September 30, 2024 • 42 mins
In this episode of Sleep Science Today, host Andrew Colsky interviews Scott Armbruster, CEO and inventor of the SoundPillow and SoundPillow Sleep System, about tinnitus. Scott shares his personal experience with tinnitus and how it led him to create a product that helps people with tinnitus sleep better. The SoundPillow is a non-allergenic pillow with built-in stereo speakers that emit soothing sounds to distract from the ringing in the ears. Scott discusses the development of the product and its impact on his own sleep. He also emphasizes the importance of finding sounds that work with tinnitus rather than against it.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Welcome to the next session of Sleep Science Today.
I'm your host, Andrew Colsky.
And today we're going to be talking about tinnitus, which is sort of a ringing in theears.
We've got Scott Armbruster joining us.
He is CEO and inventor of the SoundPillow and SoundPillow Sleep System.
So Scott, welcome to the show.
(00:23):
Good morning.
It's really awesome to be here.
First of all, because I get to talk about one of my favorite, least favorite subjects,which is tinnitus.
And I think my family and friends are kind of tired about hearing about it.
So I always get to talk about it with somebody new.
Great, great.
Well, we appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to join us.
(00:45):
And, you know, to get us started, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Who are you and how did you even get interested or involved with tinnitus?
Well, the first thing I have to do is make my lawyer happy.
So it's important to understand that we're going to be talking about a medical condition.
However, I am not a doctor, medical doctor, I've never played one on TV.
(01:08):
However, I can discuss my experiences, experiences and conversations I've had with amyriad of clinicians, other folks with tinnitus, veterans, and across the board.
I will not be dispensing any medical advice today, but we'll certainly be able to tell my
Fantastic, I appreciate
(01:29):
so without going all the way back to 1964, when I was born, just turned 60, just had abirthday.
Yeah, they made it this far.
So it's all good.
You know, I very early on had this affinity for music.
And I remember the first, I guess, vinyl album, My Father.
(01:52):
ever put on record player.
And I was probably around five years old when I had this, you know, this conscientiousawareness of music.
And it was the Dave Brubeck quartet take five.
It's the first album I ever heard.
In fact, I actually have that album in my collection downstairs.
I inherited it from my father.
And I was just really, man, I just, I loved the way jazz made me feel.
(02:16):
I liked the calmness.
that it brought to me and I played that record over and over and over again.
can actually still hear the burn marks, which is radio term when you're queuing up arecord and you get that kind of hits at the beginning.
(02:36):
You can tell I wore that album out, but I still have it to this day and I still listen toit with all its imperfections because it reminds me of being a kid.
You know, from there, my dad encouraged me to go into band.
So I played in band for years, from fourth grade through graduation, alto sax, tenor sax,A band, jazz band, orchestra band, marching band, concert band, all sorts of bands.
(03:09):
But sort of a precursor is I had the horn section right behind me.
So I had
the trumpets and the trombones and the brass section, you know, right behind me.
And that might have been kind of the early onset of using an abusing sound.
Right, Wow.
(03:30):
used to, as a kid, listen to the radio at night by hiding a small transistor radio undermy pillow.
And that way I could listen to, you know, the American Top 40 or the local AM station.
(03:50):
And when my folks came to check on me to see if I was sleeping, they had no idea that Iwould listen to
whatever program it was, tucked underneath my pillow.
Which becomes, you know, this whole story just kind of becomes like this road leading towhere we are today.
I don't play anymore.
(04:16):
friend of mine still has her sax and I picked it up about a year ago and made some reallybad noises out of it.
I decided, you know, that was then, you this is now.
So, know, flash forward and getting through high school.
was kind of, I don't know, I guess we were all kind of rebellious and careless.
(04:39):
And I lived out in the middle of nowhere, Afton, Minnesota, small town of about 2 ,500people grew up in the woods.
And my parents, when I didn't want me just to hang out all summer after I graduated highschool in 1982.
So they had set me up at a trade school, Brown Institute, which
(05:03):
was a radio television broadcasting school.
And that's how I got into radio.
I wanted to be a DJ.
I wanted to sit and listen to music all day long.
I wanted to, you know, explore new music, be around music, a part of music, get into it.
It was all about music and sound.
I my FCC license, the whole bit.
(05:27):
The next step was, where do you go from there?
Well, oddly enough, I ended up working for a short time at the radio station, major marketradio station in the Twin Cities, that was the radio station I would listen to through the
little radio tucked under my pillow, station called ABWB 101 .3 on the FM dial or 63 AM.
(05:54):
And I was in the production side of
So this whole abuse of sound is gonna start growing a little bit more.
And one day I was putting songs on the cart, kind of, if you're old enough to remembereight track tapes, we would actually, in order to help avoid Q -burn, that scratchy sound
(06:15):
you might get at the beginning of a song that you were holding before you let it fly toplay.
And so we put it among what we call carts.
And then the DJs would play those carts instead of the actual album.
freed up their time, their hands to do other things and do the logs and that.
Well, this band had come up with this song, Don't Tell Me You Love Me, Night Ranger.
(06:41):
And it started off with this boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, just this really great bassline.
I fell in love with
I cranked up the monitors and I mean, I cranked up the monitors because I didn't want tojust hear the sound.
I wanted to feel that bass through my body, just bouncing out like bones rattling thewhole bit.
(07:08):
And the FM jock came in while I was doing this and I'll tone the language down a littlebit.
We said, will you turn that darn thing down?
And I turned it down and I look at him and said,
I thought this was a soundproof room.
Said, yeah, so did we until you came.
(07:29):
It's like, okay, okay.
And I moved on.
From there, I was offered a television position.
One of the first students ever out of Brown Institute where I was offered an on -cameraposition at a Cheyenne Wyoming radio station.
(07:52):
But they wanted to give me sports and I wanted weather.
I realized working at the radio station, playing music on rotation was not for me.
Michael Jackson's Thriller had just come out and dear Lord, you could set your clock bywhen did Billy Jean play?
(08:15):
When did Thriller play?
And it was this constant repetition.
I just, hated it.
I wanted to go and funny enough in radio, it's all programmed.
You don't get to choose.
Right, right.
listened.
not turned out that wasn't for me.
So like, OK, let's do television.
Let's do let's do weather.
But I was offered a sports position.
(08:37):
And I still remember speaking to the the owner of the TV station because it was all verysmall then.
It's not like the conglomerates like it is today.
They were they were actually independently owned.
Don't get me started again.
have an FCC license.
And so it was very fragmented in my opinion, as it should be.
However, he really wanted me to do sports.
(09:00):
I just wasn't into the sports scene.
Having been in band at high school, we showed up at every sporting event.
We were doing football, we were doing hockey, we were doing basketball.
And it wasn't my thing.
I liked to play the music, like to listen to the music.
I didn't want to talk about sports.
(09:22):
So I decided to go to college.
And I ended up at Mankato State University in southern Minnesota, now University ofMinnesota, Mankato, where I decided to go into business.
You know, and I wanted to have, you know, background in marketing and advertising becauseI thought that that would be fun.
(09:44):
I inadvertently picked up a second degree along the way, second college degree, whichbecame
just simply of my love of speaking to people.
So I have the radio television degree, the business degree, and the speech communicationdegree.
And the speech communication degree had an emphasis of inter and intra -personalcommunications.
(10:12):
So those who don't know, interpersonal is like you and I, we're speaking back and forth.
But intra -personal communications is knowing how to speak to
your internal dialogue, which I thought at first was kind of odd.
But as I went through life, found out I use all of that every day.
(10:34):
It wasn't my intention to, you know, go out into the world and have all these degrees.
It just worked out that way.
And in moving then forward through life, I knew I wanted to be around music.
I also had a love
for audio visual.
We'd go figure with the radio and TV, AV.
(10:55):
And ended up working for a small laser company in the Twin Cities where we started doingcorporate events.
had, back in the day there was a, well, I think they still might have music lands.
I'm not sure if they still have music land, but they were corporate customer, deluxechecks.
And we did these corporate gigs where they would gather a bunch of people to have, I say,a yearly meeting.
(11:20):
And the laser show would be the kind of get them going, pump up the blood and kind of therah rah motivational aspect of it and kind of get everybody jazzed about these meetings.
Holy buckets.
The money was insane.
I I had no idea that they would actually pay me to go have fun and put on shows.
(11:44):
you know, and then the, and the travel that came with it, we did shows in Cancun, Hawaii.
North Dakota, South Dakota, nothing wrong with that.
Not everyone was always Cancun or Hawaii, but I got to see and speak to people all aroundthe country.
My favorite gig was a concert gig.
And you could have a corporation that would bring in a concert.
(12:07):
Some of these corporations will spend some huge money putting on very elaborate stageshows.
A lot of private parties.
with a lot of big name bands.
And those were great.
The only entity I toured with where it was more than just a one -off gig was the PinkFloyd Laser Spectacular.
(12:31):
Though the Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular is a show, as you would imagine, it's a laser showbuilt around and synchronized to the music of Pink Floyd.
Which was great for me because I absolutely loved Pink Floyd.
Now I remember
the first time a friend of mine put Dark Side of the Moon on the album and blown away.
(12:55):
And from there I went in real deep to animals and as we got the wall and I've actually gotPulse on in the background right now, a Pink Floyd concert, because of the fact I don't
get to sit in silence, which we'll get to when we get to tinnitus.
So as you can imagine, when you're in a venue and you're doing a sound check,
(13:18):
There's no audience in the venue.
It is loud because we are running everything at show mode.
Got to make sure it all works.
And sometimes we'll go from beginning to end if there was something that we wanted to see.
We'd run the entire show before the audience got there.
And sometimes we'd do pieces.
Even in a stadium where you maybe had 25 ,000 seats, there's no audience.
(13:45):
Then our sound was even louder.
And my, one of my jobs was to roll around and get in a golf cart and I'd roll around tothe different levels in the stadium and I'd listen for dead spots, you know, and help the
guys, the audio guys EQ, you know, push out maybe a little more house left or house rideor stage left or say, and fill it
(14:06):
So let me stop you right here for a second, because I can tell we're building to the cruxof this story.
And so this is the perfect time for us to take our commercial break and come back and hearexactly what is going to occur.
So bear with us as we break to commercial.
(14:30):
We are back on Sleep Science today.
We were just before our commercial break.
We were hearing from Scott Armbruster He's in a stadium.
He's doing sound checks and Fill us in what what happens?
Well, generally in a sound check, you would get some guitar tech who thought they wereJimmy Page, and had to just start ripping, or Eddie Van Halen, and they would just start
(14:57):
ripping, shredding the guitar in those really high frequencies.
And it would get kind of, I guess when you use the word annoying, but sometimes it wouldget actually almost painful for me.
It's just, thinking about it now, you can see my shoulders going up.
I can feel it almost rippling through my spine.
(15:18):
All right.
So let's flash forward to 1991.
Helena, Montana.
That particular night, we were the opening act, the laser Floyd was an opening act forRick Derringer and Edgar Winter.
They were just coming off their live in Japan tour, supporting a CD.
(15:38):
And so we decided to hang around after our portion of it and keep the lasers going.
for their performance.
But one thing you need to understand about these lasers, we were governed by the CDRH, theCenter for Devices of Radiological Health, because the level of lasers we were using could
(16:00):
blind somebody in the audience.
We had very specific rules on height, distance.
I used to prove to clients how dangerous these were by lighting a cigarette off the beam.
And I would do that with them maybe about a foot off the table.
Now granted, once it goes out into the audience, it's dispersed.
(16:21):
It's not as bad.
It's not going to burn them, but blind them is certainly possible or at least leave somescar tissue.
I noticed stage left.
There was an effect that was starting to focus down more towards the audience.
It was a beam bounce.
we've been on bounce the laser up to the top truss down to the stage and then out over theaudience and the stage.
(16:44):
left mirror was starting to tilt.
So I hit over stage left just behind the speaker stack.
All the speakers were floor mounted on this particular gig.
About 2 ,500, 3 ,000 people in the audience.
And I waited for a moment where I could get in front of the speaker stack and adjust thateffect.
(17:04):
Well, Rick and Edgar went center stage.
They're chatting, so I figured perfect moment.
No, no one's going to see me.
I'm all, you know, we're all dressed in black.
know, everything's always smoking mirrors in black.
And so I started adjusting this, this mirror, get it raised back up to the, know, 45degrees that I was looking for.
And I didn't tighten it down very well and it wasn't, it wasn't grabbing.
(17:29):
And so as I'm tightening it down and trying to lock it in, Rick turns to the mic andscreams rock and roll, hoochie coo into the mic.
and drops me to the floor.
I was probably three to five inches with my, enough, my right ear from this stack ofspeakers.
(17:53):
we're show time, right?
We're in the show.
It is loud.
It used to be, we would say, if it's too loud, you're too old.
Well, the moment, I became too old for too loud.
And it literally dropped me to the floor.
I had the nausea.
(18:14):
My head felt muffled or wonky is, you know, maybe one way to put it.
And everything was just not right.
So I crawled out of a door and literally I'm getting out into the hallway.
If there was a door in the theater and I had to shake it off.
(18:34):
had to just breathe it
The show has to go on.
I know I have a job to do.
And I had to get over it.
At the end of the gig, I'm good.
We're loading out.
We're heading home.
My head is screaming.
There is such a loud sound in my head.
(18:56):
that I could not hear my boss very well as we're just chatting, you know, explain to him,I'm not, not really good.
This is what happened.
Um, so I basically just tried to on the drive back from, from Helena.
No, it's a couple of days later, still have it weeks later, still have it months later.
(19:19):
They'll have it now in 1991, I'm much younger than I was today.
You know, so I'm about 27, 28, 28 years old and I'm still going, going, going withproduction.
So a lot of times I would fall asleep just from pure exhaustion.
You know, when, doors are at eight o 'clock, well, that's when the audience comes in,you're ready.
(19:41):
And if you're not ready, you better be ready or you better figure out what it takes to getready.
So the adrenaline, the stress is insane.
And then after the game, you just collapse.
I've had more 24 hour days than I could ever shake a stick at or even remember.
My long, I've had a couple 48 hour days and my longest day is 65 and a half hours.
One day.
(20:02):
just for clarification, so after this event occurs that you were in front of the speakerand dropped to the floor, you're still working doing the same type of work.
But during this time, you now have a sound in your right ear, is that correct?
Or is it both ears?
(20:24):
-huh.
oddly enough, which seems counterintuitive because it was my right side.
best a lot of clinicians about that.
You know, if the, if the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body andthe right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, which I don't know is true
or not, but that's what I've heard.
It would make sense.
My right side was impacted, but the tinnitus left side of my brain.
(20:47):
Yeah.
And of course, did I start wearing ear protection after that?
No.
Did I start doing anything to protect?
No, of course not.
Young and dumb, you know?
And at the gigs, I really didn't hear it when we were in show mode because of all of thisexternal sound, all the stimulus that was coming in.
(21:12):
It was at night or when I was in a quiet room.
You know, there's a lot of hurry up and wait in production where we have to get somethingdone by a certain time and then you might sit for an hour and I'm not doing anything.
And that's when I would hear it.
So let me stop and ask this.
So you're saying when you're in the quiet room is when you would start to hear thetinnitus.
(21:36):
Can you describe?
So describe for us, what are you hearing?
What does that sound like for someone who doesn't
let's start with what is tinnitus or tinnitus?
And I will flip back and forth on that.
Tinnitus is a perceived sound where there is no sound being emitted from somewhere.
So I perceive a very high -pitched, squeal sound with a bit of an electrical crispinessaround the edges.
(22:06):
24 -7, always.
I'm listening to it right now.
I will never get away from
it varies in levels and there are reasons why my tinnitus might be louder on some daysthan others.
And I read, so I had to learn to identify what my triggers are.
(22:27):
But the, the hardest part of all of it was the keeping me awake at night because while I'mlaying in bed, now I'm married and my wife doesn't want to have, you know, kind of any
ambient sound.
I'm staring at a ceiling on the nights that I'm not out at some gig and I'm listening tothe squeal in my head, which is always, always, always on the left side of my brain.
(22:54):
I don't call it ringing of the ears.
I've been trying to change that for the last 20 years with the clinicians and folks that Imeet with because I know it's not in my ear, it's in my brain.
Because I can almost pinpoint where it is, straight about
So let me ask this because this is interesting and I want to make sure that people areable to understand.
So to you, you're trying to sleep, you've got this perceived sound, but you know, when Ihear the word sound and this is what you're talking about, I think that I'm gonna perceive
(23:29):
it in my ears like I'm hearing you speak to me in my ears.
Are you feeling or sensing that it's towards your ears or you're actually sensing thatit's in your
I'm sensing it's in my brain.
Yeah.
In 1999, I was sitting with Dr.
Selvi at the University of Buffalo.
(23:49):
It was first time I brought the product, which is now known as a sound pill sleep systemto an event.
And I said, for me, it is not in my ears.
You keep calling it ringing of the ears.
I am telling you, if you put me under an MRI, it is not in my ears.
It's in my brain.
He did not disagree with
(24:10):
And then oddly enough, spent the next day or so looking at MRIs because that happened tobe the subject that day.
So I got to sit in on all of these very high level meetings where tinnitus was really kindof hitting the map, where it's becoming more known.
And you guys also have to understand that when I first got this, there was no internet.
(24:34):
And we're talking 1991.
fact, I didn't even really know what I had.
until 1994 when I was talking about it with my audio and video guys at a festival in ElPaso.
And I was kind of complaining about this screeching sound in my head and my audio guyssaid, yeah, that's tinnitus.
(24:54):
I've got it.
And then video had it.
Monitors had it.
The band had it and
lead singer, country Western singer that is very well known.
So we'll not use her name.
I'm not sure if she's gone public with her, her, her, her challenges with tinnitus shehad.
So I said to her, how do we, asked her, how do, how do we get rid of this?
(25:17):
And she's like, we don't.
She goes, this is permanent.
There is no cure.
There's nothing you can do about it.
You're just going to have to get over it.
And I said, but I don't accept that.
You know, I just, I don't.
I've since accepted that because she was right.
You know, and this is an individual who could get on her private jet, go anywhere shewanted in the world and see the best doctors in the world.
(25:41):
And everyone she met told her, no care for this.
You're just going to have to get used to it and move on.
Well, I can't cure it, right?
No one's going to cure it.
Even my product's not going to cure it.
But where I was really struggling with was sleep.
And now let's flash back to when I
You know, an elementary school listening to that radio underneath my pillow, which kind ofhelped calm me down and entertainment purposes.
(26:08):
I didn't have, I didn't have tinnitus then or tinnitus then.
but now I do.
And I'm not the first person necessarily to put speakers in a pillow, but I was the firstperson to recognize, Hey, this could really benefit someone like
(26:28):
Keeping in mind, I did not know there were a lot of people out there like me because we'restill talking early 90s, pre -internet.
I started playing with the concept then of speakers in a pillow.
It helped me sleep.
So I ended up taking that product, which was what's called the sound pillow.
And it was kind of a prototype at the time for someone.
(26:50):
And I said, look, I've got a vision for this.
I want to completely rip apart what you've done, rebuild it.
and do it this way, can I have your company?
You don't really want to do this anyway.
Can I, so I bought the company.
So this is a perfect spot for us to take our second commercial break because I really wantto hear the story here and I don't want to break it up.
(27:14):
So let's stop real quick for a commercial and we'll come right
All right, we are back on sleep science today.
We were just about to hear the beginnings of the SoundPillow company in a way.
So Scott, please fill us
(27:35):
got it.
They were just kind of going into the, did the SoundPillow come about?
And I had found this kind of a prototype, a working prototype product that I had a visionfor.
The individuals who were playing with it didn't, so I bought that company.
I trademarked SoundPillow, that's a business degree they had.
(28:01):
then had to take it to somebody to see if it was a worthy product.
Well, lo and behold, again, coming out of an industry there, I knew there wereassociations for everything.
I found a group called the American Tonitis Association.
The American Tonitis Association was started by Dr.
(28:21):
Jack Vernon, who actually is sort of the discoverer of tonitis and it was, and he co-founded the ATA.
ATA .org for anybody who wants to check them out.
Great group.
I don't receive any money from them, but I became a member and I got a hold of the top docthere.
(28:42):
Guy by the name of Steven Nagler and it took six months to get him on the phone.
I would call him a couple times a week.
Then I would go back, you know every day, then a couple of times.
And I did this for six months until one day he accidentally answered the phone.
Hahaha
and I'll tone the language down just a little bit so we can keep it a G rating for theprogram.
(29:05):
And I said, Dr.
Nagler, this is Scott Wasampo.
And he went, dear Lord, quit calling me.
And I went, I can't.
I said, look, I have chronic tinnitus.
I've got unilateral on the left side of my brain, always, always.
And then I've got bilateral on the right side when it just jumps in for no reason at all.
So sometimes I've got both.
(29:26):
sides of my brain are both ears going.
I have created this product, which I retuned frequency responses for the speakers.
Again, working with my audio guys, we all had tinnitus.
I built this product and I came up with it and I need to know.
I need to know.
And this is exactly what I said to him.
(29:48):
So I will apologize for just a moment.
I I loathe snake oil and bullshit.
And I need to know.
Turned out, so did he.
He loathed those two things.
So he said, all right, Scott, tell you what I'm going to do.
said, we're going to send your product to five of my worst patients.
You will fail miserably and never call me again.
(30:13):
Deal.
Got it.
Threw up, you know, some questions.
Got him the pillow.
He got him over to his patients.
The self -addressed, you know, stamped envelopes came back.
And once we had all five, took a big deep breath, started opening them up.
my God, they loved it.
(30:34):
I mean, absolutely loved it.
A couple of them actually wrote multi -page, two -sided letters telling me about how thisgave them hope, how being able to sleep was no longer a luxury for them.
Because you've got to remember.
When you're going to bed, if you think you're going to lay there all night, just the actof going to bed can cause stress and despair because they just don't believe they're going
(31:05):
to go to sleep.
And I never really thought about that.
Well, so here we go.
I figured how long is it going to take to get Dr.
Nagler on the phone now.
Call him up and lo and behold, he answers the first time
And said, Hey, Dr.
Nagler, this is Scott Armbruster with SoundPillow.
And he goes, dear Lord, you promised never to call me again.
(31:29):
No, sir.
That was not the deal.
And I reminded him the deal was I would fail miserably.
It would fail miserably.
And then, then I would never call him again.
And he immediately said, what you got?
And I started reading the letters to him and he said, okay, as it so happens, I'm going tobe in Austin, Texas.
(31:49):
This is San Antonio in two weeks.
Let's have dinner.
This is only 1996 and we had dinner and he said, look, you look like you have somethinghere.
You know, we talked about my tinnitus and I wasn't just trying to come up with somethingto sell to a desperate community because desperate people will spend desperate money.
(32:10):
We just look at what's going on on internet today.
Right.
All those, you know, look, look at all the hoaxes and the snake oil.
Right.
He said, it's going to take you 20 years.
to get this product to be accepted in this community.
Because if you can keep doing this for 20 years, then I think that you'll be accepted.
Fortunately, my wife and I owned a successful promotional product company.
(32:33):
So I had a day job.
And that day job might have been, you know, sometimes it's 12 hours a day, 14 hours a daywhen you own your own company.
I mean, you like, you know, you're just constantly working.
It never turns off.
So I called SoundPillow my night job.
And I started working with, you know, the American Tinnitus Association, convinced them tolet me put an ad in their journal, Tinnitus Today.
(32:59):
Took a little convincing and I think Dr.
Nagler may have had a little bit of, you know, cachet in helping that happen.
And then the wheel started to turn.
Can I stop and ask a question for a second?
Because I bet the listeners are wondering what I'm wondering too.
When you say that you've got this sound pillow and you're talking about speakers and apillow and you had these people test it and they loved it, what is it actually doing for
(33:26):
them?
What are they experiencing?
Okay.
So this, the sound pillow itself is a non -allergenic twin size pillow with a set ofstereo speakers built inside the pillow.
So back then, when it was just sound pillow, you'd plug that into say a Walkman or aDiscman, you know, some music, and you listen to the sound from the pillow.
(33:50):
So you've got this really, now keep in mind I did big
corporate gigs and concerts.
So I was a speaker snob.
My audio guys are speaker snobs.
We came up with some very small speakers that really do sound great and puts the soundright around the ears on either side of the head.
And as a side sleeper, if my tinnitus is particularly loud, I'll just kind of get close onone ear, which it usually is the left side.
(34:14):
I'll get closer to maybe one side.
But what happens then is I'm listening to another sound.
instead of the squeal in my head.
Now I can still hear that squeal, which is going to lead into where the sound pillow sleepsystem comes in, because I needed to create sounds that worked with my tinnitus, not
(34:38):
against my tinnitus.
Being banned from band, I knew that there were harmonics and certain notes that soundedgood together and certain
That didn't, right?
You can hear a chord that sounds real nice.
So I started then developing content that worked with the squeal in my head.
I'm not going to fight it.
(34:58):
No point.
Can't get rid of it anyway.
And so I started listening to and creating sounds that made my brain happy.
Now let's reference Dr.
Jack Vernon again for a moment, because one day Dr.
Vernon actually called me.
And this is the guy who discovered tinnitus, the modern day discoverer of tinnitus.
(35:18):
And he said, Scott, I hear what you're doing.
I think it's great.
These are the types of sounds you want to consider.
You want to consider rain, ocean, water sounds, white noise, nature, relaxation sounds,perhaps some musics.
And of course, white noise.
Everybody knows white noise.
Okay.
Got you.
(35:39):
So I started creating music.
with a gentleman who also saw the vision and he had some really good hypnotic types ofsounds that made my brain feel relaxed and comfortable.
From there, we had to have these white noise nature sounds that Jack had mentioned.
(36:04):
And in fact, there's a whole bunch of content on our sleep system.
The player comes preloaded with 22 tracks.
And the nature sounds are natural.
They're organic.
I didn't want to do anything that was synthetic because the brain knows.
So I listened to sounds that make my brain happy by working with the squeal in my head,not against it.
(36:29):
And that sound is emitted from the pillow right around my ears.
So I get to hear it, but my wife doesn't.
So let me stop you there for a second just because we've got about three minutes left inthe show and I want to make sure that I get to ask this question.
So you've got this pillow, it's on the bed now.
(36:51):
Is there a wire, like is it plugged into something?
Is it battery operated?
If I'm using it, what do I have to know about
Okay.
Literally it was designed around my then 72 year old mother who doesn't like toreconstructions.
So the everything is hardwired and you basically just plug it into the MP3 player, muchlike your headphones are plugged into a speaker input or a speaker jack and whatever
(37:20):
device you're listening through, right?
Same thing, but instead of listening to the sound through the headphones,
which then that cord, you're sleeping, could get wrapped around your neck, veryuncomfortable, plus the danger of that.
And then you just push the of the cord back behind the pillow and it connects to the MP4player.
And the MP4 player is designed to play whatever track you fall asleep to all night long sothat the brain is receiving a stimulus.
(37:49):
The brain is receiving a sound that's working with the tinnitus.
And you're not just listening to the squealing tinnitus in and of itself.
It's a destruction.
so another question that I'm sure people have is if you've got speakers in a pillow, doesit feel like you're laying on something hard and uncomfortable?
(38:12):
No, because I wouldn't use it then.
That was part of the issue, right?
And when I say I took somebody else's prototype and completely redesigned it, that was oneof the things I changed.
So our speakers are a bit convex and the way the material sits on top of the speakers,which is a polyfiber fill, one because it's again, non -allergenic, but the other, lets
(38:38):
the sound through unlike foam.
And
I don't feel the speakers.
Most of the feedback comes back as, Scott, I wouldn't believe there are speakers in yoursound pillow if I couldn't hear them because I
stop you there because we've only got about 40 seconds left in the show.
(39:00):
So tell me the impact that that has had on your life for you using it.
Tell us that.
You have 30 seconds to tell us.
sleep.
I mean, that just it.
I sleep.
Now granted, I'm not always perfect sleeper.
I've got a 21 year old daughter in college going on 30 who thinks she knows everything andis racing the world.
(39:22):
I've got my own stresses, but it helps calm my brain.
It helps shut down the racing type A personality conversation in my head distracts me frommy tinnitus.
and then puts me in a very relaxed state so I can achieve sleep.
And that's the feedback we get from veterans and civilians alike.
(39:44):
Perfect, perfect.
That's actually right at our time slot here.
So thank you so much.
I really appreciate understanding the background of this and how we got there.
So if you are listening and you have tinnitus, this is another option that you may want toexplore, could be beneficial.
(40:06):
And for those listeners, please don't forget to join us on sleepsciencetoday .com.
You can go there, you can get a free ebook about sleep and a lot of other specialinformation.
And when you look at the podcast online, you can see links to Scott and information abouthim.
(40:28):
So thank you so much and we appreciate you being here, Scott.
Thanks.
Welcome to the next session of Sleep Science Today.
I'm your host, Andrew Colsky.
And today we're going to be talking about tinnitus, which is sort of a ringing in theears.
We've got Scott Armbruster joining us.
He is CEO and inventor of the SoundPillow and SoundPillow Sleep System.
So Scott, welcome to the show.
(00:23):
Good morning.
It's really awesome to be here.
First of all, because I get to talk about one of my favorite, least favorite subjects,which is tinnitus.
And I think my family and friends are kind of tired about hearing about it.
So I always get to talk about it with somebody new.
Great, great.
Well, we appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to join us.
(00:45):
And, you know, to get us started, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Who are you and how did you even get interested or involved with tinnitus?
Well, the first thing I have to do is make my lawyer happy.
So it's important to understand that we're going to be talking about a medical condition.
However, I am not a doctor, medical doctor, I've never played one on TV.
(01:08):
However, I can discuss my experiences, experiences and conversations I've had with amyriad of clinicians, other folks with tinnitus, veterans, and across the board.
I will not be dispensing any medical advice today, but we'll certainly be able to tell my
Fantastic, I appreciate
(01:29):
so without going all the way back to 1964, when I was born, just turned 60, just had abirthday.
Yeah, they made it this far.
So it's all good.
You know, I very early on had this affinity for music.
And I remember the first, I guess, vinyl album, My Father.
(01:52):
ever put on record player.
And I was probably around five years old when I had this, you know, this conscientiousawareness of music.
And it was the Dave Brubeck quartet take five.
It's the first album I ever heard.
In fact, I actually have that album in my collection downstairs.
I inherited it from my father.
And I was just really, man, I just, I loved the way jazz made me feel.
(02:16):
I liked the calmness.
that it brought to me and I played that record over and over and over again.
can actually still hear the burn marks, which is radio term when you're queuing up arecord and you get that kind of hits at the beginning.
(02:36):
You can tell I wore that album out, but I still have it to this day and I still listen toit with all its imperfections because it reminds me of being a kid.
You know, from there, my dad encouraged me to go into band.
So I played in band for years, from fourth grade through graduation, alto sax, tenor sax,A band, jazz band, orchestra band, marching band, concert band, all sorts of bands.
(03:09):
But sort of a precursor is I had the horn section right behind me.
So I had
the trumpets and the trombones and the brass section, you know, right behind me.
And that might have been kind of the early onset of using an abusing sound.
Right, Wow.
(03:30):
used to, as a kid, listen to the radio at night by hiding a small transistor radio undermy pillow.
And that way I could listen to, you know, the American Top 40 or the local AM station.
(03:50):
And when my folks came to check on me to see if I was sleeping, they had no idea that Iwould listen to
whatever program it was, tucked underneath my pillow.
Which becomes, you know, this whole story just kind of becomes like this road leading towhere we are today.
I don't play anymore.
(04:16):
friend of mine still has her sax and I picked it up about a year ago and made some reallybad noises out of it.
I decided, you know, that was then, you this is now.
So, know, flash forward and getting through high school.
was kind of, I don't know, I guess we were all kind of rebellious and careless.
(04:39):
And I lived out in the middle of nowhere, Afton, Minnesota, small town of about 2 ,500people grew up in the woods.
And my parents, when I didn't want me just to hang out all summer after I graduated highschool in 1982.
So they had set me up at a trade school, Brown Institute, which
(05:03):
was a radio television broadcasting school.
And that's how I got into radio.
I wanted to be a DJ.
I wanted to sit and listen to music all day long.
I wanted to, you know, explore new music, be around music, a part of music, get into it.
It was all about music and sound.
I my FCC license, the whole bit.
(05:27):
The next step was, where do you go from there?
Well, oddly enough, I ended up working for a short time at the radio station, major marketradio station in the Twin Cities, that was the radio station I would listen to through the
little radio tucked under my pillow, station called ABWB 101 .3 on the FM dial or 63 AM.
(05:54):
And I was in the production side of
So this whole abuse of sound is gonna start growing a little bit more.
And one day I was putting songs on the cart, kind of, if you're old enough to remembereight track tapes, we would actually, in order to help avoid Q -burn, that scratchy sound
(06:15):
you might get at the beginning of a song that you were holding before you let it fly toplay.
And so we put it among what we call carts.
And then the DJs would play those carts instead of the actual album.
freed up their time, their hands to do other things and do the logs and that.
Well, this band had come up with this song, Don't Tell Me You Love Me, Night Ranger.
(06:41):
And it started off with this boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, just this really great bassline.
I fell in love with
I cranked up the monitors and I mean, I cranked up the monitors because I didn't want tojust hear the sound.
I wanted to feel that bass through my body, just bouncing out like bones rattling thewhole bit.
(07:08):
And the FM jock came in while I was doing this and I'll tone the language down a littlebit.
We said, will you turn that darn thing down?
And I turned it down and I look at him and said,
I thought this was a soundproof room.
Said, yeah, so did we until you came.
(07:29):
It's like, okay, okay.
And I moved on.
From there, I was offered a television position.
One of the first students ever out of Brown Institute where I was offered an on -cameraposition at a Cheyenne Wyoming radio station.
(07:52):
But they wanted to give me sports and I wanted weather.
I realized working at the radio station, playing music on rotation was not for me.
Michael Jackson's Thriller had just come out and dear Lord, you could set your clock bywhen did Billy Jean play?
(08:15):
When did Thriller play?
And it was this constant repetition.
I just, hated it.
I wanted to go and funny enough in radio, it's all programmed.
You don't get to choose.
Right, right.
listened.
not turned out that wasn't for me.
So like, OK, let's do television.
Let's do let's do weather.
But I was offered a sports position.
(08:37):
And I still remember speaking to the the owner of the TV station because it was all verysmall then.
It's not like the conglomerates like it is today.
They were they were actually independently owned.
Don't get me started again.
have an FCC license.
And so it was very fragmented in my opinion, as it should be.
However, he really wanted me to do sports.
(09:00):
I just wasn't into the sports scene.
Having been in band at high school, we showed up at every sporting event.
We were doing football, we were doing hockey, we were doing basketball.
And it wasn't my thing.
I liked to play the music, like to listen to the music.
I didn't want to talk about sports.
(09:22):
So I decided to go to college.
And I ended up at Mankato State University in southern Minnesota, now University ofMinnesota, Mankato, where I decided to go into business.
You know, and I wanted to have, you know, background in marketing and advertising becauseI thought that that would be fun.
(09:44):
I inadvertently picked up a second degree along the way, second college degree, whichbecame
just simply of my love of speaking to people.
So I have the radio television degree, the business degree, and the speech communicationdegree.
And the speech communication degree had an emphasis of inter and intra -personalcommunications.
(10:12):
So those who don't know, interpersonal is like you and I, we're speaking back and forth.
But intra -personal communications is knowing how to speak to
your internal dialogue, which I thought at first was kind of odd.
But as I went through life, found out I use all of that every day.
(10:34):
It wasn't my intention to, you know, go out into the world and have all these degrees.
It just worked out that way.
And in moving then forward through life, I knew I wanted to be around music.
I also had a love
for audio visual.
We'd go figure with the radio and TV, AV.
(10:55):
And ended up working for a small laser company in the Twin Cities where we started doingcorporate events.
had, back in the day there was a, well, I think they still might have music lands.
I'm not sure if they still have music land, but they were corporate customer, deluxechecks.
And we did these corporate gigs where they would gather a bunch of people to have, I say,a yearly meeting.
(11:20):
And the laser show would be the kind of get them going, pump up the blood and kind of therah rah motivational aspect of it and kind of get everybody jazzed about these meetings.
Holy buckets.
The money was insane.
I I had no idea that they would actually pay me to go have fun and put on shows.
(11:44):
you know, and then the, and the travel that came with it, we did shows in Cancun, Hawaii.
North Dakota, South Dakota, nothing wrong with that.
Not everyone was always Cancun or Hawaii, but I got to see and speak to people all aroundthe country.
My favorite gig was a concert gig.
And you could have a corporation that would bring in a concert.
(12:07):
Some of these corporations will spend some huge money putting on very elaborate stageshows.
A lot of private parties.
with a lot of big name bands.
And those were great.
The only entity I toured with where it was more than just a one -off gig was the PinkFloyd Laser Spectacular.
(12:31):
Though the Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular is a show, as you would imagine, it's a laser showbuilt around and synchronized to the music of Pink Floyd.
Which was great for me because I absolutely loved Pink Floyd.
Now I remember
the first time a friend of mine put Dark Side of the Moon on the album and blown away.
(12:55):
And from there I went in real deep to animals and as we got the wall and I've actually gotPulse on in the background right now, a Pink Floyd concert, because of the fact I don't
get to sit in silence, which we'll get to when we get to tinnitus.
So as you can imagine, when you're in a venue and you're doing a sound check,
(13:18):
There's no audience in the venue.
It is loud because we are running everything at show mode.
Got to make sure it all works.
And sometimes we'll go from beginning to end if there was something that we wanted to see.
We'd run the entire show before the audience got there.
And sometimes we'd do pieces.
Even in a stadium where you maybe had 25 ,000 seats, there's no audience.
(13:45):
Then our sound was even louder.
And my, one of my jobs was to roll around and get in a golf cart and I'd roll around tothe different levels in the stadium and I'd listen for dead spots, you know, and help the
guys, the audio guys EQ, you know, push out maybe a little more house left or house rideor stage left or say, and fill it
(14:06):
So let me stop you right here for a second, because I can tell we're building to the cruxof this story.
And so this is the perfect time for us to take our commercial break and come back and hearexactly what is going to occur.
So bear with us as we break to commercial.
(14:30):
We are back on Sleep Science today.
We were just before our commercial break.
We were hearing from Scott Armbruster He's in a stadium.
He's doing sound checks and Fill us in what what happens?
Well, generally in a sound check, you would get some guitar tech who thought they wereJimmy Page, and had to just start ripping, or Eddie Van Halen, and they would just start
(14:57):
ripping, shredding the guitar in those really high frequencies.
And it would get kind of, I guess when you use the word annoying, but sometimes it wouldget actually almost painful for me.
It's just, thinking about it now, you can see my shoulders going up.
I can feel it almost rippling through my spine.
(15:18):
All right.
So let's flash forward to 1991.
Helena, Montana.
That particular night, we were the opening act, the laser Floyd was an opening act forRick Derringer and Edgar Winter.
They were just coming off their live in Japan tour, supporting a CD.
(15:38):
And so we decided to hang around after our portion of it and keep the lasers going.
for their performance.
But one thing you need to understand about these lasers, we were governed by the CDRH, theCenter for Devices of Radiological Health, because the level of lasers we were using could
(16:00):
blind somebody in the audience.
We had very specific rules on height, distance.
I used to prove to clients how dangerous these were by lighting a cigarette off the beam.
And I would do that with them maybe about a foot off the table.
Now granted, once it goes out into the audience, it's dispersed.
(16:21):
It's not as bad.
It's not going to burn them, but blind them is certainly possible or at least leave somescar tissue.
I noticed stage left.
There was an effect that was starting to focus down more towards the audience.
It was a beam bounce.
we've been on bounce the laser up to the top truss down to the stage and then out over theaudience and the stage.
(16:44):
left mirror was starting to tilt.
So I hit over stage left just behind the speaker stack.
All the speakers were floor mounted on this particular gig.
About 2 ,500, 3 ,000 people in the audience.
And I waited for a moment where I could get in front of the speaker stack and adjust thateffect.
(17:04):
Well, Rick and Edgar went center stage.
They're chatting, so I figured perfect moment.
No, no one's going to see me.
I'm all, you know, we're all dressed in black.
know, everything's always smoking mirrors in black.
And so I started adjusting this, this mirror, get it raised back up to the, know, 45degrees that I was looking for.
And I didn't tighten it down very well and it wasn't, it wasn't grabbing.
(17:29):
And so as I'm tightening it down and trying to lock it in, Rick turns to the mic andscreams rock and roll, hoochie coo into the mic.
and drops me to the floor.
I was probably three to five inches with my, enough, my right ear from this stack ofspeakers.
(17:53):
we're show time, right?
We're in the show.
It is loud.
It used to be, we would say, if it's too loud, you're too old.
Well, the moment, I became too old for too loud.
And it literally dropped me to the floor.
I had the nausea.
(18:14):
My head felt muffled or wonky is, you know, maybe one way to put it.
And everything was just not right.
So I crawled out of a door and literally I'm getting out into the hallway.
If there was a door in the theater and I had to shake it off.
(18:34):
had to just breathe it
The show has to go on.
I know I have a job to do.
And I had to get over it.
At the end of the gig, I'm good.
We're loading out.
We're heading home.
My head is screaming.
There is such a loud sound in my head.
(18:56):
that I could not hear my boss very well as we're just chatting, you know, explain to him,I'm not, not really good.
This is what happened.
Um, so I basically just tried to on the drive back from, from Helena.
No, it's a couple of days later, still have it weeks later, still have it months later.
(19:19):
They'll have it now in 1991, I'm much younger than I was today.
You know, so I'm about 27, 28, 28 years old and I'm still going, going, going withproduction.
So a lot of times I would fall asleep just from pure exhaustion.
You know, when, doors are at eight o 'clock, well, that's when the audience comes in,you're ready.
(19:41):
And if you're not ready, you better be ready or you better figure out what it takes to getready.
So the adrenaline, the stress is insane.
And then after the game, you just collapse.
I've had more 24 hour days than I could ever shake a stick at or even remember.
My long, I've had a couple 48 hour days and my longest day is 65 and a half hours.
One day.
(20:02):
just for clarification, so after this event occurs that you were in front of the speakerand dropped to the floor, you're still working doing the same type of work.
But during this time, you now have a sound in your right ear, is that correct?
Or is it both ears?
(20:24):
-huh.
oddly enough, which seems counterintuitive because it was my right side.
best a lot of clinicians about that.
You know, if the, if the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body andthe right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, which I don't know is true
or not, but that's what I've heard.
It would make sense.
My right side was impacted, but the tinnitus left side of my brain.
(20:47):
Yeah.
And of course, did I start wearing ear protection after that?
No.
Did I start doing anything to protect?
No, of course not.
Young and dumb, you know?
And at the gigs, I really didn't hear it when we were in show mode because of all of thisexternal sound, all the stimulus that was coming in.
(21:12):
It was at night or when I was in a quiet room.
You know, there's a lot of hurry up and wait in production where we have to get somethingdone by a certain time and then you might sit for an hour and I'm not doing anything.
And that's when I would hear it.
So let me stop and ask this.
So you're saying when you're in the quiet room is when you would start to hear thetinnitus.
(21:36):
Can you describe?
So describe for us, what are you hearing?
What does that sound like for someone who doesn't
let's start with what is tinnitus or tinnitus?
And I will flip back and forth on that.
Tinnitus is a perceived sound where there is no sound being emitted from somewhere.
So I perceive a very high -pitched, squeal sound with a bit of an electrical crispinessaround the edges.
(22:06):
24 -7, always.
I'm listening to it right now.
I will never get away from
it varies in levels and there are reasons why my tinnitus might be louder on some daysthan others.
And I read, so I had to learn to identify what my triggers are.
(22:27):
But the, the hardest part of all of it was the keeping me awake at night because while I'mlaying in bed, now I'm married and my wife doesn't want to have, you know, kind of any
ambient sound.
I'm staring at a ceiling on the nights that I'm not out at some gig and I'm listening tothe squeal in my head, which is always, always, always on the left side of my brain.
(22:54):
I don't call it ringing of the ears.
I've been trying to change that for the last 20 years with the clinicians and folks that Imeet with because I know it's not in my ear, it's in my brain.
Because I can almost pinpoint where it is, straight about
So let me ask this because this is interesting and I want to make sure that people areable to understand.
So to you, you're trying to sleep, you've got this perceived sound, but you know, when Ihear the word sound and this is what you're talking about, I think that I'm gonna perceive
(23:29):
it in my ears like I'm hearing you speak to me in my ears.
Are you feeling or sensing that it's towards your ears or you're actually sensing thatit's in your
I'm sensing it's in my brain.
Yeah.
In 1999, I was sitting with Dr.
Selvi at the University of Buffalo.
(23:49):
It was first time I brought the product, which is now known as a sound pill sleep systemto an event.
And I said, for me, it is not in my ears.
You keep calling it ringing of the ears.
I am telling you, if you put me under an MRI, it is not in my ears.
It's in my brain.
He did not disagree with
(24:10):
And then oddly enough, spent the next day or so looking at MRIs because that happened tobe the subject that day.
So I got to sit in on all of these very high level meetings where tinnitus was really kindof hitting the map, where it's becoming more known.
And you guys also have to understand that when I first got this, there was no internet.
(24:34):
And we're talking 1991.
fact, I didn't even really know what I had.
until 1994 when I was talking about it with my audio and video guys at a festival in ElPaso.
And I was kind of complaining about this screeching sound in my head and my audio guyssaid, yeah, that's tinnitus.
(24:54):
I've got it.
And then video had it.
Monitors had it.
The band had it and
lead singer, country Western singer that is very well known.
So we'll not use her name.
I'm not sure if she's gone public with her, her, her, her challenges with tinnitus shehad.
So I said to her, how do we, asked her, how do, how do we get rid of this?
(25:17):
And she's like, we don't.
She goes, this is permanent.
There is no cure.
There's nothing you can do about it.
You're just going to have to get over it.
And I said, but I don't accept that.
You know, I just, I don't.
I've since accepted that because she was right.
You know, and this is an individual who could get on her private jet, go anywhere shewanted in the world and see the best doctors in the world.
(25:41):
And everyone she met told her, no care for this.
You're just going to have to get used to it and move on.
Well, I can't cure it, right?
No one's going to cure it.
Even my product's not going to cure it.
But where I was really struggling with was sleep.
And now let's flash back to when I
You know, an elementary school listening to that radio underneath my pillow, which kind ofhelped calm me down and entertainment purposes.
(26:08):
I didn't have, I didn't have tinnitus then or tinnitus then.
but now I do.
And I'm not the first person necessarily to put speakers in a pillow, but I was the firstperson to recognize, Hey, this could really benefit someone like
(26:28):
Keeping in mind, I did not know there were a lot of people out there like me because we'restill talking early 90s, pre -internet.
I started playing with the concept then of speakers in a pillow.
It helped me sleep.
So I ended up taking that product, which was what's called the sound pillow.
And it was kind of a prototype at the time for someone.
(26:50):
And I said, look, I've got a vision for this.
I want to completely rip apart what you've done, rebuild it.
and do it this way, can I have your company?
You don't really want to do this anyway.
Can I, so I bought the company.
So this is a perfect spot for us to take our second commercial break because I really wantto hear the story here and I don't want to break it up.
(27:14):
So let's stop real quick for a commercial and we'll come right
All right, we are back on sleep science today.
We were just about to hear the beginnings of the SoundPillow company in a way.
So Scott, please fill us
(27:35):
got it.
They were just kind of going into the, did the SoundPillow come about?
And I had found this kind of a prototype, a working prototype product that I had a visionfor.
The individuals who were playing with it didn't, so I bought that company.
I trademarked SoundPillow, that's a business degree they had.
(28:01):
then had to take it to somebody to see if it was a worthy product.
Well, lo and behold, again, coming out of an industry there, I knew there wereassociations for everything.
I found a group called the American Tonitis Association.
The American Tonitis Association was started by Dr.
(28:21):
Jack Vernon, who actually is sort of the discoverer of tonitis and it was, and he co-founded the ATA.
ATA .org for anybody who wants to check them out.
Great group.
I don't receive any money from them, but I became a member and I got a hold of the top docthere.
(28:42):
Guy by the name of Steven Nagler and it took six months to get him on the phone.
I would call him a couple times a week.
Then I would go back, you know every day, then a couple of times.
And I did this for six months until one day he accidentally answered the phone.
Hahaha
and I'll tone the language down just a little bit so we can keep it a G rating for theprogram.
(29:05):
And I said, Dr.
Nagler, this is Scott Wasampo.
And he went, dear Lord, quit calling me.
And I went, I can't.
I said, look, I have chronic tinnitus.
I've got unilateral on the left side of my brain, always, always.
And then I've got bilateral on the right side when it just jumps in for no reason at all.
So sometimes I've got both.
(29:26):
sides of my brain are both ears going.
I have created this product, which I retuned frequency responses for the speakers.
Again, working with my audio guys, we all had tinnitus.
I built this product and I came up with it and I need to know.
I need to know.
And this is exactly what I said to him.
(29:48):
So I will apologize for just a moment.
I I loathe snake oil and bullshit.
And I need to know.
Turned out, so did he.
He loathed those two things.
So he said, all right, Scott, tell you what I'm going to do.
said, we're going to send your product to five of my worst patients.
You will fail miserably and never call me again.
(30:13):
Deal.
Got it.
Threw up, you know, some questions.
Got him the pillow.
He got him over to his patients.
The self -addressed, you know, stamped envelopes came back.
And once we had all five, took a big deep breath, started opening them up.
my God, they loved it.
(30:34):
I mean, absolutely loved it.
A couple of them actually wrote multi -page, two -sided letters telling me about how thisgave them hope, how being able to sleep was no longer a luxury for them.
Because you've got to remember.
When you're going to bed, if you think you're going to lay there all night, just the actof going to bed can cause stress and despair because they just don't believe they're going
(31:05):
to go to sleep.
And I never really thought about that.
Well, so here we go.
I figured how long is it going to take to get Dr.
Nagler on the phone now.
Call him up and lo and behold, he answers the first time
And said, Hey, Dr.
Nagler, this is Scott Armbruster with SoundPillow.
And he goes, dear Lord, you promised never to call me again.
(31:29):
No, sir.
That was not the deal.
And I reminded him the deal was I would fail miserably.
It would fail miserably.
And then, then I would never call him again.
And he immediately said, what you got?
And I started reading the letters to him and he said, okay, as it so happens, I'm going tobe in Austin, Texas.
(31:49):
This is San Antonio in two weeks.
Let's have dinner.
This is only 1996 and we had dinner and he said, look, you look like you have somethinghere.
You know, we talked about my tinnitus and I wasn't just trying to come up with somethingto sell to a desperate community because desperate people will spend desperate money.
(32:10):
We just look at what's going on on internet today.
Right.
All those, you know, look, look at all the hoaxes and the snake oil.
Right.
He said, it's going to take you 20 years.
to get this product to be accepted in this community.
Because if you can keep doing this for 20 years, then I think that you'll be accepted.
Fortunately, my wife and I owned a successful promotional product company.
(32:33):
So I had a day job.
And that day job might have been, you know, sometimes it's 12 hours a day, 14 hours a daywhen you own your own company.
I mean, you like, you know, you're just constantly working.
It never turns off.
So I called SoundPillow my night job.
And I started working with, you know, the American Tinnitus Association, convinced them tolet me put an ad in their journal, Tinnitus Today.
(32:59):
Took a little convincing and I think Dr.
Nagler may have had a little bit of, you know, cachet in helping that happen.
And then the wheel started to turn.
Can I stop and ask a question for a second?
Because I bet the listeners are wondering what I'm wondering too.
When you say that you've got this sound pillow and you're talking about speakers and apillow and you had these people test it and they loved it, what is it actually doing for
(33:26):
them?
What are they experiencing?
Okay.
So this, the sound pillow itself is a non -allergenic twin size pillow with a set ofstereo speakers built inside the pillow.
So back then, when it was just sound pillow, you'd plug that into say a Walkman or aDiscman, you know, some music, and you listen to the sound from the pillow.
(33:50):
So you've got this really, now keep in mind I did big
corporate gigs and concerts.
So I was a speaker snob.
My audio guys are speaker snobs.
We came up with some very small speakers that really do sound great and puts the soundright around the ears on either side of the head.
And as a side sleeper, if my tinnitus is particularly loud, I'll just kind of get close onone ear, which it usually is the left side.
(34:14):
I'll get closer to maybe one side.
But what happens then is I'm listening to another sound.
instead of the squeal in my head.
Now I can still hear that squeal, which is going to lead into where the sound pillow sleepsystem comes in, because I needed to create sounds that worked with my tinnitus, not
(34:38):
against my tinnitus.
Being banned from band, I knew that there were harmonics and certain notes that soundedgood together and certain
That didn't, right?
You can hear a chord that sounds real nice.
So I started then developing content that worked with the squeal in my head.
I'm not going to fight it.
(34:58):
No point.
Can't get rid of it anyway.
And so I started listening to and creating sounds that made my brain happy.
Now let's reference Dr.
Jack Vernon again for a moment, because one day Dr.
Vernon actually called me.
And this is the guy who discovered tinnitus, the modern day discoverer of tinnitus.
(35:18):
And he said, Scott, I hear what you're doing.
I think it's great.
These are the types of sounds you want to consider.
You want to consider rain, ocean, water sounds, white noise, nature, relaxation sounds,perhaps some musics.
And of course, white noise.
Everybody knows white noise.
Okay.
Got you.
(35:39):
So I started creating music.
with a gentleman who also saw the vision and he had some really good hypnotic types ofsounds that made my brain feel relaxed and comfortable.
From there, we had to have these white noise nature sounds that Jack had mentioned.
(36:04):
And in fact, there's a whole bunch of content on our sleep system.
The player comes preloaded with 22 tracks.
And the nature sounds are natural.
They're organic.
I didn't want to do anything that was synthetic because the brain knows.
So I listened to sounds that make my brain happy by working with the squeal in my head,not against it.
(36:29):
And that sound is emitted from the pillow right around my ears.
So I get to hear it, but my wife doesn't.
So let me stop you there for a second just because we've got about three minutes left inthe show and I want to make sure that I get to ask this question.
So you've got this pillow, it's on the bed now.
(36:51):
Is there a wire, like is it plugged into something?
Is it battery operated?
If I'm using it, what do I have to know about
Okay.
Literally it was designed around my then 72 year old mother who doesn't like toreconstructions.
So the everything is hardwired and you basically just plug it into the MP3 player, muchlike your headphones are plugged into a speaker input or a speaker jack and whatever
(37:20):
device you're listening through, right?
Same thing, but instead of listening to the sound through the headphones,
which then that cord, you're sleeping, could get wrapped around your neck, veryuncomfortable, plus the danger of that.
And then you just push the of the cord back behind the pillow and it connects to the MP4player.
And the MP4 player is designed to play whatever track you fall asleep to all night long sothat the brain is receiving a stimulus.
(37:49):
The brain is receiving a sound that's working with the tinnitus.
And you're not just listening to the squealing tinnitus in and of itself.
It's a destruction.
so another question that I'm sure people have is if you've got speakers in a pillow, doesit feel like you're laying on something hard and uncomfortable?
(38:12):
No, because I wouldn't use it then.
That was part of the issue, right?
And when I say I took somebody else's prototype and completely redesigned it, that was oneof the things I changed.
So our speakers are a bit convex and the way the material sits on top of the speakers,which is a polyfiber fill, one because it's again, non -allergenic, but the other, lets
(38:38):
the sound through unlike foam.
And
I don't feel the speakers.
Most of the feedback comes back as, Scott, I wouldn't believe there are speakers in yoursound pillow if I couldn't hear them because I
stop you there because we've only got about 40 seconds left in the show.
(39:00):
So tell me the impact that that has had on your life for you using it.
Tell us that.
You have 30 seconds to tell us.
sleep.
I mean, that just it.
I sleep.
Now granted, I'm not always perfect sleeper.
I've got a 21 year old daughter in college going on 30 who thinks she knows everything andis racing the world.
(39:22):
I've got my own stresses, but it helps calm my brain.
It helps shut down the racing type A personality conversation in my head distracts me frommy tinnitus.
and then puts me in a very relaxed state so I can achieve sleep.
And that's the feedback we get from veterans and civilians alike.
(39:44):
Perfect, perfect.
That's actually right at our time slot here.
So thank you so much.
I really appreciate understanding the background of this and how we got there.
So if you are listening and you have tinnitus, this is another option that you may want toexplore, could be beneficial.
(40:06):
And for those listeners, please don't forget to join us on sleepsciencetoday .com.
You can go there, you can get a free ebook about sleep and a lot of other specialinformation.
And when you look at the podcast online, you can see links to Scott and information abouthim.
(40:28):
So thank you so much and we appreciate you being here, Scott.
Thanks.
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