Throwing in the Towel

As a mtn biker it’s not traffic I want to hear but other riders. I can never understand any of the chatter that goes on without HA and yet they understand each other. With Covid still not eating out in restaurants and being retired it’s my only opportunity to interact with groups of people. I never want to deal with cars, lol. Everytime I have to ride on the street I have a close call with some driver not seeing me as I cross the street, etc. I’ll take the “danger” of mtn biking over road riding any day, lol.

I too thought of getting that Spectrum analyzing program to identify when voices and my HA produce the offensive break up (distortion or whatever you want to call it). Listening to the news I’ll find that most men’s voices are OK and even a few women. But then there will be a woman newscaster (and rarely a man’s voice) that will drive this distortion and of course it’s unpleasant and hard to understand. I even got a 2nd fitter and she adjusted everything to make that high frequency distortion much worse. Didn’t notice until I went out into the real world and this was after I described to her my issues.

I had to try to get the neural net program to fix this and that’s an extremely indirect process to go thru and you never know what is being changed, lol. If I listed all the pros and cons right now I would get my money back after 5+ weeks of trying to adapt to something that is only giving me marginal improvement but lots of discomfort and difficulty. I still have about 4 1/2 months in the CostCo trial period. Maybe time to try another HA brand like the KS10 before I throw in the towel for good. As far as I can tell these BiCores produce sound that’s thin, tinny and not what I would call rich and clear at all.

@maac said:

Do you like visiting places? Tourism? If you can afford a couple of trips to Brussels (175€ both ways from Zurich), or to Lyon, or a week of holidays, then you can also have a French audiologist…

Thanks for the suggestion but for various reasons that I won’t go into that will not work for me. I’m glad that you found a solution that works for you.

@fbacher1 said:

As a mtn biker it’s

@fbacher1; I’m sorry, I can’t take it any longer! Electric power biking is NOT mountain biking!

It’s motorcycling without the noise and fumes, thassall!

[I’m stating my opinion for the record … I will not be arguing the point.]

@paulpuente: Yes, I’m sure about that. Been hard tail mountain biking since 1982.

I struggled with the hard floors and the water faucets about a week. Got better without adjustments to the HAs. I’m sorry it hasn’t happened for you folks.

WH

Hi John, Your experience sounds familiar. I’m sorry it hasn’t gone better for you. I’ve read your posts over the years and seen how you were struggling. It’s another reminder that we are all different and what works for one person may not for another. I hope you ultimately discover some ways to improve things. I’ve found a tiny thing or two, and am hoping that finding enough of those will keep adding up. One interesting thing I found is that, given how much I depend on low frequency hearing, if it is really noisy and I plug my ears (which I assume blocks highs / mids more than lows), my comprehension improves. I carried on a technical conversation on a COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT that way (plugged ears, HAs off), aided also by lipreading. But I wasn’t only reading lips. I was very very surprised. Luckily I was speaking with an engineer who knew exactly what I was doing and didn’t find it odd or rude.

@paul.cleary.nz said:

Would the discussion about mountain biking with/without electric power please be moved to its own thread?

I’m not gouing to be pursuing it … it had a life of its own in this topic before I put in my $0.02 - αnd that’s all it was (and will remain) $0.02 worth. Chill.

SAme here, said my piece too…peace!

So on my 2nd tech for my HA and she really set me back a lot by turning up all the high frequencies once again after I explained to her that’s where things sound distorted. She didn’t want me using the term distorted so I said tinny, broken up, garbled, etc. I ended up going to the neural net program and tamed things a lot after I got home. Still have issues with some very nasal females on TV and a few men. I even experimented with my Apple airpod pros that have my audiogram input and those darn things DO NOT break up under the same conditions and the sound is fuller, richer (more bass since they are ear buds) and basically I can hear better most of the time. But they suffer from noise issues of course, uncomfortable to wear long term and very short battery life, terrible occlusion and so my own voice is boomy. But it was an eye opening “Pepsi” challenge. They have zero of the same tinny distortion I’m getting with the BiCores. Not sure where to go now except to tell her once again or maybe try another HA like the KS10. I was starting to think maybe it’s my ears that can’t accept this high frequency boosted so much but the Apples are putting out a very clear signal and loud to my ears that is not distorted at all.

I think the distortion I’m experiencing is the delay between the sound entering my ear and what the HA is sending to my ear, something I suspected from the start. I know it’s very small (milliseconds or a fraction of that with some HA) but I hear that as two voices or sounds slightly out of phase, garbled, tinny and distorted. And my brain is still not able to deal with that. It’s not so much it can’t deal with high frequency. The apple airbud pros, being ear buds, restrict that outside sound and so I can actually tolerate a much higher amplification than I can with my HA without it sounding garbled. I even tried some cotton balls in my ears and this “distortion” went away. But the Apples are definitely providing more amplification at 100% than my HA at max right now, probably because I reduced the volume thru the neural net program and the tech did have the gain down some. Maybe molded ear plugs would solve this if my brain can’t (5+ weeks and it hasn’t) but then I would need enough venting to not feel plugged up affecting how my voice sounds too much. I think CostCo only charges $50. for those molds from what I’ve read.

I think your experience is probably reflective of the limitations of online-only audiology service provision. The reason why no audiologists will see you when you’ve purchased hearing aids elsewhere is because the hearing industry has decimated the value of standard clinical services by offering them for free or at very low cost in order to get more footfall and sell more products.

If people want cheaper hearing aids, the only way it’ll happen is if people stop going to corporate chains for free services. The cost of these services and all the marketing is in the cost of the devices.

If you want a clinician who is more interested in your personal hearing success consider an independent. They can provide superior and personalised clinical care and are often more invested in your success because it has a greater effect on their lives and livelihood then may be the case in businesses with high employee turnover.

Clinicians need to be able to charge a reasonable amount for their clinical services because they can never compete on device cost with manufacturer-owned clinics. Seek out someone who doesn’t offer free services. You might find them to be a lot more cost effective because they don’t spend most of their time working for free.

Interesting read about Widex Pure Sound HA and the advantages of having very short sound processing delays of around 0.5 millisec. I wonder what the Rexton BiCores are because I believe it’s this delay I’m hearing as distortion. Reducing Hearing Aid Delay for Optimal Sound Quality: A New Paradigm in Processing | The Hearing Review2

The “tinny” sound and distortion of voices is due precisely to delay of the sound coming from the HA wrt the sound entering your ears and also to the non linear amplification necessary to correct for your lack of dynamic range. There is no way around it with digital HAs.
It takes time to your brain to get used to it, and it takes longer the older you are, 5 weeks is not enough. It took me two months just to be able to put up with it and around a year to get to the point where I “don’t notice it” anymore.

Thanks Maac. That’s what I suspected. So maybe a hearing aid with less delay like the Widex might sound better a lot better as claimed by Widex? I think all HA are under 10 msec delay but not by much but you I can’t seem to find the specs for that on any of them. Studies just call them A, B, C, etc and don’t identify the manufacturers. But Widex is generally the lowest at 2.5 msec with the Puresound version at an incredible 0.5 msec. I know the generally accepted value for where a human will notice the delay is said to be 10 msec. But when I plugged my ears with cotton the doubling delay/distortion, coulomb effect, I swear I’m hearing just went away even with the highest volume setting. And my Apple Ipod pros, set for my audiogram, do not experience this distortion at all so I don’t believe it’s the fault of my ears but the devices and my brain NOT able to ignore this. Of course the Apple almost totally plug your ears and there is that occlusal effect on your own voice to deal with along with discomfort and very short battery life. But all music, streamed and external, sounds amazing with the Apple. I HATE how my guitars, especially acoustic, sound with the Rexton BiCores and some songs in my car sound absolutely horrible too. Can’t win I guess.