HAs for violinists

@fiddlesticks said:

I am a violinist and cellist, and have terrible trouble getting an aid to work well enough to work without giving me terrible noises on certain notes when I’m playing, especially on the violin. - It’s like every note is a trill. My loss is a cookie-bite loss, so the worst is in the middle range.
I have been wearing aids for nearly 10 years, and the latest pair is worse than any I’ve had before. Can anyone recommend an aid which type is worth trying?

What are the new aids you have now?

MANY current digital aids (even top-of-the-line models) would cause this issue out-of-the-box for a violinist due to a phenomenon called entrainment, a particular kind of sound artifact, but this may very well be fixable by the audiologist. Don’t give up on these aids yet. The audiologist may need to call in help from a manufacturer rep for advice if she or he has little direct experience with patients who are classical musicians.

Search the forum here for one of the longer threads on entrainment (top blue bar above). Violins, flutes, trumpets, sopranos, and other similar musical instruments can produce sound that gives fits to the digital feedback suppression circuitry trying to resolve it with certain pitches, and that trill sound you report gets overlaid onto the sound as a result. I know exactly what you’re hearing–I heard it, too, with my Aleras especially when listening to classical music.

The solution is often to create a special music program with digital feedback suppression turned COMPLETELY OFF (ironically). You would then set your aid to use this music program when you were performing or listening to music. The audiologist may also want to adjust the gain and compression settings in this program if you play in the middle of an orchestra that may frequently exceed 110 dB at peak on the stage (/damn brass and percussion players… I’m kidding, sort of… I used to play trumpet in orchestras.) The catch is you also have to be able to understand the conductor in rehearsal, so your music program would need to be able to meet both needs.

Hearing aids are designed for spoken voices and can need special adjustment to work with other kinds of sound such as music. The feature here is that digital aids are HIGHLY programmable and adjustable for special needs. No guarantee for your aids and loss, but worth a try. I no longer have this problem with my Aleras using a custom music program, but then, I’m no longer sitting in the middle of a symphony orchestra.

My aids are phonak certena petite. The problem has definitely got worse since having a new shell fitted after my left aid got dropped and the shell smashed. The audiologist has spent a long time turning off and turning down the feedback suppression, and has set up a music programme, but when I switch to this I can neither hear myself well enough, or the others around me.

First I would suggest you take your violin into the clinic where you purchased your hearing aids, and have them tuned so that you are not getting the issues you are getting now.

I would suggest having a manual music program and that your programming be set for DSc (digital super compression) rather than dWDRC (digital wide dynamic range compression), and that your MPO (maximum power output) be increased in such a way that if you were playing along with a cd in the office, you can hear your violin and the music from the speakers at the same time.

There are not many practitioners who really know how to work with musicians and their instruments, so be patient. Use the information from this forum to help guide you.

I hope this helps.

Sorry about your troubles. I played violin and bassoon in orchestras when I was young. Now, I play classical piano and flute. My Bernafons are the first and only HAs I have worn. They are horrendous, grabbing and holding various notes from all instruments. Even when they are not “entraining”, and are presumably working correctly, the sound is screeching and agonizing to listen to in a musical sense, with many false overtones, so that a piano sounds like breaking glass. They also grab the microwave alarm and hang on to it. The Soundgate “controller” and Bluetooth infterface was switching programs every time it got near a metal shaft or mass, or every time I turned on my phone’s camera. After sending it in for repair a few weeks ago, the Soundgate worked somewhat better, but the HA’s sound quality was still awful. Today, when I pulled off the plastic earpiece, the wire pulled out of the HA. I pused it back in, but it doesn’t work anymore. Maybe that is a blessing. I had originally bought them for voice recognition, but my audiologist tells me that, while they amplify sounds, they do not improve speech intelligibility, plus their instructions say to look at the speaker’s mouth to improve recognition. I have found this to be true. Costco sells these at a low price, which they are worth. Tech support from Bernafon is almost non-existent. And, gosh no. I would not buy them again.

Bobbowhale,
It could be that the person setting up the Bernafon’s doesn’t know the ins and outs of setting them up for music or for general hearing. Ask them to have the Bernafon rep in the store to see if they can get them programmed any better for you.

I too have cookie bite hearing loss. I’m over in the UK. I used to play the violin at church until one day I was told I wasn’t playing in tune. I haven’t touched my violin since. Not knowing what had caused the problem, it took several years to decide it was probably the latest hearing aids I had been given by the NHS. My current NHS aids are Phonak (Nathos Nova). They are great for speech, but music is like mud. If I know a tune, I can eventually pick out the melody and sing along, sometimes in tune (I once sung in a semi-professional choir). I use the music setting, which despite adjustments, does not seem to help much. It has all caused me a great deal of embarrassment and shame and disappointment. I’ve stopped going to hear my wonderful brother-in-law’s concerts, as the ‘music’, just sounds awful. Any advice gratefully received!!