Listening to music with Hearing Aids

I am wearing 4 year old Oticon OPN 1 HAs and have had a good experience streaming to my aids. I prefer to have it connect to my portable tiny “Fugoo” speaker so it fills the room, but music sounds good to me. IT makes sense to trial different brands to see if you can improve your experience! Stick with it and hope it works out. I studied piano for years and my son is an operatic tenor. There are times if music is playing through my car radio that it takes me longer to recognize the song than it used too. I assume it is because certain frequencies aren’t being picked up, but it doesn’t sound “bad.” I am being an evaluated for a Cochlear Implant in my left ear due to recent severe ski slope lose. I am pretty much completely deaf in my left mid/upper frequencies and think that is why recognition takes longer. My right ear is moderate/severe loss. I am nervous how music will sound with a CI. I’ve read studies that say it takes our brains 6-9 months of full daily wear to adjust and relearn how to “hear” after adding HAs to stimulate the nerves, so it may improve for you - I hope.!

Neville, my wife and I did not have any expectations specifically for music, but one can’t blame us for not being happy not getting anything at all for music from the top notch HAs straight out of the box.
There is no mention of music being a problem for HAs on Signia and Phonak websites. All they talk about is how good their technology is, and how good life will be with Bluetooth, direct streaming, etc.

She has been using headphones for a couple of years now for watching TV or for YouTube and TV on demand on her laptop. Music from speakers isn’t good at all, with headphones it is better.
Now with the HAs inside her ears, she still uses headphones, but the HAs don’t give any improvements.

At our next visit we will ask the audiologist to do something about the music program. I am gathering information what other people recommend be done, just in case our audiologist is not aware of it. I may start a new thread on this.
Thanks for your response.

My wife is a musical ant-talent in the sense that she can’t sing well at all. But she likes music, mainly ballet music, and the Viennese and Hungarian operettas, waltzes, polka’s etc. That is what we have been brought up on.
I am reading that there are HAs that can render music well. There is a recent topic where a pianist is looking for a replacement of his old Starkey HAs that were excellent for his needs, but so far hasn’t found anything. Signia could not help him.
We are limited to Signia and Phonak, because that is what Specsavers in Australia sell for affordable price.
We will talk to the audiologist and try to do something with the music program.

If your wife is using open domes then this can have a detrimental effect on how music sounds - at her next appointment get your wife to bring in some of the music she likes to listen to (or play some direct from her phone if streaming is enabled) and see if the clincian can adjust it in the room. quite often music can sound tinny and unatural through hearing aids so a reduction in High frequencies / boost in low and mids can help.

@jfranek43 said:

I have read somewhere that most audiologists would not consider fitting for music to be part of their role, and would not know what to do.

This sucks. It could be true, but if it is it sucks. Music is a big part of hearing. I know a great musically inclined clinician in New Zealand if you want to go on a trip.

Is your wife’s hearing loss the loss that is in your avatar?

There are some very well understood rules about listening to music with hearing aids. You can easily find them if you Google, but the ones I remember off-hand are:

Use a specific music program on your hearing aid.

In that program:

1. you need feedback suppression to either be off or set to a specific music setting or at least set to the minimum that prevents feedback.

2.Turn off any frequency compression, frequency shifting or “sound recover” type of technology.

3.Turn up the MPO settings.

4.Keep the level compression as low as you can, but obviously avoid clipping.

5.Turn off noise suppression, noise limiting, wind noise suppression and other such things.

Listening with just one ear, are there noises that sound particularly prominent? If so you could ask for those frequencies to be reduced a bit. Do the same with the other ear.

I find that you can massively improve things by doing this. There is no reason why the settings for music should be the same as the ones for general conversation.

Also lastly some hearing aids work much better for music than others. I like my current Resound Ones, but no doubt others here can tell you others that work well for them.

It’s true that hearing aids can never give you back the quality of sound you have before you needed hearing aids. But you certainly can get to a place where you can still enjoy music. It needs some work though.

I work for Specsavers in Australia and I would (or have a go at it at least). Just ask the clinician if its ok.At a guess I think it would only take 15 minutes or so to tweak a dedicated music program - Just let them know in advance so they can allow a bit more time. Lower price shouldnt equal less service. Good Luck

Yes, Neville. I am posting here on my wife’s behalf, and the chart in my profile is her hearing test.

That is what I intend to do - ask the audiologist to wipe any other settings out.

Interesting thing - today, my wife is using the Recorded Music program throughout the day. She does not notice any difference from the Universal program, and neither am I or our daughter when we communicate with her.
I don’t know what to think of this. Either the music program is a copy of the universal program, or my wife does not need speech recognition algorithms to understand speech in quiet environment.

I am sure the audiologist will try to do it. We are going there after lunch - she said it won’t be as busy as mornings.
At the last session, we spent most time trying to get the Signia Assistant installed on my wife’s mobile. The audiologist could not manage to do it. .
She rang Signia support, and the guy told her the Galaxy A71 wasn’t compatible, so it won’t work.
Galaxy A71 is not on Signia’s list as a compatible phone for Android direct BT streaming.
That list is out of date.
A71 is compatible, it supports the ASHA protocol. Direct streaming works on it.
When we got home I re-read a Signia paper about how to install the Assistant, and managed to do it. The trick is that the hearing aids must be paired with the phone not via the phone’s settings, but from within the app. So first connect with the OR code, and once the FM connection works, go to the Settings of the app, and connect with BT.
The BT connection gives a few more controls, and a mask mode. And the Assistant.

I like your comment that lower price should not mean less service.

@jfranek43 said:

Having the new HAs, my wife expected that she will get better quality of music from the laptop, but it is not the case.

Disappointing thing is that even direct streaming of music via BT from her smartphone to the HAs is poor quality.

It is absolutely true that the music quality coming from a laptop or smartphone is like already 2nd or 3rd generation. It’s simply never going to be the same as hearing music live at a concert/symphony for starters. So there should be some “expectation level” setting when one wears aids given the sound wave compression and crappy music streaming from who knows what source.

I also had a pair of Sennheisers that not only worked great with my laptop, but also on phone calls when I was in an awkward transition to an earlier Oticon OPN that had NO phone streamer out for over a year.

The basic nature of how HAs process sound is going to render that inferior to perfect hearing for NOW. Maybe technology will catch up - not sure how if frequencies have to be compressed.

We are not used to listening to music in concert halls or opera houses, so we are not comparing with that.

My wife does not listen to the laptop via its tiny speakers. She uses wired Sennheiser HD599 headphones. Laptop Realtek audio processing is not bad. In any case, she is not very demanding. Mostly watching ballets or opera/operetta clips on Youtube. Andre Rieu too. Unfortunately, when she says music sounds bad, she can’t describe it in detail.

There are many success stories on this forum where musicians managed to configure satisfactory music programs in their HA. We’ll try that, and if that fails, we’ll have to try to figure out a good EQ setting for her.

@jfranek43 said:

Yes, Neville. I am posting here on my wife’s behalf, and the chart in my profile is her hearing test.

Ah, that’s a substantial hearing loss for a first time hearing aid user; adaptation is going to take some time. I would strongly consider getting custom tips made. But in terms of being successful, unless something happened that caused her hearing loss all of a sudden, she has to overcome decades of auditory deprivation–like strengthing a leg after decades of wearing a cast. Things may sound sharp and intrusive for a while. That level of loss over 2kHz is also more frequently associated with a loss of frequency acuity which may or may not lead to pitch-smearing that is in the ear rather than the hearing aid, and can impact musical quality. For the music program to sound better in the immediate, you might need to back right off of those highs–she may be able to add them back in over time. If she’s not a serious audiophile, I do still think it should be reasonable to expect that the clinician can get music sounding ‘comfortable’ through the hearing aids. ‘Nice’, even. It helps to have music that she is familiar with in the office while adjustments are being made, and yes it helps if she can think about how to describe her perception.

@jfranek43 said:

Either the music program is a copy of the universal program, or my wife does not need speech recognition algorithms to understand speech in quiet environment.

A lot of the automatic features turn off in a truly quiet environment. Most of the algorithms in hearing aids are attempting to manage background noises and babble. Keep in mind when you do end up going somewhere busy that there are also limits on what a hearing aid can do in noise, particularly when a hearing loss gets to the level of what you have posted. Hearing aids on their own can boost the signal to noise ratio by maybe 4-6 dB. It is not uncommon for individuals with that level of hearing loss to need a signal to noise ratio boost of 9-12 dB to be able to understand target speech in noise, and that sort of boost can only be accomplished by a remote mic system.

Thanks, Neville.
Things are not as bad as the test chart indicates. We met in a restaurant with friends before Christmas before she had the HAs and she could converse with people sitting next to her.
At home, it was worse, because a lot of ‘conversation’ is done in passing, not face-to-face, or even talking from another room.
In this regard, the HAs are a big improvement. I don’t think the (expensive) remote microphone will be necessary. We only go to restaurants a few times a year meeting with a few friends.
Meeting with our teenage grandsons is a bigger challenge. Their speech is a pool of mud with American accent. Their father is American. I can understand about half of what he says. He speaks clearly only when he is asking Siri something. The Signia app has a face mask mode - it may help to listen to them.
Custom tips? The Insio is all custom. No tips.
Regarding music - as I said before, she has distortion even without HAs.
Her hearing loss worsened from mild to what it is now within - I would say - 6-10 months.
We will try to compensate with an EQ for headphones if the music program is no help.