Problems Hearing on Landline Telephone

@Roberto said:

Those old fashioned phones made forty years ago - they were brilliant. Modern phones are crap in comparison, they are made too cheaply.

Different type of construction - older handsets used coils and iron core dynamic speakers within the receiver. This made for heavy and large handsets that required a reasonable voltage to shift. ~ Modern landline handsets tend to use a piezo-ceramic speaker that needs far less power and is lighter to build into a device.

Also looking at your loss, I’m guessing that the OPN is a bit shy on power/coupling into your ear especially in the lower pitches. Your audiologist should be able to provide you with an enhanced program for phone use.

The slightly unusual shape of your loss also may indicate LF dead-spots in the basilar membrane - that aren’t easily identified due to nearby overlapping frequencies. The issue with the phone accentuates the problem as the bandwidth compresses due to the way telephones work. In your case, low pitch sounds that would sound OK one to one are likely compressed to a slightly higher, narrower band, if this band sits on a dead-spot around 500-750z then it may still be difficult to hear even when amplified. This would be true of the telecoil also, as it operates over the same bandwidth as the phone.

Your mobile phone operates on a different technology platform that isn’t constrained in the same way.

Interesting information. I would love to get an old fashioned phone. For people with hearing difficulties they are much better by far. My Gran had one and it was really good.

I have just got an email back from my audio. He says that I have the non telecoil one and he has posted me a magnet that I can try. The telecoil aid would be bigger. I am not really fussed about telecoil as I have always used phones without telecoil and its not been a problem, although admittedly it does help.

Your explanation makes sense - the sounds on the phone sound slightly distorted in a way that compression would distort I guess and for some reason the Resound seem to handle this whereas the Oticon struggle? Is this what you mean when you say that the Oticon is a bit shy on power/coupling for lower frequencies.

Is there a way to test for LF dead spots? What you say does explain why I have always found it easier to hear and understand women compared to men relatively speaking.

I have been toying with the idea of getting an REM. I did ask my audio about it and he said it would not necessarily result in a better hearing fit as its not a simple case of doing the test and adjusting the aids to match that test. I don’t know. Is it worth getting a real ear measurement in light of the issues that I am having?

Thank you.

The default Oticon prescription is a little bit weedy and they used to have issues with lower pitch resonances as their feedback manager/phase canceller wasn’t effective below 1KHz. You can easily test the other aspect - does the sound get clearer when you put a finger over the back of the receiver in your ear?

As for the dead spots - that’s a little bit of a leap based on the work that the ISVR in Southampton did a few years ago where they basically computer modelled the basilar membrane and reproduced similar audiograms for different dead-spot positions. In the HF the dead-spots produce much steeper notches but in the lows the centre tends to be flat with a ‘pie-crust’ reverse notch about 2khz. I can’t remember the precise argument, but in the LF, the larger overall movement of the basilar membrane - looking something like a tongue stretched out like an ironing board - resulted in more adjacent disturbance vs the HF sounds. The only way to check is to remove the cochlear…

REM will help identify if the aids are under powered - it’s likely they are, as there’s a lot less emphasis put on the frequencies below 1Khz than above.

Is a Captioned phone possible for you? I used CaptionCall in the US previously and was very impressed. It’s live-captioned I believe, rather than text-to-speech and being able to see the words as well as having a LOT of control over the phone volume, eq, etc made it VERY useful.

I have asked my audio to book in an REM test as I think it would be worthwhile to see what results we get. Thank you.

OK, there is an app for captioned phones too (probably many), but I don’t know how you’d talk and read it at the same time. Sorry that’s all I can think of. Good luck with the REM test.

Hi Roberto, that’s why I tell everybody to EMAIL ME instead of phoning me. Tell them with the phone words are gone with the wind. I haven’t had a HA yet as I’m looking for a good audiologist and a few other questions which I’ll post here soon, but I too have difficulty using the phone, and in person, annoying friends by my frequent “what?” lol! I know it’s a VERY serious problem we “mature” people have…

I think this is a very simple question that i am going to ask that how to solve this issue that when i am hearing voice on telephone set , then i hear the double voices whats the problem