Question: I have a friend who suffers form a debilitating ear condition called tinnitus. It is a constant ringing in the ears which can drive some people to suicide. It's ever present and todate my friend has been told by the medical profession that there's nothing 'they' can do for him. I have a 'background' in radio repair and would be interested to hear from electronic/medical specialists if one could use an audio oscillator output frequency to nullify the 'noise' in his ear by 'beating' the audio frequency of the oscillator with the 'tone' in the patient's ear. Is it a ridculous suggestion. I'd like to hear your views----and put my crazy 'idea' to bed.

Answer: Tinnitus has two possible components- one is completely nerve based, and does not exist in the real world at all. It is a neurological and "nonexistent" sound that has nothing to beat against. There is no way to eliminate this form of tinnitus because it is produced either from the damaged receptor in the inner ear or from a damaged nerve in the part of the brain that recognizes sounds. While the two have different causes, they produce no actual sound and cannot be neutralized. They are completely perceptual and have no physical basis in the real world. The other type of tinnitus results from the ear's ability to cancel out some sounds (in a manner similar to what you are proposing) and can indeed produce an audible tone. In this form of the affliction, a small microphone placed inside the ear can actually register a faint but persistent tone. The ear can produce counter-tones that help us sift out actual signals from the background noise, but this is a much more rare form of tinnitus- and the mechanism that does it gets tired and loses its output after a while. If your friend has the second form of tinnitus, it may be possible to do what you want, but not very wise, as it can result in permanent ear damage to other parts of the ear as well. White noise is the only effective masking solution that has been found so far.