In the latest Reader's Digest (July/August 2012, page 34) there is a brief mention of a device that helped reduce tinnitus in 75% of patients in an early study. It's described as an iPod size device with which the user listens to a sequence of quiet tones that are believed to quiet or stop abnormal brain rhythms. The developer is ANM Adaptive Neuromodulation (German company).
I post at great personal risk, since so many have mentioned that just talking about it makes it worse, but...
I did read about this study earlier. IIRC, this was for the kind where you hear specific tones (frequencies). They would filter those tones out of the music on the iPod, and the idea was that by hearing other tones, your mind/nerves would somehow 'shut down' it's sensitivity to the tinnitus tones.
My tinnitus developed abut 6 months ago. I always feared it, as I was exposed to a lot of noise on the farm from ages 10-20. No OSHA people protecting kids on farms, and some of that equipment is like a buzz saw (hay choppers), and you run it for hours on end.
And I always feared that tinnitus would drive me absolutely bonkers, but fortunately, the type I have I seem to tolerate pretty well, so far. Mine is like some have described - like very distant crickets chirping. No specific tone, but not like white noise (steam sound) either. When it first started, I was going around the house trying to find the source (fridge running? toilet running? noisy light dimmer, or TV circuit?). Mine is of the 'in the head' variety, rather than 'in the ear'. I have very occasionally had an 'in the ear' type - that was always a definite pure high pitch - sinusoidal, like a test tone, but would fade away in seconds.
The worst part for me is when I want to do some critical/serious music listening. I used to have a noise just like this in my pre-amp, and have since bypassed the pre-amp by going directly from a computer and hard drive, through USB to a DAC directly to my amplifier. The noise is gone from my pre-amp, but now it is in my head!
-ERD50