I saw an old friend at an industry function recently who had what I thought were a new pair of hearing aids in his ears, but which on closer inspection were something different entirely. He told me he’s started suffering from a very bad case of tinnitus — unwanted noise or ringing in the ears — and sought out help from a recognized expert in the field, Dr. William H. Maxwell of Portland, Maine. Dr. Maxwell is a proponent of tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT), which, very simply put, attempts to eliminate the tinnitus noises by getting the brain to ignore them. Part of the therapy includes wearing a pair of Tranquil in-the-ear sound generators from General Hearing Instruments. The Tranquil devices create soft noise that masks the tinnitus sounds in an attempt to get the brain to simply stop hearing them. As a long-term tinnitus sufferer, I have seen for myself that masking noises in different environments make my tinnitus sounds disappear. I’m very curious whether my friend’s TRT treatments will work for him and will write about his progress in future posts.