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Hearing While Playing and Listening to Music

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AudiogramDirect is a feature in Phonak Target that lets you do hearing threshold testing using your hearing aids. If your loss is sensorineural you can you use the resulting to fine tune your hearing aids.

Here’s a link to Phonak’s ‘stellar’ documentation11. :wink:

When I test for continuity between my results and the results from my most excellent audi, we’re pretty close. The results I get doing my own testing are a tad more optimistic: I know when the tone is being presented so I can better pick it out from all the tinnitus.

Well the documentation is at least a starting point. Thanks, I’ll definitely spend some time with it.

This thread came to mind this evening. A buddy of mine that listened to Robert Cray back in the day called. After the visit I listened to Robert Cray’s “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark“. It sure brought back memories. My Phonak Audeo M aids with aggressive Sound Recover 2 did pretty good, not perfect but pretty darn good. Look at my , I still enjoy music.

Was a big fan of Mr. Cray. Saw him quite a few times and used to cover a few of his tunes. Glad you can still enjoy it.

Edited

This thread resonates a lot with me. I’ve been playing guitar and singing for other folks for 55 years and started suffering from hearing loss several years ago. I also have the problem of not knowing if I’m on key. Because of this and Covid-19, the only time I get out my guitar nowadays is at home. But still, the guitar sounds a little odd to me. I have had the KS8s for a little more than a year and I don’t know if they can be adapted to help.
The programs my audi set up are:

Automatic
Noise/Party
Listening to Music
Live Music
Playing Music
Television

and of course,
Cafe
Cinema & Theater
Group Conversation

I would really like to make better sense of what I hear.
My is from 3/2019.
Getting another brand of aids right now is out of the question.
Any suggestions would be appreciated

The not having the ability to tell if you’re in key is the thing that has really had the biggest effect on my confidence and ability to sing with others. This is after a 45 year career of making music, mostly as a lead singer in small and large ensembles.
Take a look at some of the suggestions above. Turning off Sound Recover seems to make a lot of sense for my hearing loss and looking at your probably yours as well. If you ever get back to performing, in ear monitors made it very doable for me. I would take my aids out and just use the in ears as they sounded a lot better than using the aids as monitors.
Good luck trying to achieve what you’re after. If I find anything helpful I’ll be sure to pass it along.

I am an 82 year old amateur musician who recently took up classical guitar about the same time I realized my hearing was deteriorating.

I purchsed a pair of used Phonak V70s off ebay, and acquired the Target software. I was able to hear all the high frequency sounds that have been missing, and set up a dedicated music program with anything that could change the pitch or distort the sound like sound recovery turned off.

What a difference. Things like ghost fret buzzing dissipeared, and the guitar really sounds natural.

Being able to sit in front of my computer with the guitar in hand, while making programming changes has been fantastic for me.

You should give it a try.

Edited

Get ready to go down a rabbit hole:
1 - hearing aids are programmed for speech recognition, not music
2 - hearing aids heavily depend on active sound processors
3 - audiologists do not know how to program aids for performing musicians
4 - the so called music channel is designed for listening to recorded music, not live music.
So you have to do it is get the aids re-programmed with all sound processors turned off, and at worst, anti feed back set to mild or music. Definitely not any pitch shifters / transposers
You need to get an in ear probe tube test using pink noise and pure tone - not recorded speech.
You will need to open up the to at least 115db to keep them from clamping down on sound. Yes that is high but music peaks out that loud. And orchestra will hit 120db easy.
You will need to download a pitch to frequency convertor chart
https://pages.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreqs.html8
to help your audi identify what pitches are giving you problems. But I can tell you now it will be 500hz, 750hz and about 2K. Just play a piano or guitar and make note of which notes stand out and which are soft, then use the chart to convert to audi speak.
Yes you can but it is not a thing for the faint hearted - you need to know audio production basics and how to operate hearing aid software. But taken one step at a time, it is entirely doable…

This has been a valuable thread. I have had progressive hearing loss for almost 30 years. After trying several models over the years and previously owning Oticon Epoq I now have Widex Beyonds. I didn’t know at the time (4 yrs ago) that they were better for music, but I listen to a lot of music and that probably influenced my choice.

I have found that my high frequency hearing loss has now become more limiting for my music appreciation. I have come to realize this over the past several years in interesting ways.

First I now find that I sometimes have to concentrate to recognize the song even when it is something I have enjoyed for many years. The frequency shift in my program alters the pitch enough to make even favorites sound different enough to miss initially. This is especially true for instrumentals.

Second, I find it hard to enjoy music I have never heard before. I suspect that with music I know and enjoy, my brain fills in what subtilties I can’t hear with my memory of it. I can’t do that with music I have never heard. before. That is a loss that I have more recently come to notice since I use to add music to my collection by listening to Pandora or other music streaming services to hear new things. The effect is that I have not added any new music previously unknown to me in a few years. A new and interesting piece playing in the background while I work doesn’t catch my attention the way it did before. That’s been tough to accept, but forces me to be more proactive to seek out new music and consciously listen to it.

Of things that help I have found that I actually have better luck listening to music WITHOUT my aids in. Whether I use headphones or even earbuds the richness still comes through better. I assume it is because of larger more powerful speakers than those on HAs… I also find that wearing noise cancelling headphones is the best of all as background noise can have a significant detrimental impact on recognition.

I guess that the difficulty for a performer to hear pitch correctly shows up with listeners in a similar way. The loss is the same.

This really resonates with me. One way I can bring the house down with laughter is to try and tune my guitar in front of an audience. Very embarrassing! And I used to have nearly spot-on perfect pitch until my 50s. From what I hear in this thread, one is better off using a pair of inexpensive in-ear amplifiers.

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