About - Tinnitus Review

How This Site Started

My name is Mike Peterson. My wife Linda and I live in Phoenix, Arizona. We're in our late 50s, recently retired, and we both have tinnitus.

Linda got it first. She was 50, it was 2019, and one morning she woke up with a high-pitched ringing in her left ear that never went away.

The scary part wasn't the sound. It was not knowing what was happening.

We went to our family doctor. He said it might go away. It didn't. We saw an ENT specialist. Hearing test came back mostly normal. "You have tinnitus," he said. "There's no cure. You'll learn to live with it."

That was basically it. No pamphlet, no resources, nothing. Just... learn to live with it.

Linda spent the next few months pretty scared. She couldn't sleep. I'd hear her up at 2am watching TV with the volume low. She Googled everything and got more scared reading about acoustic neuromas and tumors and all these worst-case scenarios. (She didn't have any of those. The MRI came back clean, thank god.)

Finding Something That Actually Helped

After the initial panic settled down, Linda started looking for anything that might help. A friend mentioned meditation apps. We tried a few. Then we stumbled onto apps made specifically for tinnitus. Ones that play sounds, white noise, rain, that kind of thing.

Some of them actually helped her fall asleep. Not a cure, but it was something.

Over the next year or so, Linda must have tried 15 or 20 different apps. She's the organized one, so she started keeping notes in a little notebook. Which ones helped. Which ones were annoying. Which ones wanted $80 a year. Which ones stopped playing when you opened YouTube. That kind of thing.

Friends Started Asking

Here's what we didn't realize. Tinnitus is way more common than you'd think. Once Linda started mentioning it, friends would pull her aside at church or at dinner. "I have that too." "My husband just got that." "Do you know any good apps?"

So Linda started sharing her notebook. Then she typed it up as a Word doc. For a while we'd just email the PDF to whoever asked.

But over the holidays we realized we kept updating the thing and re-sending it to the same people. One of our kids finally said "Dad, just make a website." So that's what this is. We launched it in January 2026. It's basically Linda's notes in a format that's easier to share.

Then I Got It Too

I started hearing a low hum in my right ear in 2024. My doctor thinks it's related to my blood pressure. I've been on medication for that for a few years now and I guess it can be a factor.

So now we're both in the club. Lucky us.

The one good thing is I finally understand what Linda went through those first months. And now I have my own opinions about which apps are actually good and which ones are a pain to use.

What This Site Is (and Isn't)

We update this when we find new apps or change our minds about something. We're not doctors or audiologists or anything like that. Just two people in Phoenix who have tinnitus and have tried a lot of apps.

A few things we should mention:

Nobody pays us. No affiliate links, no sponsors. We bought all these apps ourselves.
We have no idea if these will work for you. Tinnitus is weird, everyone's different.
Apps don't replace seeing a doctor. If you're new to this, get your hearing checked and rule out the serious stuff first.
These ratings are just our opinions. We might be wrong about some things.

If there's an app you think we should look at, there's a form to submit suggestions. Can't promise we'll review everything but we do read them.

Why We Bother

Honestly? Those first few months were really hard for Linda and nobody gave us any useful information. If this helps someone else sleep a little better or feel less alone with it, that's worth the couple hours we spend on this.

Tinnitus isn't fun. But you can manage it. And there are tools that help.