[bdamm]

This is exactly my problem as well. How would I actually be able to differentiate high pitches (which I hear constantly) from noisy electronics and power supplies? The times where I'm out in deep nature with utter quiet (e.g. no airplane flying overhead at 30,000 feet) is so rare that I couldn't say I'd achieved homeostasis with silence. So really I spend 99% of my life in near proximity (within 30') of some cheap electronics that could very well be the source of this constant high pitch background noise. Or it's me.

[falcolas]

Ear plugs. If you can drop the surrounding noise by 35+db, you'll notice what's tinnitus and what's ambient noise.

Funny story related to this question, one day in a conference room I thought my tinnitus was just particularly bad, until someone went and turned off some unused AV equipment. The pitch of the electronic noise was identical to my personal tinnitus (and different than someone else's - they commented that it wasn't the right pitch for them).

[hluska]

I have tinnitus and haven’t talked about this with other sufferers so this may just be me. But if I slowly plug and unplug my ears, the difference between tinnitus and all the background shit is obvious. The only way I can describe it is that the sound comes from a different place and when you change how your ear works, you can hear the differences between the sources. My hearing is awful so I really pray this anecdata is of no use to you.