany. The research has been endorsed by the Tinnitus Research Initiative.

Reduce your tinnitus while listening to your music; the scientific way!

Tinnitus Pro is an easy-to-use app to help you reduce the loudness of your tinnitus tone while listening to your own iTunes music.

HOW DOES THIS APP WORK?
Tinnitus Pro Music Therapy is a treatment aimed at reducing the loudness of tinnitus through listening to individually tailored music. This works by stripping out the frequencies in music that correspond to an individual’s tinnitus frequency. The app identifies a one-octave band around the patient’s tinnitus frequency and removes this swath of frequencies from the music’s energy spectrum. After one year of listening to this “notched” music, patients have reported a significant reduction in the loudness of ringing compared to a group of tinnitus patients who listened to music in which frequencies were randomly removed.

THE THEORY BEHIND THE APP
Little is known about the mechanisms of tinnitus, but recent studies have shown it may be caused by maladaptive auditory cortex reorganization. In this situation, neurons in the auditory cortex are deprived of normal electrical input because of hearing loss.
Yet the neurons dont become inactive. Instead, they are "rewired" so that they are no longer excited by the frequencies they were originally tuned to. They do, however, become sensitive to neighboring frequencies. That synchronized spontaneous neural activity may lead to tinnitus.
Previous research has shown that this kind of cortical reorganization can be modified by behavioral training.

This app reduces the loudness of patients tinnitus by exposing them to music of their choice which is modified, or "notched", to contain no energy in the same frequency range as the patients tinnitus.
The idea behind this therapy is that the notched music doesnt stimulate the cortical area corresponding to the tinnitus frequency, but it still excites surrounding neurons. Therefore, the neurons that arent stimulated are suppressed via lateral inhibitory inputs originating from surrounding neurons.
The notched music could also have induced synaptic or cellular plasticity mechanisms.

FEATURES
- Determination of tinnitus frequency
- Fine slider for exact frequency finding
- White-, Pink- and Browne Noise audio files included
- Time line; a perfect solution to follow the therapy results
- User friendly interface
- Share by twitter
- and much more...

DOES IT REALLY HELP ME?
The research shows that the therapy has significant positive results, we can not guarantee that the therapy will work for specific cases. Please go to http://www.pnas.org/content/107/3/1207 to read the full scientific publication.

NEVER DISREGARD PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL ADVICE OR DELAY SEEKING MEDICAL TREATMENT BECAUSE OF SOMETHING YOU HAVE READ ON OR ACCESSED THROUGH THIS APP.

Pros and cons of Tinnitus Pro : Music Therapy app for iPhone and iPad

Tinnitus Pro : Music Therapy app good for

Great idea. Would love to see more audio features to allow people to more easily "tune out" there tinnitus frequencies.

Great overall app. Things to improve on: -add longer choices for timer (2,5,8 hours) -ambient sounds should be longer than 2,5 min so we dont hear a down moment when sound loops.

Some bad moments

Does not work if you use music in the cloud like Apple Music, Spotify, Internet radio. Therefore, not usable for me and probably many. There should also be an option that makes the sound change system wide, meaning an option where one can chose to have the frequency filtered out for phone conversations, videos, games, etc., so one has the effect not only with sounds consumed through the app.

Unfortunately the app only allows to play music that is stored on your device. Does not work with Apple Music, Spotify or any other cloud based services. Also, it would be nice if the sound manipulation was systemwide, not just during use within the app, but all sounds and conversations or videos one listens to on the iPhone or iPad. I cannot use the app since I have no music stored on my phone and need the space for other things.

Im really impressed with what Ive seen so far. Its clear that the developers care about Tinnitus and wanted to design this to help with those of us who deal with the noise... The design shows a great level of care. But were not quite there yet with a comprehensive tool in the $10 range. The nails that need hammering: 1) ASAP: need a fix for audio playback which stops when you navigate through the app, or minimize it to multitask. In my humble opinion, the music that is playing through the filters should not stop until the app is closed from multitask. Should play like iTunes. 2) Not quite as ASAP as above, but each of my ears generate at least two tones: one in the 4k range, and another harmonizing tone in the higher realm around 11kHz. It would be nice to have up to 3 individual tone generators per ear. Here is whats great: 1) I love the layout from start to outputting treated music. The steps are fluid and easy for anyone, but nice and deep for audio nut like me. 2) Thank you for putting this out there -filtering has always been a hypothesis for me as possible treatment for tinnitus. I hope this works. 3) There are some great uses for musicians and audio creators. Time to play a bit outside the box with this one. Ramp up the tone generators, fix the music playback issue and you have a 5 star app worthy of your $10 price tag. Though I think it might be best to sell a little lower at first and work with your clients to make a great app that you can later charge more for. Man I hope you guys keep it up and succeed!

Compared to the other tinnitus-oriented apps, this warrants a five-star rating, though still has some room for improvement. One thing thats a challenge, though not specifically an issue with this app is isolating the ringing/hissing tone - though its nice that you can create multiple profiles, and easily switch between them. I am hopeful the notched music therapy will help diminish the pain of tinnitus over time, and may post additional review comments after Ive used the app more. However wanted to provide early comments to others who might, like me, be wondering if the app was worthwhile. To that end, I recommend over every other tinnitus app Ive seen.

Takes a while to figure out exact settings. I would like to see a timer. My therapist recommends that I go to sleep with it and let it play about 6 hours. Hen I wake up my device is dead.

I was wary of dropping $10 on another tinnitus app but I am glad I did. The fine tuning of the tone finding function is a winner. Other apps neglect the fact that it is extremely difficult to isolate your tinnitus note(s). There may be something to the notched music theory I dont know yet but this app is easy to use and well thought out, I hit a snag trying to play my iTunes music, apple wont let me, very unhappy with this but not the apps fault. Its comforting to be able to play the right tone into your ear and make it an external noise. That alone is worth it as it shuts my tinnitus up and its easier when its a real noise you are hearing. Ten bucks for sanity...bargain. One points mentioned in earlier reviews...tinnitus often has multiple notes you have to write this in to the app. I think I have at least 3 tones. Top app. Well done and thank you. Im not easily impressed but you impressed me and this beats shelling out $400 for adobe audition to do the same thing with ten times the effort.

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