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Missing low frequencies

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I’m trialling the Resound Vivia 9s. My Audi fitted me with tulip domes but they kept slipping so we’re now using , which fit better. I’m finding that I’m still missing the low frequencies- male voices are difficult and m’s and b’s, for example, are hard to discern. At work the other day there was thunder according to my colleagues- I couldn’t hear it.

How to proceed? Bone conduction test showed from 1000 I have mild loss of 30-40, so I know there’s a limit to what I can re-gain there, but I really hoped I’d hear more than this. I know I keep coming back to this forum with this question but I’m really struggling to understand how much hearing I should hope to regain with , and how much I have to resign to being lost for good?

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Yeah this just shouldn’t be an issue for you with your moderate loss, pretty easily fit up really, seems strange you couldn’t hear the “boom” of thunder! but it’s impossible to say what your fitter is doing wrong without seeing the fitting report, obviously your noticing your lower frequencys aren’t getting the benefit of these , you really need to explain to your Audiologist what you’ve said here, your not happy with the set up, ask at least to have some of the low frequency boosted to see if it helps, if you go the App, you can make some minor adjustments there to boost bass and lower the higher frequency, just for your own reference check out the tone generator here, see what frequencys you can’t hear.

Online Tone Generator - generate pure tones of any frequency30

Tenkan, Thanks for posting that tone meter. I’ve always wondered what frequencies my decades long tinnitus were. Around 5200 to 5500. Kinda useless information in a way, but I got their number!

@portage said:

Kinda useless information in a way, but I got their number!

Ha yeah, just you wait till you try explaining which frequencies you want adjusted after talking to your Audiologist after using it, the “weird” blank look they give!

In reply to @tenkan

Thank you, I’m seeing my Audi next week and I’ll tell him. I wonder if I need to push for after all. They did Auto-rem and I’ve found him very thorough with my feedback and programming - I trust him unlike my last experience with Specsavers - but perhaps the fit is still not right. Or perhaps I’ve got issues on the levels of auditory processing, I don’t know.. A little concerned I kick-up a fuss to get REM and it actually knocks the programming further off (which happened with Specsavers).

That link is helpful. Using it with I can hear that things are clearer/less muffled across the frequencies, but the range I can hear is only minimally extended, by like 50hz (still nothing before 200, nor after 8000), is that normal?

Its difficult to gauge what I’m missing and why when it comes to speech - I think it’s in the lows. The thunder was rumbles rather than booms I think.. I have played with the Resound App and upped the bass (and lowered the highs) as much as I can. It sounds more “natural” and takes away some of the whirring of cars I find very unpleasant, but I’m yet to test if it really helps with speech.

What would be so helpful would be very slow recorded speech in video format, showing the hz of letters/words as they’re spoken. Perhaps it’s impossibly fast. But then it also is in real life, when you’re also under more pressure to actually understand the content rather than just identify consonants….

@Sallyinthesky said:

My Audi fitted me with tulip domes but they kept slipping so we’re now using closed domes, which fit better.

With your loss it might be beneficial for you to go to ear molds to help you with bass.

The power domes properly sized would be good. Place them deeper to decrease the risk of occlusion (which may require smaller domes than when placed more shallowly). Alternatively, use earmolds with a small vent so that low-frequency sound doesn’t leak out excessively.

is also recommended of course to verify of low frequency sounds near eardrums.

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