Can clean guitar sound natural with hearing aids?

Hi. New to the forum and first-time HA user. Just got a pair of Unitron Moxi 12 aids today. I’ve only had them in for 6 hours so far, but already have some impressions, mostly positive. I could hear the audiologist’s voice clearly, even when she walked away from me and turned her back while speaking. And understanding speech is the main reason I went for the evaluation in the first place, so that was a good test result.

It’s very odd hearing the sharpness of simple things like ruffling sheets of paper again. It’s sort of a tinny, metallic sound almost, but before the HAs those sounds were muffled at best.

But one slight disappointment so far is the sound of my guitar, particularly on the high E string. Both my electric and acoustic sound like I have a chorus effect active - it’s a slight warbling sound, instead of a clean natural sound.

The audiologist set 3 main programs into the remote: #1 automatic; #2 for noisy rooms like a restaurant; #3 for music. The #3 music setting does have sharper highs and more pronounced lows than the other two settings. #2 sounds slightly quieter than either of the other two. But when I mute the HAs, the guitar sounds natural with none of the warbling effect, and when I switch the HAs to any of the other 3 settings, the warbling is there.

Maybe I need to get used to them, but I hadn’t noticed this unnatural sound until I played the guitar. I listened to a few rock songs through my PC speakers and it did seem to sound better with the HA programs as opposed to mute. Particularly, with the #3 music setting, I could hear the cymbals, and the vocals sounded natural.

Do some HAs handle tones like a guitar string differently or more naturally than others? Or would all of them probably add this effect to the sound?

I really never had a problem hearing either the electric or acoustic guitar without aids. I think the 6 open strings range from 82 Hz to 330 Hz, and the highest note at the 22nd fret is 1174 Hz. But there are also overtone harmonics at higher frequencies from what I understand, so I am likely hearing the guitar sounds somewhat muted without the aids.

Musical instrument frequency chart - it don’t get any better than this. I posted this about a year ago.

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I’m also new to hearing aids… one month. You have a similar hearing result. Mine are Sonic Flip 100s and they have changed everything on the voice end for me, as well, especially during meetings, etc. I have spent a lot of time with my audiologist dialing in my HAs. On the music program, I actually had her add some lows. Because the highs can be brittle (also an acoustic guitar player), adding lows in warms the sound a bit. Because there’s no compression or sound reduction with most HAs on a music program, this is accentuated. I have found that turning the volume down 2-3 clicks when I’m playing cuts that brittleness out. The lows still come through just fine. When listening to music at low levels, I don’t mess much with the volume much, but when a bit louder or in a movie/concert setting, my HA volume goes down - and I hear the higher frequency well. It’s nice to hear the detail in music again. I haven’t had the audi turn down the overall volume on my musc program yet, but may opt to do that this week when I’m in. I have never turned them up, only down on the music program.

We also added some 500hz- to 2khz on my main program, but not on my Noise program because I really need the focus on voice there. We’ve tried a few different settings for the 4th program, but the one I’m keeping is a modification of the music program, which opens all the mics, but also adds medium noise reduction, medium voice focus and we added some lows to that, as well. It’s great for driving while listening to music, or when people sit in the back seat. The noise reduction helps with road noise.

If you play guitar a lot, it wouldn’t hurt to take it in with you on an appointment, but keep in mind that your volume when playing is perceived louder because your ears are close to the instrument. Must make sure you keep headroom to adjust volume up and down in different music environments. After 32 years in broadcasting and playing in a few bands, I was dismayed at hearing loss. But, it’s amazing the difference HAs have made. Because my audi knows my background, she’s not hesitant with me right there with her tweaking frequencies, etc. I’m almost at the point of dialing them in and not going every week or so to tweak more.

Good luck - and play on!

Mark

@johnh123 said:

Not sure where the feedback mgr. is in my Phonak over the ear. Thanks.

Usually it’s not something you can control. It’s something the service provider has to set up for you. It involves running the feedback analyzer, which sweeps some white noise across the frequencies to determine where the feedback occurs and implement a variety of strategies to control the feedback, like limiting gain, slight frequency shifting (in the 10 Hz neighborhood), and phase shifting.

After the feedback analyzer is run, then the feedback manager is enabled in the programming of your HAs by your provider. Then the feedback manager would be “on” all the times. You don’t get to control it by turning it on or off. But you may be able to chose which program has the feedback manager enabled and which do not. So you might be able to just turn it off for the music program only (if you have one) and use this music program when you play your guitar. But for other programs, you can still have the feedback manager enabled. I know my OPN works like this. But i don’t know if other HA brands/models can be done similarly like this or not.