You can make notched music yourself, at home, for free. This is the honest, no-shortcuts guide to doing it — and a quicker option if the fiddly bits aren’t for you.
“Notched” music is a simple idea: you take songs you already enjoy and remove a narrow band of sound centred on the pitch of your tinnitus, leaving everything else untouched. The thinking is that quietening that one band may, over time, ease how loud the ringing feels. It’s an approach that has been studied for tonal tinnitus — a steady ring or hum at a fairly definite pitch. It doesn’t help everyone, and it isn’t a cure. We’d rather say that plainly than oversell it.
Everything depends on this one number. A notch only helps if it sits on the right frequency, so it’s worth taking a few quiet minutes to get it right. Most tonal tinnitus falls somewhere between 3,000 and 8,000 Hz (3–8 kHz), often up towards the higher end.
Use our free Tinnitus Frequency Finder to match the tone in your ears and read off the number in hertz. Do it in a quiet room, at a comfortable volume, and check it more than once on different days — your best estimate is what every step below is built on.
Audacity is a free, well-known audio editor for Windows, Mac and Linux. It will do everything you need. Here’s the whole process.
Download it from the official Audacity site and install it. It’s free and open-source.
Drag a music file into Audacity. Use something you genuinely like and will happily hear a lot — that matters more than you’d think.
Select the whole track, then open Effect → EQ and Filters → Filter Curve EQ (or the Notch Filter effect). Create a sharp, narrow dip centred on your tinnitus frequency — for example a cut roughly half an octave wide around 6,000 Hz if that’s your pitch. Keep it narrow and deep rather than wide and shallow: you want to lift out one slim band, not dull the whole song.
Play it back. Done well, it should sound almost identical to the original — you’ve only removed a thin sliver. If the music sounds noticeably muffled, your notch is too wide; narrow it and try again.
Export as MP3 or WAV under a new name (keep your original untouched). That file is yours to keep, on your own device, forever.
Build up a small playlist of notched tracks you enjoy, so you always have something pleasant to put on.
That’s genuinely all there is to it, and it costs nothing but time. The catch is exactly that: it’s a per-song job, the EQ settings take some fiddling to get right, and it’s easy to make the notch too wide or slightly off-pitch without realising.
If the EQ tinkering isn’t for you, this is the shortcut. Notch Music does the same job in your browser, in a click:
Your music never leaves your device in the process, there’s no subscription, and you pay once. It’s the convenience of getting the notch right, every time, without the software learning curve.
See Notch MusicWeighing it against other tools? Here’s an honest side-by-side of Notch Music and AudioNotch — where each one fits, and where it doesn’t.
This page is education, not medical advice. Notched sound has been studied for tonal tinnitus, but the evidence is still developing, it doesn’t help everyone, and it isn’t a cure — you can read the research we’ve gathered here. It isn’t suitable for pulsatile tinnitus or ringing without a clear pitch. If your tinnitus is new, sudden, one-sided, or troubling you, please see a doctor or audiologist first.