Noise is the factor people with tinnitus think about most and write down least. With the microphone allowed, TinnitusMe takes short level readings through the day, compares each day with your own usual, and marks the days that were clearly louder. Concerts and long headphone sessions you can add yourself. Then it checks whether loud days and spikes actually go together for you.
In 22,936 UK Biobank adults, tinnitus was most common in music and construction work, accounted for by job and music noise exposure along with older age.
Couth et al., Trends Hear 2019With microphone access, the phone listens for up to a minute at a time and keeps three numbers: the average, the loud end and the peak. No audio goes to your account. On Android the system mutes the microphone for apps in the background, so most readings come while the app is open; an iPhone can take some in the background too.
A phone microphone is not a calibrated sound meter, so the app does not claim a dB figure for the room. Instead it compares each day with your own average of the last 14 days. A loud day means loud for you.
Noise high and Noise low are collected triggers: a day about 9 dB louder, or quieter, than your usual. Like every other trigger they are tests. A quiet day can matter as much as a loud one, which is why silence or a quiet room is in the manual list too.
The Loud days card on What Happened counts the loud days in the last 90 days out of all the days with readings, and shows whether Noise high went with your spikes, tested the same way as every other trigger. If there is no link between loud days and your spikes, it says so.
The Loud days card on What Happened in Insights, with the count for the last 90 days and the Noise high result. Daily noise sits under Monitor, in Cognitive, Noise Sampling has its switch in Data, and the manual noise triggers are in Quick Log and the spike log.
Microphone access, granted during setup or later in Data. Readings come most often while the app is open; Android mutes background microphones, an iPhone allows some. Only levels are kept. Nothing else to do: the comparison with your spikes runs on its own. The Loud days card is in Insights, which is part of Premium.
No. When noise sampling is on, the phone measures a loudness level. No audio is sent to your account and nobody listens to anything.
No, but you get more readings when it is. Background readings depend on the phone: Android mutes the microphone for apps in the background, an iPhone allows some.
Yes. Noise Sampling has its own switch in Data, and you can say no to the microphone during setup. Everything else keeps working.
