Can someone please explain how voices work?

Hi,

I have mild-to-moderate cookie bite hearing loss, and I’m hearing pretty well with my HAs. There are some people, though, that I just cannot understand. It’s not how loud they are, as they sound perfectly loud. And it doesn’t seem to be how high or low their voices are. It seems almost as if it’s people with a sort of flattened affect to how they talk. They’ll say an entire sentence, and it just sounds like one long mumble. I’ll ask them to repeat themselves, and I still won’t understand a single word. Everyone else, I can understand most words.

I was told that different letters map to different frequencies. Is this true? Is this independent of how high or low someone’s voice is? Does anyone know, is there something fairy simple that I can read that would explain how voices work?

I’m wondering if it is worth trying to adjust the aids to these few people’s voices. Is it plausible to try to record a voice and take it to the audiologist? Or are there just some voices that are hard to understand?

My audiogram:
250 R30 L35
500 R30 L45
1K R45 L45
2K R50 L50
3K R45 L45
4K R35 L35
6K R20 L25
8K R15 L20

The speech banana just depicts “typical” ranges for specific letter sounds. The whole gray banana shape is there to show the wider range of those sounds.

I would hazard a guess, based on what I know about singing, that the consonants don’t vary so much from their ranges, but the vowels can vary quite a lot, from low to high. When singers pitch their voices, it’s primary with the vowels. Just guessing, though. However, this would explain why different people vary so much in their speaking pitches. There are monotone speakers (same volume and pitch) and melodic speakers who pitch their voices up and down quite a lot (so both the volume and the pitch changes more). If you are trying to listen to a soft, monotone speaker who primarily speaks to you in the mid-frequency ranges and you have a mid-frequency loss, then you would have the most problem with them… even if certain sounds pop into the high frequency ranges.

As for myself, I have an easier time understanding people who do NOT speak in a monotone style. I need to hear that wider range of pitch and volume to piece together the comprehension. Besides that, more colorful speakers have a lot more to work with, speechreading-wise. You may not realize just how much you rely on speechreading and looking at the whole big picture of the speaker-- context, mouth and facial expressions, emotion of the voice, etc.

I was wondering about Amy also. In one post she recommended that someone consult a urologist, and in another, an oncologist. I don’t know about her, but I don’t pee out my ear…

Re:Can hearing aids be re-fitted to another person?

			Hi Towermax, 

Yes,It may be possible that the aids refitted and used for her ears. Take the advice of good urologist as you have said that the cost of operation is nearly about $400. It sounds not…

@MaM said:

Hello,

If you Google “speech banana” and then check out the “images” for the search, you will see bunches of audiograms where they place not only specific letter frequencies, but also common sounds, into their “typical” frequency and decibel ranges.

About the muddled speech, I sometimes have that issue, as well, with or without hearing aids. Like you, it won’t necessarily have to do with it being a high or low frequency voice, although, in general, men are harder for me to understand. (I have a cookie-bite loss, too.) But, sometimes, I will have trouble understanding a female or child, as well, while others I understand quite well.

When I researched this issue, I found information online about how, for cookie-biters, it is best not too over-amplify 500 and lower in the frequency range, even if there is a loss there. (I’m taking that to mean that, yes, go ahead and amplify them a little, but not very much.) Apparently, 500 and below can create environmental sounds that will muddle the sound of speech. I just asked my audiologist about this very issue, today, and she agreed that was probably happening. So I am having the 1K to 4K boosted a little (even though I have good high frequency hearing). I am going to use that as a “Speech” program while still keeping my current program which sounds great for the general environment and most speakers. I’ll use the new “speech” program with the amplified 1K and up for speakers who sound muddled to me.

I also want to say that when I initially received my HAs, the sound was definitely on and off muddled for certain speech from certain speakers. When the audiologist reduced the amplification on the lower frequencies, it really cleaned up the speech sounds. (So my newest “speech” program is just even more clarified.)

I don’t know if this will help, but there it is! I am having success with it, so far. Good luck to you!

if you program the instruments using speech banana, you can fine tune the gain of the instrument to maximize speech intel…