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Good hearing aids for audio/sound professionals/engineers?

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Hello, I’m new to this forum. I am an audio professional, but I have developed moderate normal age-related high frequency loss (I’m 72).

I would like to find hearing aids that I can fully program myself. I know what things should sound like. I have been running live sound all my life. I don’t want somebody who doesn’t know what I am hearing to tell me what things are supposed to sound like.

I got a pair of KZ-ZST cheap in-ear monitors a couple years ago. They have a strong boost in the high end, and when I listen to music through them it sounds pretty much normal to me, not like I have a pillow over my head when listening to live sound or conversation.

There seems to be a massive amount of obfuscation of the technical aspects of hearing aids. I finally stumbled upon Hearing Tracker, and now I’m overwhelmed trying to filter through all the information to glean the nuggets that might be the answers to my search.

It is incredible to me that a device that costs probably about $29 to manufacture can sell for $2000.

From what I gather, hearing aids mostly are designed to work in the speech range, about 200 to 7000 Hz or so. So this tells me that I need an open-dome type receiver-in-canal so that the bass in the room is not blocked, but the higher frequencies are just boosted to bring things up to a flat frequency response.

In any case, I want full access to the frequency response curve. And I don’t want compression, adaptive digital noise filtering, frequency shifting, or anything else that makes what I hear sound different than it is in real life.

I get the impression that “self-fitting” hearing aids are dumbed down so much that there is no access to the raw capabilities of the devices.

So I hope that someone here can help me cut through the nonsense so I can home in on hearing aids that will meet my needs.

Thanks in advance

John Dudeck

11 people in this conversation14 min readJump to latest

Yeah so we’ve all been down this path before, most available can be programmed with a bit of , although there’s a quite a few that can’t, these are mostly rebranded with odd names, just stick to the known brands/models, if you ask on the forum before purchasing you’ll be sure to avoid issues, if your into DIY projects then you should read up on DIY school, so you can a basic understanding of the requirements, don’t be shy to ask questions, it’s a trial and error to find the HA that you like, so first off, do you have a Costco nearby and post a copy of your , this will help others in offering advice.

So I’ve been looking around a lot, both on hearing tracker and on eBay. I’m homing in on Oticon, and I’m going to start with older legacy hearing aids. I haven’t bought them yet, but am watching eBay for bargains. Even if the first purchase isn’t quite what I want, this way I still save lots of money, and I learn a lot more.

Can somebody help me get the Oticon Genie 2017.1 Legacy software + Genie2?

Thanks!

John

Hi there, sure but don’t forget you’ll need the Noahlink wireless programming device for OPN onwards and the FittingLink for models before then (you could if you wanted go HiPro, but I wouldn’t bother with all the flipping around getting cables, flex connecters etc) but I wouldn’t even bother with models before OPN, they are just to old now, go NW for the future as well.

Screenshot_20230411_105708

In reply to @jdudeck

Also just to let you know that if you do decide to go the latest version like More - Real / you’ll need the Noahlink wireless, as it’s the only programming device supported!

oticon cables

In reply to @tenkan

I got the file. Thanks! I have studied the info enough to already be aware of these items you mention. I am an engineer and inquisitive by nature, so I’m wanting to try out the older stuff for the interest sake. I’m pretty sure all I really want in hearing aids is a lift in the high frequencies. When I listen with in-ear monitors (eg. KZ-ZSTs) I am hearing music with a pretty good sound. Even cupping my hand around my ear to get a resonant boost in the high end is effective. When I read the marketing info about the newer Oticon hearing aids, I can’t imagine how the extreme processing they are doing would enable me to hear what other people hear when working with sound. I need my hearing aids to restore accurate hearing, not give me enhanced speech.

I installed the software. Is this compatible with the legacy hearing aids? I understood I need Genie 2017.1 for those. Or is it hidden somewhere in what I installed?

In reply to @jdudeck

@jdudeck said:

I need my hearing aids to restore accurate hearing, not give me enhanced speech.

Wow this the holy grail of fitting, but unfortunately you cannot “restore” your hearing, are designed primarily for speech foremost and are only an aid to help. But you can get things set up pretty good and a whole lot better then without HAs.

Agreed. But I’m pretty sure my hearing is not that far off, considering how good things sound with in-ear monitors. I do have increased trouble with understanding speech, but I don’t want the hearing aids to destroy my ability to know what I am hearing when listening to music. If I can turn off compression, noise reduction, and “directional” processing, and just get a better frequency response curve, I will be happy.

Sure I get what your saying, and yes you’ll be able to turn all those automatic features off, I believe they are off by default on any music program, although im not 100% sure for Oticon (as I’m not an Oticonian) they have a new music settings for the more and real, use the search button from right here on hearingtracker to find out more about how this works, as there’s been quite a bit of discussion on it.
@Volusiano has some very good posts.

I have never had one done. I don’t have a calibrated way of measuring. But from the best I can tell I pretty much follow the average curve for 70-yr-olds.

Edited
@jdudeck said:

I have never had one done.

I don’t have a calibrated way of measuring.

But from the best I can tell I pretty much follow the average curve for 70-yr-olds.

The first thing you’d want to know when trying to fit your hearing loss with hearing aids is to know what kind of hearing loss you have and don’t just assume. If you’re going to invest in anything to begin with, invest in getting an done. Most places do it for free. Get one done at Costco. You only have to invest your time, not even money. Then post your audiogram into your profile here for everyone to see so they can give you appropriate and meaningful advice that’s relevant to your specific hearing loss.

No hearing aid is going to be able to prescribe anything for you anyway if you don’t tell it what your audiogram data look like.

Can anybody tell me the pinout of the CS53 flex strips? There are three conductors in the strip, and I want to know which pin of the CS44 cable goes to which conductor of the strip.
Thanks.

Sure I do have it, but I’ll need to dig it up for you.

What are you trying to do tho?

I am going to make cables using old PS/2 mouse cords, and solder the wires straight onto flex ribbon strips, bypassing use of the little 4-pin connectors. This is the Do-It-Yourself forum, right?

Hey sure whatever you want to do, good on you for trying it out, still I’m thinking it would be easier to just buy some cables, but if you like to play around with stuff I’m sure you’ll have some fun.

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