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Old school vs modern hearing aids

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“they say” it takes about 9 months of daily wear for our ears to adjust to hearing aids - I wonder how you would feel about the sound of your “new” if you wore them for 6 months and only then tried the old ones again. If we have significant hearing loss, we are not currently hearing anything “normally” - even with HAs. Normal is relative.

Edited

In reply to @Don

@Don said:

I want to hear human voices. I wouldn’t care if it sounds like Donald Duck if I can understand it

Same here- I tweaked my Phonaks with this exclusive focus (using Target and a radio info channel playing on my PC). The endresult is not really a curve that looks like my inverted .

Our ears evolved long, long before human speech and language did. (There is the famous story of how a piece of jawbone in a primitive reptile ended up as the three ossicles in our inner ear). Both have their own physical constraints and perhaps (heavy speculation) the match is imperfect. The very fact that have all those programs supports this suspicion.

If things were otherwise, fitting HAs would be as straightforward as getting good glasses…

You can have the best of both worlds. I have newer hearing aids but my audiologist set them up so I have the ability to press the button on the hearing aid to change the program manually. I don’t use the programs on my phone at all.

Check out the Phonak Lyric, it’s a totally analogue deep deep inside the ear hearing solution. Your hearing loss might work for it, might not, but if you’ve been using analogues and are used to that sound, it probably will work. Only problem is they’re expensive, about £250 a month.
Otherwise try Widex set to pure mode, that will give you a very analogue type experience if set up right. Phonak Virto are ok I use them myself in fact I’m using them right now, they don’t sound analogue though. they sort of do, but they still compress, still turn things down which you may not like. I have all the noise processing turned off on mine. I personally find all the other hA makers fiddle about with the sound too much for my tastes.

Well there’s all types of hearing loss, yeah we can’t all think we hear the same, just like we don’t maybe see the same colour etc, but some people had hearing to start off with, then gradually went, mine did due to glue ear followed by grommet that got stuck and damaged my ear, others too have different stories as to why they lost their hearing, not everyone is born deaf

I simply wanted to clarify: gradually losing hearing is not a contraindication for acclimatization with technology, which @joanhawsey described.

The need to get used to the hearing aid is quite common, regardless of the mechanism in which the hearing was lost.

Ah I see, read it again, I thought she was referring to people having hearing issues won’t know what normal hearing is, which I was trying to state that some did, my bad

Indeed, some of us have relatively good hearing in the second ear, which helps to assess “naturalness”.

It is worth mentioning that I and @joanhawsey have artificial hearing in our ears, which, with consistently use, becomes more similar to our better ears.

Ah right so you have decent hearing already on one ear and then artificial on the other, is this the cochlear implant you have, does this sound similar natural hearing like your better ear

It depends of the training and consistency. For example, I hear bird chirps a bit quite like through on better ear, but not that full. However another one may state that these absolutely not sound as he hears on his/her better ear.

There are individuals (most often long-time users of who are professional musicians) who can even distinguish between halftones. However, it is VERY rare to achieve that proficiency.

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Ah right I see, gearing and sight are probably two of the most difficult senses of the human body to ever perfect to how it should be I suppose, I have finally updated my , although it was the quicker hearing test I had ever had, she fired so many noises and all the years I’ve had hearing tests. It’s never been this rushed before. So I feel like the audiogram is not a accurate representation, but see what you think as no one’s never broke it down for me before, thanks

@Sash88uk said:

are the results usually very different

Bone conduction tests the cochlea bypassing the middle ear. Air conduction has to go through the middle ear. If there is a significant difference (bone conduction losses less than air) then that points to issues in middle ear. A issue in the middle ear can sometimes be remedied to some extent.

WH

In reply to @Sash88uk

Just to remind:

Analogs vs Digitals
Indeed. Measuring Real Ear Aided Response (element of REM) near eardrum would provide much useful information. I think you should redo your tonal audiogram, especially the bone conduction part. This type of audiogram would tell you a lot about your cochlear function. If your cochlea is working well, there may be other medical (ENT) problems that can be resolved, such as eardrum reconstruction, and you may no longer need hearing aids, Just like I said above.
Analogs vs Digitals
Surgical options have changed a bit in the last twenty years. If there’s a big air bone gap on your audiogram, I’d agree that it might be worth getting an updated ENT consult on whether there are any surgical options. If your bone line is not that much better then your air line, then there’s nothing really to be done.

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