Watching Baby Driver (2017), in most scenes where for some reason Baby was unable to listen to music, a high pitch tinnitus sound came up, showing the viewer what his experience is like; but there was at least one scene where he had no headphones or music but there wasn't the tinnitus sound: he was enjoying quality time with Debora, and then, after they parted ways, there was a rare moment's silence, then the tinnitus sound slowly came back, slowly increasing in volume until it was piercing and uncomfortable.
At the time I took it as a neat way of showing the viewer how he felt when he was with her - that he was engaged in living in the moment of spending time with her so much that he was able to ignore, forget, and/or tune out the tinnitus, until he was alone again.
That said, I don't remember the details of the scene (or scenes) like this, and it occurred to me that maybe the tinnitus was simply drowned out by other background noise like the hubbub of other people's conversations. I think it usually came on gradually like this (albeit faster), not instantly, for example when someone yanked out his headphones.
So what's the pattern? In the scene or scenes where there's no music but also Baby (and therefore, the viewer) isn't hearing his tinnitus sound, is he spending quality time with Deborah, is there other background noise serving the same role his music does, or both, either, neither, or something else?
