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Why would hearing aid wearers use headphones?

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I’m sorry if this is a stupid question, but I am mystified. I have severe-profound loss and wear Oticon OPNs and stream from my iPhone. I’ve toyed with getting a gizmo for streaming TV and laptop, but haven’t really felt the need.

The question comes from recent correspondence with a niece and nephew (none of us are blood-related) in their early 30s, both of whom wear . My niece is a long-time user who wears, I think, Signia. For laptop Zooming, she wears various kinds of headphones (Jabra, Beats, corded Apple) depending upon her location; more recently she has been using AirPods. She uses AirPods for audiobooks while walking, because the in her HAs cuts out so much. As she said, she wears HA for people, and ‘not HAs’ for everything else.

My nephew is new to HA and got Phonak Paradise a few months ago. In a recent text, he said he’s never connected the BT, and so doesn’t stream his phone. I guess he does the oldey-fashioned thing of holding his phone to his head. And I just noticed in a photo that he’s wearing big huge headphones while working on his MacBook.

This is supposed to be the digital-native, wired generation, right? Is it possible that I am more techie than they are? Or is there something that I am missing? I did see another post here about wearing headphones over HAs.

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I suspect it might be any one of several reasons. My aids, for example, do stream, however, listening to music through a speaker sounds better than when it streams - so a headphone would sound better for me (I just don’t care that much so don’t ;). Also, if you have low energy Bluetooth you can’t connect to a laptop or desktop easily, so using headphones could be more convenient. That I’ve done before.

I use external over the ear headphones for streaming for the following reasons:

  1. to give a visible signal to my wife that I’m listening to a podcast
  2. audio quality is better for music / videos (Bose headphones).
    Hearing loss is mild/moderate.

I stream music to my phonak paradise and think it sounds great. With my loss if I try headphones without aids I pretty much hear nothing. If I crank up the volume in order to hear on headphones I’m afraid I’d do more damage to what little hearing I have. Or damage the speakers on the headphones. Doesn’t wearing headphones a lot create the possibility of damaging normal hearing.?

Easy answer. Headphones have more musical feeling than . I do often if I want to seriously listen to music. I will use Headphone or In-ear headphone. It always give the feeling of music more than HAs.

You don’t deal with feedback (if any), you don’t deal with out of tone or sound weird because of the way your fitter fitted your HAs. Good or bad.

Headphones will always deliver the sound you used to hear it and loved it. HAs on the other hand, if it sounds good. It’s great. If it does not sound like what you like. You may feel like you don’t want to listen to music via HAs.

Also, this is not the same as “speech understandibility”. Music and speech are different. So HAs that make you understand speech may not suit for music listening. It still depends on how well fitting.

So its not strange that she will wear HAs only the time she need to speak with people, but not on the music she loves with HAs.

Music is not about “understand it”. It’s all about feeling and rhythm.

I also wear my with around-the-ear headphones, in an effort to minimize losing out on those frequencies, etc., that I can’t hear well w/out the HAs. I really would prefer not to have to listen to only “part” of the music.

I very strongly agree that hearing music as it was intended and understanding speech are different goals with different solutions. I have seen (admittedly relatively rare – see below) research that backs that up. Streaming music to my HAs is a very disappointing experience. I wear Phonak Marvels, so I can use the phone app to very crudely tune down some of the speech function. My ideal would be a Music mode that benefits from truly proactive work toward improvements in engineering, design, and tuning for music specifically, leaving off all of the speech tricks. Alas, progress in the industry seems very narrowly focussed on understanding speech.

I personally would very happily trade some amount of speech function for the best “true” music listening experience possible. I expect that I am in a small minority of HA users, and that the HA companies just wouldn’t recoup costs of focussed work in this direction. :cry:

I do have streamers. I have a mild-to-moderate hearing loss and I do use open domes, but since they cannot provide bass amplification, music (and everything else) sounds really tinny. Also, I’m hearing every background noise. With headphones covering my ears, I:

  • Block noise
  • Have bass amplification

Also, I’m used to hear music with my hearing loss. It is the way I learned to listen and it is the way I like it.

Thank you everyone. I’m getting the clear sense that it really makes a difference for music. I’m guessing that my niece might benefit from different aids – an Oticon/iPhone combo for example – for the audio and zoom stuff she does. I don’t know why my nephew hasn’t experimented with the on his Paradise – will talk to him about that when I see him.

I have new Starkey Evolv- and use headphones for computer audio watching YouTube videos (Computer will not to ). I use the Bluetooth for streaming music or TV from my ROKU app (via android phone). The streaming sounds great when I turn off the hearing aid part. Example: when mowing the lawn, I go to the HA app and turn off amplification, yet the phone is still BT so playing music will still work without hearing the mower noise.

I do something similar when walking. I stream audiobooks from my iPhone to my Oticons, and slightly turn down the volume on my and slightly turn up the vol on my iPhone. The book is clear in both ears and takes precedence, but I have enough situational awareness that I hear traffic or, say, a neighbor calling my name.

I, too, have a profound hearing loss and really miss the ability to hear music properly. I listen only to classical music and opera and have an extensive collection of recordings and a fine audio system, but I gave up listening to it years ago as the hearing aids make it unpleasant.

I use Phonak M70 aids and see no way to use headphones with them. Wouldn’t feedback be an insurmountable obstacle?

If I take the out there are no headphones loud enough to do any good for me.

@Jthomas said:

I use Phonak M70 BTE aids and see no way to use headphones with them. Wouldn’t feedback be an insurmountable obstacle?

You need a pair of Over the ear headphones, so the actual hearing aid mics are inside the padding.
You also need a dedicated Music program for your Phonaks.
Whether you choose Bluetooth Headphones, or wired, just make certain your ears are completely covered.
If you get feedback (not expected, if you follow the above advice) just decrease the Phonak volume a click or 2.

The older Phonaks lack the input headroom needed for high fidelity sound, because they only go to ±99dB.

Widex, Oticon, and others have input headroom of 113dB.

Here’s an explaination from Oticon:

image

These are not “older” Phonaks. They are only two years old, and they do have a music program but I can’t tell that it makes any difference.

Your video link doesn’t work.

Try this one.

WH

I just got a pair of Kirkland KS10’s and in general like them. I was very disappointed though in the quality of streaming music, almost no bass, very tinny sound (I have open domes). Since streaming is important to me I was seriously considering returning them but then discovered by accident that if I stick my fingers in my ears the sound is vastly improved. I’ve started sticking foam earplugs in my ears when streaming music and the sound is on par with my Sony WF-1000 earbuds, with the advantage that the high frequency loss I have is compensated for. An added benefit is with the KS10’s I can still hear ambient sound since the microphones are outside the ear canal. Experienced users probably know this but I’ve had these things for less than a week and I’m still making discoveries.

In reply to @Jthomas

@Jthomas said:

These are not “older” Phonaks.

Ummm, the Marvel series was introduced in 2018, so compared to the current Paradise series they are “older tech”.

Phonak improved the Music issue with the Paradise, although many members of this forum are very pleased with music on the Marvels.
It really comes down to your audi’s ability to tune them.

Sorry about the link, and thanks to @WhiteHat for finding the current one.

@jones.chuck55 said:

. Experienced HA users probably know this but I’ve had these things for less than a week and I’m still making discoveries.

Good for you, I’ve suggested the foamy fix to a few members here. Another plus is you can mute the mics, and further enhance the sound, as well as make them “Noise Cancelling” earbuds!

Not sure if Costco sells the Phonak Active Vent for the KS 10, but I’ve heard positive feedback on the system.

I’ve thought about this for a bit. There was a period after I was fitted with that I fought with my computer to do zoom and google meet sessions. I could stream youtube all day, but the minute I tried to zoom or google meet, the connection dropped. For a while I wore my sennheiser headset. It was a bit tricky getting it to sit just right over the HAs and my ears and my computer glasses comfortably. Then I got a tv connector off ebay and that is like a dream. But that was a reason I wore a headset.

WH

In reply to @flashb1024

I remember that the Paradise came out just as I ordered my aids. It took at least six months to get a battery version so I guess the Paradise was already on the market by then. Would love to upgrade to Paradise, but not interested in shelling out another $6.5k so soon after the previous purchase

In reply to @capaz

Not sure which hearing aids you have, or how long you have worn them, but a lot of the features can be disabled via a custom mode for quiet (very simple amplification and compression) or for music (not streaming, but an external speaker or live) depending on the manufacturer. If you are still having issues, maybe look around for a k-amp which is an old linear hearing aid circuit type that’s supposed to be good for music but can be fitted for prescription. Personally, when I saw how much the data is compressed for hearing aid bluetooth, that put my expectations in check immediately. My hearing is impaired, but I can still hear when a sound file was very compressed. For the record I havent tried hearing aid music streaming (phone isnt compatible) so maybe I dont really know

Thanks for all this info - I hadn’t heard about using the foamy ear plugs to help improve sound. I also had forgotten that I can reduce the volume on my Oticon aids on my phone app and still hear the streaming at the volume controlled by my phone. I used to do that when I first got them 4 years ago and forgot somewhere along the line.

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