Comment by nostromo
Here’s my hot take on tinnitus:
First and foremost, ignore it. When you find yourself listening to it, distract yourself and immediately move on.
Secondly, add more white noise into your environment. The best approach I find is just opening a window or adding a little fan or water feature to your desk. White noise generators don’t work as well for me, but they can help in a pinch.
I believe that our modern day indoor environments are honestly just too unnaturally quiet anyway.
I’m not joking when I say that the only time I really get annoyed by my tinnitus is when the monthly “cure” for it gets posted on HN. ;-)
While "white noise" is the colloquial phrase, it's also a technical term that refers to a different noise spectrum – one that will do serious damage to your hearing if you listen to it loudly enough to do anything about tinnitus. (When played on ideal equipment, white noise has infinite energy – which is clearly not what you want to deliver to your ears.) You're probably thinking of brown noise, pink noise, or perceptually-weighted grey noise.