How to cancel out a high-pitched noise?

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I'm having trouble with a fairly loud, high-pitched squeak-type noise keeping me up all night. I have no idea what it is and it sounds for up to several minutes at a time, at odd intervals, throughout the night. It sounds almost like a cell phone ringing crossed with a bird chirping and seems to be coming from either right outside my bedroom window or from within the wall. I haven't been able to figure out what it is for the life of me.

Ear plugs and a sound machine muffle it a good bit, but I get bad inner-ear infections from wearing ear plugs on a regular basis. I was thinking about investing in noise-cancelling headphones, but I've read that they are not effective at dealing with upper-register sounds.

Does anyone have suggestions? I just had several months of chronic insomnia, due to a whiplash injury, and now this. I'm pretty desperate for a decent night's sleep at this point! Please help, if you can.

sounds like an insect problem to me- i've been rudely awoken by such, which enraged me to the point of grabbing a vacuum cleaner and searching for the chirpin' SOB and hooverin' the little bugger as soon as i could find it. but that didn't help me get back to sleep afterwards, god damnit!

You have tinnitus and there is little that can be done about it. It is not a noise. It is an internally generated stimulation of the auditory nerve that is not caused by external sound wave energy sources.

Get used to it.

ruveyn

Thanks, auntblabby.

I have an above-the-garage apartment and just learned on Sunday there is a hole in the ceiling of the garage downstairs, right below the area where I am hearing the noise. Apparently, there was a plumbing problem a few months ago and the plumber my landlord hired to replace some of the pipes did not re-cover the area where he had been working. So, there is basically a big gaping hole with loose installation hanging down and everything. I spoke to my landlord and she's going to have someone come in and patch up the hole, but I'm afraid the damage is already done. God only knows what crawled up there and is living in my walls now ...

^^^
you could try a white/pink noise generator such as a large box fan sitting in the corner with the windstream pointed away into the corner. i use that technique at night while i'm trying to sleep, to block out my obnoxious neighborhood noises such as chainsaws/2-stroke bikes/gunshots/yahoo hollering et al, the density of the sound the fan produces masks a lot of noise very effectively. the fan noise is also softly droning, which helps lull me to sleep. or i'll just turn up the music if i'm awake and about.

A year ago, while I was listening to the music on my iphone I thought there was something wrong in the left earphone, it was making the typical sound of a bad earphone or a bad-speaker (bit similar to a paper-tossing sound).

I changed the earphones, the problem remained same in the left earphone O_o.

I switched the earphones from right-to-left, the problem remained in the left earphone!! ! O_o

I realized then that it was my left ear doing this bad-speaker sound. Lol

I went to the doctor and told me it's a genetic condition, some people get 'allergic' to some high sounds. It is a bed 'nerve' in the ear as he described it and I should talk precautions.

Did the hearing test and it's still normal.

Since then I am no longer listening to music from earphones.

Even to this day, it's happening often, and what i've noticed they it's "triggered" by specific vibrations, it's not just about loud or low volume.

In the gym, where they play tracks all the time, only some tracks trigger this sound while others not.

In the cinema, sometimes it doesn't happen at all, even without earplugs!

Funny, the other day I was in a restaurant, and there was a music which wasn't loud AT ALL, yet it made me hear the paper-toss sound all the time, it's very annoying.

Try the wax earplugs, they're the most conformable, effective and the most invisible too.

Thanks for the suggestions, guys! The last few nights, I've actually used a combination of a white noise machine and silicone/wax earplugs and while it didn't drown out the noise totally, it did muffle it to the point it was a marked improvement.

Blue you are a saint..oh the ignorant people and their assumption that you have tinnitus
and are too dumb not to know it..as if putting ear plugs would make tinnitus go away!
I have tinnitus and I have a new more severe tinnitus that feels like someone putting a
knife through my ear drum that has started to come on with this sound which also gives
me headaches and wakes me from sleep at it's worst..MPOW 36 decibel headphones
are the only thing that blocks it..did you find out the issue??

Can you sleep under blankets to reduce the noise? Some on the spectrum can do this. I can. Even when others are around.

Curtains can also block noise but blankets are more practical. And making a fort out of Amazon delivery boxes is just weird to NTs. Maybe even to other Aspies. But, you gotta do what you gotta do to get a good nights sleep.

Woah someone resurrected a necro post.

But since my input might help other AS individuals who are sensitive to noise, I might just as well. Regarding the OP, a white noise generator can solve your problem and it is better than having to wear noise canceling headphones or ear plugs - hard to sleep with those for some folks.

White noise has consistent amplitude strength throughout the entire frequency spectrum of human hearing and it does two things in your case:

1) Covers the annoying pitch by masking the entire frequency range

2) Removes the randomness factor from the noises that bother you. Creates consistency which is key here.

"Random" noise such as white noise is always less bothersome than inconsistent/pitched noise. The same process is used in music production to remove quantization noise in case there is one from a digital track and is called Dithering.

Best thing about this is that you don't need to invest a dime. Assuming you have a speaker and a computer or phone.

https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/white ... erator.php

play this while you sleep. White noise works best for most people since it's random. You can experiment with other noises in case you have trouble with the higher frequencies or if you find out it is enough to mask whatever prevents you to sleep.

I know this has been suggested, but for future purposes don't buy the machine. Go to the above site.