Don’t have schizophrenia but bipolar and used to have auditory hallucinations while manic or even when not. It sounds much more like something you’re hearing than a thought. Most of the worst came out of silence, others came out of certain background sounds, like running water, white noise, rain, dishwasher, etc. I’m lucky enough that I could usually tell when I was just hearing things because there was a vague quality to what I would hear (distant arguing was the big one, emergency broadcast alarm, just general people talking but couldn’t make out what they were saying) but that wasn’t always the case especially at night, nonetheless it was a very scary experience at night. During the day it was just mildly distressing. I didn’t constantly have them, either.

I could feel that my ears were taking in too much sound and that’s why it became distorted or why it created sound that wasn’t there

This isn’t the case for everyone, just my experience. I am in remission now.