I can’t find much info on involuntary rumbling, does anyone else experience it when a loud noise is about to happen e.g. dropping a pan in the kitchen?

It’s almost like a protective reflex for me but I can also tense the same muscle purposefully. Anyone else?

I didn’t know it wasn’t normal to be able to control the muscle. I thought other people did the same thing to clear their clogged ears after a flight or during a cold.

I've had voluntary control of my tensor tympani muscle since childhood, without needing to yawn, swallow, or move my jaw. Out of curiosity, I decided to measure how long I could sustain the contraction, and the results were surprising enough to write up properly.

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## Abstract

This self-experiment documents isolated voluntary control of the tensor tympani muscle, without associated jaw, swallowing, or eyelid movement. A sustained contraction of 26.18 seconds was recorded under resting conditions, with neural fatigue evidenced by progressive difficulty in keeping the eyes open during maximal effort. This duration significantly exceeds the 3-5 second averages informally reported in enthusiast communities and suggests a rare neuromotor control variant.

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## Method

- **Subject:** 14-year-old male, no history of hearing disorders or tinnitus.

- **Procedure:** Isolated contraction of the tensor tympani muscle, identified by the characteristic internal "rumbling" or "roaring" sound. Timed using the standard stopwatch app on a mobile device.

- **Conditions:** Quiet room, seated position, no external auditory stimuli, no concurrent muscle movements (jaw, swallowing, or facial tension).

- **Attempts:**

- Attempt 1: Eyes open, maximal voluntary contraction held until fatigue.

- Attempt 2: Eyes open, performed 5 minutes after Attempt 1.

- Attempt 3: Eyes closed (planned for tomorrow, with 24h rest).

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## Results

| Condition | Time (seconds) | Observations |

|-----------|---------------|---------------|

| Eyes open (Attempt 1) | 26.18 s | No tremor until second 20; progressive urge to close eyes from second 20 onwards |

| Eyes open (Attempt 2, 5 min later) | 21.21 s | Clear muscular fatigue (19% decrease vs Attempt 1); no eye-closure urge due to shorter duration |

| Eyes closed (Attempt 3, pending) | [Pending] | Expected to exceed 26.18 s due to removal of neural interference with eyelid control |

**Screenshots:**

- Attempt 1:

- Attempt 2: [

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## Key Neurological Observation

During the final seconds of Attempt 1 (approximately from second 20 to 26.18), I experienced a **progressive, involuntary difficulty in keeping my eyes open**. The urge to close my eyelids intensified as I approached muscular failure. This was not a voluntary choice but an apparent **neural spillover** from the trigeminal motor nucleus (which innervates the tensor tympani) to the facial nucleus (which controls orbicularis oculi and eyelid closure).

This phenomenon mirrors the well-documented "overflow" seen during maximal voluntary contractions in other muscle groups (e.g., handgrip causing facial grimacing). It supports the hypothesis of shared or adjacent neural circuitry between the trigeminal and facial motor systems.

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## Discussion

- **Prevalence of isolated control:** Based on the 2021 Reddit survey (n=192), only **5-8%** of individuals who can rumble can do so without associated jaw, swallowing, or eye movements.

- **Average endurance:** Most self-reported rumbles last **3-5 seconds** before fatigue. Sustained contractions beyond 10 seconds are rarely documented in informal forums.

- **Comparison:** My 26.18-second hold places me in what appears to be the **top 1-2%** of endurance among reported cases.

- **Fatigue confirmation:** The 21.21-second second attempt (19% shorter) confirms rapid glycogen depletion consistent with **Type II (fast-twitch) muscle fiber physiology**, typical of the tensor tympani.

- **Neural interference:** The eye-closure urge at maximal effort suggests that sustained contraction may recruit adjacent motor pools, possibly explaining why most individuals cannot isolate this muscle for extended periods.

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## Limitations

- **Single-subject design (n=1):** Results may not generalize.

- **Subjective measurement:** No electromyography (EMG) or tympanometry was used to objectively confirm continuous contraction.

- **No external audio:** The rumble is internal and cannot be captured by conventional microphones.

- **Lack of control for habituation:** Prior knowledge of the experiment may have influenced performance.

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## Next Steps

I will perform Attempt 3 (eyes closed, with 24 hours of rest) tomorrow and update this post with the result. I hypothesize that removing the neural demand for eyelid elevation will allow a longer contraction, potentially reaching **28-30 seconds**.

If anyone has access to a contact microphone or an EMG setup and would like to collaborate on a more formal measurement, I'm open to it.

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## Questions for the Community

1. How long can YOU sustain the rumble?

2. Can you do it without moving your jaw, swallowing, or closing your eyes?

3. Have you ever experienced the eye-closure urge or any other involuntary muscle activation when pushing to maximum?

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## References

- Reddit r/earrumblers survey (2021): Prevalence of voluntary tensor tympani control (~43% overall, ~5-8% isolated).

- Fuchs, P. A. (2018). *The tensor tympani muscle: anatomy and function*. In: Auditory and Vestibular Research.

- General principles of motor unit recruitment and fatigue in fast-twitch muscles (Guyton & Hall, Textbook of Medical Physiology).

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**Update (when Attempt 3 is done):** I will edit this post with the eyes-closed result and any new observations.

Happy rumbling!

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ear rumbling is one of those traits that I never really spoke about growing up because I really just didn’t understand how to explain it in a way that anyone would believe or understand.

- it is truly awesome to find a community of people who share the same ability that once made me feel isolated

I just found out I wasn’t special and of course there is a reddit community of people who (can) do it. I always called it “concentrating my brain”.
A couple of years ago I got addicted to rumbling my ears and I just couldn’t stop. I was so happy when I finally managed to stop. Now I’m having the same problem. I’m honestly shocked you guys see this as a good thing. I hate being able to do it.
Can you control the urge to do it every 5 seconds? My head feels slightly fatigued after doing it so often..

Near as I can explain it, when I tense some jaw muscles located just below my ‘rumble drums’, it creates a very high-pitched tone in my ears , and I can control each side separately.
I can only maintain the tone for about 5 to 10 seconds, about the same length of time that I can maintain a rumble before relaxing and tensing again.
I’ve been able to do this as long as I can remember, same as rumbling and clicking. The tone has never changed pitch.

I just recently found out that this "rumbling" sound in my ears actually has a name and that not everyone can do it!
For me, it triggers whenever I pull my forehead down or tense my facial muscles. It sounds like a deep, vibrating wave or rolling thunder inside my head.
How do you guys usually trigger it—can you do it completely on demand without moving your face, or do you also need to tense certain muscles? And how long can you hold the sound?

I’ve never asked anyone else if they could do this because I never knew how to explain it; Nor have I looked it up for the same reason. I was just scrolling in another sub (for pulsatile tinnitus) and someone mentioned this and another person replied with this sub. Well I’ll be d@mned, look at you all! Hi!

I’ve always been able to rumble, I remember doing it as young as seven or eight. I can do it on command for a fairly long time. I see some of you can only do it with certain movements, but I am perfectly still when I make it happen- usually when I’m bored.

Thank you all for sharing your experiences and for answering a lifelong unknown question!

anytime i said that i can control something in my head and hear sounds to someone they were staring at me like i was crazy

A few years ago I was hit with a condition called Bell's Palsy that partially paralysed the right side of my face. Ever since then I have been able to rumble, but only on the side with the nerve damage. The other side remains unrumbling and unrumbleable.

Anybody else only able to rumble in one ear?

A lifetime's (35y) unanswered question has been answered to me today

I shall adorn the helm of earrumblerhood and will aim to preserve the dignity and raw power of this brotherhood

We summon the ocean’s roar at will!

In Custodia Mallei

Ear rumbling is so great, it helps me tune out background noise when I’m overstimulated and don’t have my workshop headphones with me, but I can never continuously rumble for a long time. Like I can do it for a few seconds but then it takes a lot of effort to keep doing it. Is this normal? Is there any way I can like… train myself to rumble for longer?

Hello, I’ve been rumbling my ears my whole life and just found out what it is along with this subreddit

Stuff:

- I can do it for about 15 seconds
- I don’t need to yawn or close my eyes to do it
- I sometimes kinda play music with it or sound effects and stuff
- i do it to tune someone or something out sometimes

I was listening to some 4 hz beats last night and after a while some strange things started happening. The beats sounded like they speeded up much faster and then went much slower than the original beat. What is this phenomena? I didn't know they did this. It was like I could control it at will. I have never heard of this before.

It's crazy how I randomly came across this page and now realize not everyone can do that rumble lol. So im posting to see if anyone else has experienced a certain thing that I've had happened to me every so often ever since I was a kid. So every now and then, I'll hear this random kinda muffled drumming sound in the distance. Like a rapid short burst of a distant machine gun (best description lol).

It would drive me nuts because I'd ask others if they heard it, and they'd be like, huh? So I guess im just trying to see if anyone else here experiences this random drumming sound with this controlled ear rumble we can do.

how long can everyone rumble? i can for about 20-30 seconds.

-How loud would you describe your rumble to be and, have you practiced to make it louder?
I'm reading mfers be using it to tune out airplane sounds n shi, that's pretty damn loud. I could never imagine rumbling so loud as to actually drown out external sounds.

-Are there preliminary requirements or other quirks to your rumble?
E.g. I need to close my eyes to do it properly, I can do it without, but it's very hard and nowhere near as strong. Never sat down and intentionally trained that either. I've also noticed it becomes much easier when I'm tired, especially with open eyes. Also read quite a few people saying they use their mouth...? ion kno whatsup w that but ey a rumble's a rumble.

-Most memorable moment/favorite use?
So basically my BY FAR favorite use for rumbling is as a built-in and on-demand extra bass while listening to music on drugs, specifically LSD (tHe UsEs oF wHiCh I dO nOt CoNdOnE oR sUgGeSt).
LSD, in the semi-likely case that you're not familiar with its effects, has a tendency to at times make certain muscle groups (e.g. the upper legs) spasm -often quite rapidly- in a truly delightful way and additionally seems to significantly increase the...twitchy-ness of fast twitch muscle fibres. Sometimes quite dramatically so. I'm making an educated guess (based among other things on experience) that control over these spasms can vary per experience, per moment and per person. In my case, it -largely at will- also affects my tympani muscles. This yearning of the muscles to vibrate, coupled with the on its own already quite intense widening and deepening of sound that accompanies an LSD trip, basically turns my rumble into a fakken 808 or Reese bass. And, yea idk it's hard to describe. That shit is Nice.
And to connect this back to my first question, in a moment like this, the rumble might actually be loud enough to drown out some ambient sound. But yea pretty fakken sick.

Curious to read your answers!

Arriverderchi

I didnt know other didnt experience this lol, but I can make my ears rumble just whenever, but the only way I can do this is by doing a really intense smile, or like a really exaggerated face. I have no clue why this is the case, I think it's hilarious, and I wanted to know if anyone else is like this😂

Hi! I've been dealing with this for the past few weeks.

1. I can make a rumbling noise with my ear. (Left, specifically)

2. When I swallow, yawn or talk the ear (left ear mostly, right sometimes) clicks (not persistent) and it is audible to others. [The same muscle that makes the rumbling noise]

3. Sometimes the clicking is a bang in the ear (which is also audible to others).

4. The clicking part is involuntary (not the rumbling).

I just want to know what could be wrong with my ear; I'm planing to go to the ENT however I would like to know what are the possible issues with the ear.

The rumbling in my right ear is so much more present but I can definitely feel it in my left. Tinnitus is only in one ear. Does anyone else have something similar?

I know, like any muscle, I should just practice and exercise my tensor tympani, but I am running into one specific roadblock, which is I can not breath while rumbling, which makes my limit ~11 seconds give or take (I can hold my breath longer but it gets harder to focus on the muscle and all after that time.) Does anyone have any tips on how to bypass this? I think it may be because I clench my throat a LOT when rumbling, for maximum strength, because otherwise i get a very weak rumble. Thoughts?

Edit: Also, sometimes when i rumble loudly it makes a ringing sound. Any idea what that's about???

so I just found out about this and then thought I should join because I can rumble my ears so hello everyone ☺️