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Cicadas

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When I got hearing aids for the first time about a year ago there were all of those customary revelations as to sounds I had been missing that were being discovered. Here it is a year later and I had been hearing the cicadas in the evening for the past few weeks and to me it was how loud they were that I had forgotten. My daughter came to visit and commented to me about how loud they were since she live in an area not having trees (a new neighborhood that used to be farm fields). When she left the idea occurred to me to take out my hearing aids and to my amazement I couldn’t hear them at all! Wow! Then I realized, thinking back, that it had been many years since I had heard them.

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I found the same thing! amazed what I had missed. When I listen carefully, I hear cicadas, crickets and bats simultaneously, each are slightly different. I can hear them outside without (very subdued) but 1st heard them with HAs in the house. With the HAs out, I can’t hear them through the window. What frequencies do you suppose these are? I am trialing Costco Brio-R at 70% target gain. When I go for an evening ‘cricket walk’ I am maxing the volume, though this does make (for me) certain sounds strangely loud (like my shoes scraping the sidewalk).

I found your post interesting. I thought it was just me thinking the cicadas & crickets were loud. I can also hear them with out my in but louder with them it’s amazing. I also find that certain sounds are loud to me too like paper crumpling , plastic bags opening etc. I’m not sure if any of this is normal or not since these are my first pair of HA.
Miki

I think it’s normal of your hearing loss is high frequency. Others I’ve talked to locally have made the same comment. It is possible to take the edge off of some of it. My audiologist did it saying it’s called “sound smoothing”.

Here is something I read on the Internet …

"One of the biggest shocks people experience when wearing new hearing aids is how loud everyday sounds now seem. The toilet flushing thunders like Niagara Falls! Clinking cutlery sounds like jackhammers. Initially, you may find you cannot stand rustling papers, running water and other everyday sounds.

However, with time, your brain will learn to turn down its internal volume control so these sounds become bearable. This is another reason you need to persevere during those first 90 days. Unfortunately, many people give up before this happens. If they had kept using their hearing aids a little longer, they would have succeeded."

Since income is hypothesized to be related to degree of hearing loss,
both aided and unaided subjects were asked to complete the following subjective measures of
hearing loss: Consumers were segmented into one of ten groups (called deciles) based on
their responses to four measures of hearing loss:
Number of ears impaired (1 or 2)
Score on the Gallaudet Scale6 : An eight point scale in which the respondent indicated
whether they can understand speech under the following conditions: “whisper across
a quiet room”, “normal voices across a quiet room”, “shouts across a quiet room”,
“loud speech spoken into their better ear”, “not able to understand loud speech in
their better ear”; In addition, “tell noises from each other”, “hear loud noises at all”,
“hear any sound or any noise”.
http://www.artofhearing.com.au/hearing-loss-and-dementia.html8

— Updated —

Since income is hypothesized to be related to degree of hearing loss,
both aided and unaided subjects were asked to complete the following subjective measures of
hearing loss: Consumers were segmented into one of ten groups (called deciles) based on
their responses to four measures of hearing loss:
Number of ears impaired (1 or 2)
Score on the Gallaudet Scale6 : An eight point scale in which the respondent indicated
whether they can understand speech under the following conditions: “whisper across
a quiet room”, “normal voices across a quiet room”, “shouts across a quiet room”,
“loud speech spoken into their better ear”, “not able to understand loud speech in
their better ear”; In addition, “tell noises from each other”, “hear loud noises at all”,
“hear any sound or any noise”.
http://www.artofhearing.com.au/hearing-loss-and-dementia.html

In reply to @Nebraskan

Michigan cicadas sound higher pitched. I found this info: Frequency is directly affected by the size of the insects and, more correctly, the size of the organs associated with sound production and amplification (timbals, abdomen etc.). Smaller cicadas with small timbals tend to have higher frequency songs. Most cicadas in the genus Cicadetta Group VII10 call with major frequency components at above 17kHz (good human ears can receive sound up to 18-20 kHz). Most medium sized cicadas produce sound in the 4-16kHz range. Large cicadas normally have most dominant frequency components between 3-12kHz. The song of the Bladder Cicada Cystosoma saundersii5is incredibly low pitched and peaks below 1kHz. This is due to the incredibly large abdomen and large timbals.

My hearing loss is mid frequency, worse between 1000-3000Hz, so I imagine our cicadas are medium sized. Like Miki, the sounds (s)he reports are terribly annoying to me, but I LOVE hearing the insects.

Shredbetty it’s she:o. These are sounds of summer to me & kinda nice to listen too. I took mine out while outside & boy what a difference.I didn’t realize what I wasn’t hearing. It’s past 90 days for me so i just have to keep tweaking .

@shredbetty61 said:

Michigan cicadas sound higher pitched. I found this info: Frequency is directly affected by the size of the insects and, more correctly, the size of the organs associated with sound production and amplification (timbals, abdomen etc.). Smaller cicadas with small timbals tend to have higher frequency songs. Most cicadas in the genus Cicadetta Group VII call with major frequency components at above 17kHz (good human ears can receive sound up to 18-20 kHz). Most medium sized cicadas produce sound in the 4-16kHz range. Large cicadas normally have most dominant frequency components between 3-12kHz. The song of the Bladder Cicada Cystosoma saundersiiis incredibly low pitched and peaks below 1kHz. This is due to the incredibly large abdomen and large timbals.

My hearing loss is mid frequency, worse between 1000-3000Hz, so I imagine our cicadas are medium sized. Like Miki, the sounds (s)he reports are terribly annoying to me, but I LOVE hearing the insects.

— Updated —

Shredbetty it’s she:o. These are sounds of summer to me & kinda nice to listen too. I took mine out while outside & boy what a difference.I didn’t realize what I wasn’t hearing. It’s past 90 days for me so i just have to keep tweaking .

@shredbetty61 said:

Michigan cicadas sound higher pitched. I found this info: Frequency is directly affected by the size of the insects and, more correctly, the size of the organs associated with sound production and amplification (timbals, abdomen etc.). Smaller cicadas with small timbals tend to have higher frequency songs. Most cicadas in the genus Cicadetta Group VII call with major frequency components at above 17kHz (good human ears can receive sound up to 18-20 kHz). Most medium sized cicadas produce sound in the 4-16kHz range. Large cicadas normally have most dominant frequency components between 3-12kHz. The song of the Bladder Cicada Cystosoma saundersiiis incredibly low pitched and peaks below 1kHz. This is due to the incredibly large abdomen and large timbals.

My hearing loss is mid frequency, worse between 1000-3000Hz, so I imagine our cicadas are medium sized. Like Miki, the sounds (s)he reports are terribly annoying to me, but I LOVE hearing the insects.

Here’s one area digital aids get to be too smart for their own good. My Widex aids, all 3 generations that I have had, would completely cancel cicadas, crickets, frogs… Finally fed up with having no ambient noise I worked with my audiologist to get it back to some degree. I used to fume when we went camping and older model Widex would noise cancel the crickets, also resulting in a huge decrease in volume of spoken voice as well, and making people sound strange.

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