This paper focuses on whether masking signal with natural sounds is an effective way for mitigating annoyance caused by monotone-like tinnitus. Four natural sounds, pink noise, and narrow bandwidth noise were applied as maskers in the present study shown in this paper. Two monotones were applied as maskees. As a basis for research, natural sounds do not necessarily mask monotones entirely. According to the results, spring water and rain noise can be selected as effective noise for masking monotones. In the case of monotones with different frequency, the same masker performed a little differently on masking. We preliminarily demonstrated the feasibility of natural sounds for masking monotone-like tinnitus, which is of great use for improving maskers in tinnitus masking therapy.
Tinnitus is a common clinical symptom. Researches have shown that fractal sound can effectively treat tinnitus. But current fractal sound is usually synthesized based on constant notes via fractal algorithm, which lead to monotony of synthesized fractal sound. So it is difficult to achieve personalized match. Clinical datas have confirmed that it is common to match tinnitus sound with nature sound and it has a good effect on regulating negative emotion and relieving tinnitus via some natural sound. Therefore, a new method of personalized synthesizing tinnitus rehabilitation sound based on iterative function system (IFS) fractal algorithm is proposed in this paper. This method firstly generates personalized audio library based on natural sound, then tinnitus rehabilitation sound is synthesized via IFS fractal algorithm. Simulation results show that rehabilitation sound in this paper can meet the basic requirements of tinnitus therapy sound and can match tinnitus sound by controlling personalized audio library. So it has reference significance to the treatment of tinnitus sound therapy.