Close to despair after months of audiologists (note: PLURAL!) attempting recovery of music and speech

It’s just that. . .if I had to take a wild guess just based on comparing these audiograms, the audiogram from Advanced Hearing Aid Centre looks more accurate. I wondered if the hearing aids from that location had sounded the best to you.

Tall, narrow. Glad you are in molds.

I fully agree and understand with your topic title - it IS close to despair technology and financial means and other things have left us vulnerable. I don’t know sign language and probably. too old by now to pick it up like any other language - if there are no close-captions then I can’t know what’s going on half the time. This all makes me quite uneasy - not suggesting one way or the other to you but the whole thing all of commerce seems a bait and switch / no supply to match demand / and a shell game.

I feel as though I’m painting myself or someone is painting me into a corner and it seems to have its inception with the whole covid toilet paper shortage. I do most of my shopping on Amazon out of necessity for the most part now that I’m living sort of in the middle of nowhere with no shops. But it started out for me with Mango Tea which I was just short of addicted to and then it was only available from questionable sources on Amazon and for an amount 5 times what it used to be. Once I succumbed and gave in to my addiction and paid the black market price and IT WAS NEVER DELIVERED. First it was then it was running behind, then it was “lost” by shipper or seller or somebody. Its continued on since then but now, my 2 poor little dogs who are aging, like me and have little to look forward to especially in winter and the treats I used to order them now sell for scalper prices and they keep going up to the point just shy of absolutely unaffordable - and for myself I try to buy sugar free hard candy for dry mouth from prescriptions and now they are all UNAVAILABLE except at exorbitant price and even those sources are drying up. This can’t be an accident, my instincts tells me this is not going to end well in the NEW WORLD ORDER of things.

I’m not trying to change topics, yours here with hearing aids and Beltone and switching offices but not switching - all makes me very uneasy. There used to be laws that protected us from monopolies but I fear there is some global cartel somewhere controlling these things. And WHY SHOULD HEARING AIDS BE ANY DIFFERENT? Since most of our drugs are manufactured elsewhere, much of it like anything else - in China - our once said to be based on GREAT American ingenuity - we could be brought to our knees if supplies of drugs were cut off. People with diabetes, high blood pressure, chemotherapy, anesthesia, antibiotics. During covid they postponed almost all surgeries.

So now add in hearing aids and domes and molds and accessories, wax guards, etc.

I’m sorry I really am not meaning to detract from your topic which is very relevant and important.

I don’t know what else to say so I will stop but just as some other poster here said that he was for “calling out” misbehavior - this seems negligent or suspicious that someone such as you used to have hearing aids that performed QUITE WELL and now they or a suitable substitute can’t be found even scouring in the internet.

I don’t have the financial capability of rolling the dice - the sums of money being talked about here is nerve wracking.

I WILL SAY in defense of ear molds they have worked out fairly well for me if that can be said even though, like you, I cannot understand much of what is being said (or the voice mail messages I keep saving hoping to decipher later) - but the ear molds have advantages even if no improvement in sound - is the wax trap things that I used to dread when it would be time to change them because Phonak has these obnoxious little wheel things - and sometimes when I would remove the tips to try to replace it some key part would bounce off my bed where I did my changes in hopes of preventing catastrophe - and I would finally give up after searching off and on for hours - then a day or two later there it would be nearly invisible in some out of the way cranny - so I could try again. This was during the height of covid and you could hardly get anyone to see you and I couldn’t hear well enough and my phone service towers were hit or miss and so that I couldn’t spend enough time on the phone to find or be understood. SO EAR MOLDS the first few days were quite hard on my nerves because even though I couldn’t understand speech any better I could hear things like faucet dripping or furnace pilot operating - all sorts of noise and I thought at first there’s just no way. But in two days times or so I guess my hearing adjusted to the noises I hadn’t heard before. Now I’ve had these molds for at least a year and a half and show no signs of needing replacement.

I will stop now and hope you understand I really apologize if it seems I’m going off track. I wish you the best of luck or perseverance or funds or whatever it takes to get back on track to where you were again.

Equal loudness curves refer to equalization i.e. different energy at different frequencies. Compression, however, refers to different amounts of gain for different levels of input within a particular frequency band. I might start with linear gain across the board and then cut overall gain (all input levels) at offending frequency bands.

@Neville said:

It’s just that. . .if I had to take a wild guess just based on comparing these audiograms, the audiogram from Advanced Hearing Aid Centre looks more accurate. I wondered if the hearing aids from that location had sounded the best to you.

My sincere apologies.

I’d forgotten about AHAC. That was the sole potential provider who said "You don’t need new hearing aids. You need bigger wax guards (and thus the yellow sticky with some examples). I was very impressed with him both professionally (technique/exam depth) and personally (nice guy, no agenda).

So, I never had any from him. He’s an independent so likely he’d have used Starkey or Phonak or maybe Widex. But I never had an application of his gram.
AND
My ratings there were orders of magnitude better hearing than any of the others. I have no clue how I might suddenly have gained so much hearing, and that my left ear, which is clearly VERY less acute than the right in every other test, should be nearly exactly the same.

I don’t wonder that he didn’t think I needed new aids - but also have no clue why it should be an outlier to every other test over more than 2 years…

@joanhawsey said:

Rather than taking ASL, have you considered being evaluated for a cochlear implant?

I have indeed, but the $8800 3-maker trial guy said I’m far from that point. I dunno if he’s right, but if I went there, the music door would be closed, locked, and the key melted.

On the other hand, a fellow cruiser (I lived and cruised for 15 years on a sailboat) has what I thought was a CI; instead it’s a bone conductor HA. He sang with us in our church choir one season so I know it works for that. But none of my trials or Beltone have suggested that step, either. And as close as I’ve come (never all in the same instrument at the same time) to each of my metrics, I continue to believe that it can be done.

Phonak is not yet there, but very close. I tried the new (he redid it my last time; it had disappeared in my pre-concert emergency regression seen above) “ladies” setting with my wife yesterday, and it was better than the “automatic” setting (the L70s’ technology has the main setting sense the environment and move to the adaptation of the change from ‘normal’), which was already fair. A snippet from yesterday’s log (Phonak all day):
1200 Lydia reading in automatic in close-by, around-a-wall/through an open sliding door, resonant room: largely OK
1205 " around corner in hall but sounding like intentionally louder
1210 “Ladies” better understanding

So, the quest continues. I’ll wear the Phonaks to start, and then cycle in the Sam’s, and finally, the Beltones at church today; I’ll have several chances to evaluate piano discordance, and can evaluate the speech of Sam’s at the coffee afterward (Phonak and Beltone having already been proven/failed at home previously), and at home. My last Sam’s notes had Lydia (wife, requirement #1!) incomprehensible. I have follow-up appointments with both on Tuesday, and the completely awful program in Beltones obviously needs tweaking, so I’ll set that up (the reason for the move being an ability to get in quickly vs the weeks-at-a-time intervals at my local office, and her technical expertise with the brand and software…)

My point was that your hearing isn’t just a discrete system that you can plug device A, B, C into and expect to hear normally on day 1.

It’s an interactive (albeit damaged) system that requires prolonged tuning; so constantly changing the input parameters is going to fry your noodle. After a few hours, either you’re getting something that’s physically blocking the output of the aids or you’re fatiguing you cochlear amplifier function.

The first issue requires changes to how your aids are physically managed or a BTE, the second issue is one of tuning, moderating your expectations and increasing your experience with ONE set of prescribed settings. Typical mental plasticity requires somewhere near 8 weeks to 6 months to fully habituate to one set-up.

The switching might appear to work as each aid pushes your hearing buttons slightly differently, however with each change you’re impairing the learning phase. I can see how that would be incredibly frustrating over time.

@Um_bongo said:

… each change you’re impairing the learning phase. I can see how that would be incredibly frustrating over time.

All this experimentation came as a result of complete failure to achieve tonality and speech clarity with a year’s worth of no-instrument-change (Beltone Imagine 17s) effort, including several months of factory-rep/manager involvement (albeit a month apart each, until he took several months of family leave).

I very much doubt it could be worse, and there have been glimmers of light at the ends of the 3 tunnels; unfortunately, there were cave-ins along the way which have resulted in having to backtrack occasionally.

And all this (the last 3 months) has acclimated my ears/brain to varying sources, or, at least, the individual metrics have had very close encounters, albeit never all 3 at once.

I can’t afford owning multiple sets of multi-thousand-dollar aids, and if what I read on the Starkey site is accurate, no provider is going to give me a 1-year (“it may take up to a year to acclimate” - though those comments were addressed at potential new users) trial. And thus my predicament.

Sigh…

@Um_bongo said:

you’re fatiguing you cochlear amplifier function.

Is this the feeling I’m getting at the end of a 4 hour music session (I mix and produce music for a
living). It feels like my ears are fatigued and I’m not hearing as well.

@Um_bongo said:

The switching might appear to work as each aid pushes your hearing buttons slightly differently, however with each change you’re impairing the learning phase

So, after doing a general tweak to settings, one should wait a long time for the brain to adapt before aborting that adaptation in favor of another fine tuning? Will hearing aids, for a newbie like myself who has always used my hearing for a living, take a long time in a general sense to get used to? It’s been almost a few months. Thanks

@Neville mentioned REM and you have not said in any of your posts that you had it done?

Thanks for your post. I have Phonak Audeo Paradise P90R’s
This will help me explain to my audiologist what he should add as programs.

DaveL
Toronto

Thanks so much Um_bongo!

Does it take longer for old people to adapt and learn than young people? I’m 76 and have worn hearing aids for just over 20 years. The first hearing aid was a disaster; I seldom used it in the 10 years I had it.

DaveL
Toronto

Fortunately, I am still able to laugh about it; I posted this on Facebook recently:

Unfortunately this isn’t the least bit funny, and it’s only because the Brits have National Health that they were only that much…

(Those paying attention know that I’m currently going through hearing aid hell, with the possibility that I’ll merely escape to Deaf’s Door.)

It’s real ear measurement, adjusts the gains to the actual results at the ear drum.
Search on the forum if you have hours to spare.
@Neville is a firm believer and hopefully will comment.
As an amateur I think it’s a relevant piece to your jigsaw.

@michael1 said:

It’s real ear measurement, adjusts the gains to the actual results at the ear drum.

If that’s sticking an acoustically blocking earpiece in and tweeting at many different frequencies is REM, I’ve had that on most cases (there might be one provider which didn’t do that, but I’m not certain of that).

I’ve also sat with said instruments and audiologist and tweaked each frequency to be similar volume (the midrange seemed usually lower volume, so we twiddled until we got to the same apparent - to me - volume at the ear).

However my music clarity seems to be percussive-sensitive, as when the piano is masked by other instruments, it’s usually in tune as heard. Alone, real-world (not recording heard over air or in headset) piano intonation is off. It seems that removing compression from a channel (like, all-around, restaurant, music, e.g.) improves that performance…

For real ear verification, the clinician puts a small microphone tube into your ear next to your ear drum and plays some speech passages and measures the output of the hearing aid at the ear drum to confirm it is meeting prescriptive targets. Commonly used speech passages are a little speech about carrots or one about a rainbow or the human eye, or an unintelligible blend of language babble.