Comparing Three Established Methods for Tinnitus Pitch Matching With Respect to Reliability, Matching Duration, and Subjective Satisfaction.

The sample was a convenience sample of 59 people with chronic single-pitch tinnitus, and people with hearing loss above 40 dB, hearing aids, neurological or psychiatric disease, substance abuse, or concurrent tinnitus treatment were excluded. Participants had chronic, single-pitch tinnitus, so the results do not show how the methods perform for other kinds of tinnitus. The reliability confidence intervals were wide, so the study could not decide whether one method was significantly more reliable than another by that measure. The two-alternative forced-choice procedure used a maximum of seven iterations, which the authors suggest may have contributed to its larger variability. The method of adjustment always started at 500 Hz, which the authors suspect may have biased matched pitches toward lower frequencies. Likeness rating used only 11 predefined frequencies, so the resolution was limited by that frequency list. Matching duration was affected by procedural details and learning across runs, so the recorded times may not represent a single new clinical session. The study did not report whether repeated exposure to matching sounds changed the tinnitus itself.

Do not conclude that the method of adjustment is the best choice. Its average matched pitch was 4,697 Hz, significantly lower than the other methods, and the authors suspect the 500 Hz starting tone may have biased the result.