Shuffle Lovers

Tinnitus – The “Sound” Companion

The Problem

If you’re reading this article there is a good possibility that you have that “sound” companion – Tinnitus. I understand all too well that constant noise and ringing in my ears. The ringing is described in a wide variety of descriptions, depending soley on one’s personal “sound” companion — humming, buzzing, roaring, crickets in the ear, and that’s just getting warmed up.

Just for starters, let’s look at an abridged definition from Wikipedia.

Tinnitus (pronounced /tinaites/ or /tinites/, from the Latin word tinni-tus meaning “ringing”) is the perception of sound within the human ear in the absence of corresponding external sound.”

Tinnitus seems to be a symptom rather than a disease in itself. The causes are numerous including such things as: high blood pressure; wax or other foreign objects in the ear; past injuries; certain medication such as aspirin; and many others too numberous to mention.

According to one acclaimed expert, 95% of cases of Tinnitus treated by him, is caused by only 4 main causes and they each have a homeopathic remedy.

Remedies

There seems to be a consensus among health practicioners and nutricionists that although there is no cure for Tinnitus, there are effective treatments that give relief.

However, there is a big “if” attached to reliefs offered, that being that it is necessary to find the cause of the Tinnitus in the first place. In other words, not everyone’s Tinnitus is treatable by the same “potion”.

For an example, when my blood pressure is up, my ears ring. When it is under control, they don’t, so in my case Atenolol seems to provide the remedy.

Another example is that the continual use of Aspirin can cause Tinnitus is some folks. The remedy is also obvious in this case, cease the use of Aspirin. I think you get my drift, thus If you have foreign matter in your ear have it removed.

Obviously, the most difficult remedy to diagnose is if the ringing is caused by a past injury. In many of these cases, more sophisticated methods may need to be used, and many times there is a trade off between the condition and the treatment. For some, the cure is worse than the disease.

This also is true of many with hearing loss, whether caused by the natural progression of age or an accident. It seems people with hearing loss have a very high incidence of Tinnitus.

I guess the crux of this article is that the most important thing you can do to find relief is to first identify the underlying cause. Once you know the root cause – and many do not – then you can proceed to pursue the relief.

If this article left you a little in the dark, you can find additional information on my blog. Just go to http://tinnitusthesoundcompanion.blogspot.com/.

John

Putting Sound on your Web Site – Part 1

Article by John Rickey

Putting sound on your web site can give your web site that special sparkle. As Interlaced graphics are gradually focusing on the page, the visitor can be put into the proper mood, preparing them for the graphic images and textual messages they will see. In this article I will discuss the best ways to put sound on your web site. Please keep in mind I am not exclusively addressing the best sound formats available on the web but rather getting the best sounds that will load quickly and encourage visitors to stay.Types of Sound FilesThere are many ways of putting sound on your web page. The most common sound files are wave, Mp3 or MIDI files. When coding sounds to automatically play when a visitor enters your web page, Wave and Mp3 files should generally be avoided. If you want to automatically play a sound file when visitors enter your web page, MIDI is the way to go. Complete songs in MIDI occupy about 5k ot 15k bytes. Its probably better to take a key short 8 to 12 bar section of a song and loop it on your web page. Although looping a poorly chosen song can drive visitors crazy. These smaller song loops occupy 2k to 7kbytes. (I will show you later the html to put MIDI on your page.)On the other hand a wave file lasting more than a second, is just too large to put on a web page as it will take too long to load (100K).MIDIWhat exactly then is MIDI? MIDI is a special computer language that communicates music. It can only communicate music by controlling stored sampled sounds. When you make a MIDI file, the number of different sounds you can record is limited by your sound card. (Although you can download new sampled sounds from the web). Most new sound cards such as the Sound Blaster Live have 127 different voices or sounds(General MIDI), on them.Making MIDI FilesA great idea for making MIDI on the web, is to use the 127 voices of the Sound Blaster Live card as your sound card. The reason being is that you know that most people on the web will hear your MIDI in the same way you heard it when you made it. (Sound Blaster does have more than 127 voices built in that you can access but stick to the 127 voice mode.)If you use extra sound banks and have an expensive card that has over 127 sounds, most people on the web will not hear the extra sounds. One problem though with the 127 voice sound card is that older computers with a 64 voice sound card will get a tinny gazzoo sound from your 127voice composition. But these 64 voice cards are now in the minority of visitors.Remember then to stick to 127 sounds when making MIDI for the web. Using the Sound Blaster card is a good idea as most visitors will be using this card and the sampled sounds will be the same ones that you heard when making the MIDI.A common question is “Can an Mp3 or wave file be converted into a midi file. The answer is no. The file would need to be recomposed using midi software. Voices, singing lyrics can not be put onto midi.