Anyone here use hearing aids?

rlw

tomajoha said:

rlw said:

tomajoha said:

My dad was recently fitted with new hearing aids and comments that he now suffers from a weird chorus effect from the top three strings when playing, so much so he doesn’t use them while playing now.

That's it in a nutshell. Oh.

I’ll ask him for an update as he was planning on seeing his specialist about the issue. I suppose the question is, does your hearing loss effect your playing and if not why not just turn them off when playing too? You can then also justifiably not respond when your significant other shouts: TURN IT DOWN!

Turning the things off is an option but a PITA.  My hearing deficiency has zero impact on my playing though.

Also noticed the same effect with ring tones etc on peoples' phones.  It's weird.  All mid/high frequency sounds and nothing lower down.

Blaendulais

Hearing is a worry theres no question mine is damaged at what stage does one consider a hearing aid.  This might seem a stupid question but i really often struggle to hear and ask people to repeat.

rlw

Blaendulais said:

Hearing is a worry theres no question mine is damaged at what stage does one consider a hearing aid.  This might seem a stupid question but i really often struggle to hear and ask people to repeat.

If I'm in a busy pub or restaurant, even at dinner with friends, I struggle to hear conversations properly, if at all sometimes.  Unless someone is in the same room as me - not down the hall or up the stairs - I don't hear them.  It's embarrassing having to ask someone to repeat things and annoying if you don't.

I went for a hearing test which showed that I was quite deficient in the higher frequencies and the tester tried some hearing aids on me to see what I thought.  To sit in his room, hear the clock ticking on the wall and the fan whirring in his PC and the constant commotion outside was an eye (ear!) opener. 

Go get a hearing test with one of the big providers - I went to Hidden Hearing - and get your hearing tested.  Don't even think of signing anything and then look at the providers on the interent for exactly the same service and product but at about 35% less.  Cynical but I saved £1800 doing it.

steveledzep

Blaendulais said:

Hearing is a worry theres no question mine is damaged at what stage does one consider a hearing aid.  This might seem a stupid question but i really often struggle to hear and ask people to repeat.

Not a stupid question, I'm in the same situation.  Mrsledzep "encouraged" me to go for a hearing test.  I'm 63 so wasn't surprised when they said my hearing is down.  I was told I'm borderline for a hearing aid.  The lady then went on to say that getting used to an aid isn't easy and if you have one too soon it can alienate you and you end up not wearing it.  Then when you definitely need one, you resist because you had a bad experience previously.  I decided not to have one at the moment and asked the missus to face me when she speaks and not to turn the kitchen tap on at the same time as she starts to talk to me.  I have difficulty when ambient noise levels are high and I benefit from people speaking directly to me.  Hope this helps.

Blaendulais

Thanks @rlw ;

rlw

Blaendulais said:

Thanks @rlw ;

My pleasure.  It’s what we’re all here for.

rlw

And I’m 67...

steveledzep

rlw said:

Blaendulais said:

Thanks @rlw ;

My pleasure.  It’s what we’re all here for.

I agree.  Just a shame that my contribution fell on deaf ears. 

Rickyd

Mrs D and Ms D have been going on at me for ages to get tested as I have to have the tv volume at a "decent level" to hear anything. The first thing they do if they walk in the room is declare FFS and turn it down. Mind you I swear they put the dishwasher/tumble dryer/ washing machine on as soon as I want to watch something which doesn't help. Often I'll give up on  a programme I cant hear and bugger of and do something else leaving them to it.

So a question to any wearers - as well as the crap hearing I suffer from tinitis. Mine is a constant "white noise" if that makes sense. Looking at the ages of some of the posters, you'll remember when BBC and ITV closed for the night and the tv went fuzzy, that noise. Would an aid help in this situation? I'll be 65 next month and would love to watch and hear a decent programme all the way through.

Roland

Rickyd said:

Would an aid help in this situation? 

Yes

rlw

Rickyd said:

Mrs D and Ms D have been going on at me for ages to get tested as I have to have the tv volume at a "decent level" to hear anything. The first thing they do if they walk in the room is declare FFS and turn it down. Mind you I swear they put the dishwasher/tumble dryer/ washing machine on as soon as I want to watch something which doesn't help. Often I'll give up on  a programme I cant hear and bugger of and do something else leaving them to it.

So a question to any wearers - as well as the crap hearing I suffer from tinitis. Mine is a constant "white noise" if that makes sense. Looking at the ages of some of the posters, you'll remember when BBC and ITV closed for the night and the tv went fuzzy, that noise. Would an aid help in this situation? I'll be 65 next month and would love to watch and hear a decent programme all the way through.

I suffer from a high pitched whistle which comes and goes.  At my next appointment, we are going to add a little noise cancelling to reduce it.   So yes,

rlw

I've now figured out the controls on my phone so I can turn the volume up or down in one or both ears; receive calls and notifications on my iPhone direct to the hearing aids; mute them completely for guitar playing; see the state of charge and all sorts.  Pretty clever stuff.  It's nice 'cos I know when someone special has whatsapped me without havingt o look at the phone too :-)

JohnS37

FWIW, when I had my first consultation I was told that I should have gone in sooner to be checked.  The consultant told me that your brain will only continue to process input from the frequencies it gets regularly, so if you leave it too late no hearing aid will restore the (usually high-) freqs you haven’t heard for a long time.
So, moral of the story is: if you suspect you have hearing loss get in there and get tested.

Rickyd

Roland said:

Rickyd said:

Would an aid help in this situation? 

Yes

Hi Roland,  can l ask, have you found noticeable difference in the short time you've been wearing them? How are you getting on with them?

Roland

My hearing drops off suddenly between 3.5 and 4 kHz. That’s probably due to exposure to loud noises. I can still hear those frequencies, but they are heavily compressed. This may be a different situation to yourself.

The hearing aids are configured to supplement frequencies from 3.5 kHz upwards. They make it easier to distinguish speech in noisy places, and I’ve turned down the television. I also have renewed interest in the acoustic guitar where I can hear the rasp of skin on the strings. Electric I can play at a lower volume and still hear clearly.

Do I like them? No. There’s the delay problem which I can’t do much about. Left and right aren’t correctly matched in volume or tonal response. That’s not my ears - I’ve swapped the devices over to check that. However they are an improvement on nothing. My brain is still going through a period of retraining, and I’m told that could take up to three months. After which I’ll get them reconfigured.

Rickyd

Roland said:?

My hearing drops off suddenly between 3.5 and 4 kHz. That’s probably due to exposure to loud noises. I can still hear those frequencies, but they are heavily compressed. This may be a different situation to yourself.

The hearing aids are configured to supplement frequencies from 3.5 kHz upwards. They make it easier to distinguish speech in noisy places, and I’ve turned down the television. I also have renewed interest in the acoustic guitar where I can hear the rasp of skin on the strings. Electric I can play at a lower volume and still hear clearly.

Do I like them? No. There’s the delay problem which I can’t do much about. Left and right aren’t correctly matched in volume or tonal response. That’s not my ears - I’ve swapped the devices over to check that. However they are an improvement on nothing. My brain is still going through a period of retraining, and I’m told that could take up to three months. After which I’ll get them reconfigured.

Thank you,  time to get tested methinks. 

merlin

I went for a hearing test and to have hearing protectors fitted some time ago. The audiologist found that I have a substantial drop around the 6k mark particularly in my left ear. Probably due to loud music too often. 

So I went to have hearing aids fitted for a week's free trial at one of the big ones, Amplifon. I don't have a spare 3k to spend on hearing aids so I've ended up with the NHS ones. Not as good as the expensive ones but still pretty good. And yes I get the weirdness on the high strings and yes I get a certain amount of feedback and yes they're weird and tricky to get used to but what has returned, and to me more important than the hearing itself, is proper stereo. My right ear was doing all the work and I was missing so much stereo imaging. That's back when I have my hearing aids in and it's pretty wonderful. 

rlw

I went out for dinner last night and was amazed to be able to sit in a noisy and busy restaurant and hold a perfectly normal conversation with my wife across the table.  10/10 for the hearing aids.

Can anyone think of a reason for the weirdness on the high strings thought?  It’s a mystery to me.

Roland

Time for an update. This morning I spent an hour with the audiologist. It was billed as a follow-up session to check that my hearing aids were working properly, that my brain had adjusted to using them, and whether they had made a change to my tinnitus. The answers to these were:
No, so we adjusted the EQ and compression settings
Yes, the cracked plate syndrome disappeared after about 48 hours
No, but then my tinnitus wasn’t triggered by hearing loss.

rlw said:

Can anyone think of a reason for the weirdness on the high strings thought?  It’s a mystery to me.

The first answer is that a modern hearing aid typically has 8ms latency, so you get phasing between the room sound and what the hearing aid is delivering. I proved that this was part of the problem by injecting delay settings between 7 and 10ms at 50:50 wet:dry mix into my guitar signal.

Now the really interesting bit! These NHS Phonak hearing aids are too clever. They automatically detune frequencies in the 6 to 9 kHz range! The theory is that people who have lost hearing in that range can hear aspirants better if those frequencies are transposed downwards to a frequency range which they can hear. The impact on you and me is that they create artifacts which bugger up what we hear. We turned the setting off, along with wind suppression and a couple of other smart settings. At the time I could hear how the changes affected reverberation in the 3x2m room where we were working. Everything became more natural sounding.

I’ve been taking my hearing aids out when playing guitar because of the word ness which @rlw describes. Last week I’d also spent some time searching for fret buzz or bridge rattle on an acoustic. I even put a camera inside looking for a loose wire. In the end I turned my hearing aids off so that couldn’t hear it. This afternoon, with the new hearing aid settings, the weirdness and the rattle have gone.

rlw

Mine have been adjusted a couple of times but are now actually worse.  I need another session with my lot but they really don't seem to understand my needs that well I must say.

I'n now listening permanently to a cheap transistor radio with a further two setting which make it worse.  I want my middle and lower range back please and to get rid of that bloodyoscillation.