How to find the pitch of your tinnitus with a tone generator

Pitch matching means comparing a tone against the sound you hear until the two line up, using a slider that sweeps from low to high. Most people with tonal tinnitus match somewhere between 4 kHz and 8 kHz, though matches can shift session to session, so checking more than once is normal.

What counts as pitch matching?

Pitch matching is the process of adjusting a reference tone until its frequency lines up with the tonal sound you hear. It only deals with frequency, how high or low a sound is, not with how loud your tinnitus feels. Some people hear a single steady tone, others hear something closer to a narrow band of noise, and pitch matching works for both by giving you a moving reference point to compare against.

A tone generator is the simplest tool for this. It plays one frequency at a time on a slider, and you move the slider until the tone sounds closest to what you're hearing internally. If you're still getting oriented on what tinnitus is and why it happens, this straightforward guide covers the basics before you start pitch matching.

How do you use a tone generator to find your pitch?

The pitch exploration tool in siasola Tinnitus Masking Sounds spans 100 Hz to 16 kHz and opens at a default reference point of 6 kHz, since that sits inside the range where most matches land. A basic pass through the tool looks like this:

1. Open the pitch exploration tool and start from the default 6 kHz reference tone.
2. Lower the masking volume, or mute it, so the reference tone is the only sound you're actively listening to.
3. Sweep the slider slowly across the range rather than jumping between distant points, since a fast sweep makes it easy to miss the closest match.
4. Once a region sounds close, narrow the range around it and sweep again in smaller steps.
5. Check one octave up and one octave down from wherever you land, since octave confusion is common in pitch matching.
6. If you already know your frequency from a previous check or another source, type it in directly instead of sweeping.
7. Save the result once it feels closest, so you don't have to repeat the process from scratch next time.

Why check an octave up and down?

Octave confusion happens because tones an octave apart share a lot of harmonic structure, which makes them sound deceptively similar even though the frequencies are double or half of each other. Someone sweeping past 4 kHz might settle there when their actual match is closer to 8 kHz, or the other way around.

Checking both directions before saving a result is a quick way to catch this. If the octave above or below sounds just as close, or closer, than your first pick, that's worth noting and adjusting for before you save.

What if you already know your frequency?

Not everyone starts from zero. If a previous check, an outside tone generator, or another source already gave you a number, typing that frequency directly into the tool skips the sweep entirely. From there you can still fine-tune by nudging the slider around that starting point until it feels right.

Why does the match change from one check to the next?

Pitch matches are not fixed measurements the way a ruler reading is. Attention, background noise, time of day, and ordinary variability in how tinnitus is perceived can all shift where a match lands from one session to the next. This is expected, and it's part of why re-checking periodically, rather than treating one result as final, is standard practice in pitch-matching literature.

If your saved pitch feels off after a few weeks, running the sweep again and updating the saved profile keeps it current. Our guide to building a custom sound profile walks through what to do with a pitch once it's saved.

What does a saved pitch profile unlock?

Once a pitch is saved, it becomes a reference point the rest of the app can use. The auto-match feature takes purpose-built sounds, like cricket textures, singing-bowl pitches, and drip arpeggios, and pitch-shifts them so their dominant frequency lands on your saved pitch, typically within about one semitone. Instead of picking a sound and hoping it happens to sit near your frequency, the sound moves to meet the number you already found.

The free tier of siasola Tinnitus Masking Sounds includes pitch exploration, 20+ sounds, and 2-layer mixing with no personal data collected, so the whole pitch-matching process described above works without paying anything. The 5-layer mixer and full auto-match library are part of the paid tiers if you want to go further.

If you'd rather read more on how frequency and masking work together, our guide to frequency matching covers the mechanics in more depth. Once you've saved a pitch, the pitch exploration tool in Siasola Tinnitus Masking Sounds is where auto-match puts it to work.

siasola Tinnitus Masking Sounds is a sound customization tool, not a medical device. It does not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any condition. If you have tinnitus or any hearing concern, consult a qualified healthcare professional. Individual experiences vary.