First pair of hearing aids but see no improvement

Hi, My sister has same level of hearing loss like me but not wearing hearing aids so I was expecting to be able to hear the ringing. I thought I would be able to hear it with my hearing aids on. I mean I’m not sure if it’s too much to expect. My mom definitely heard it loud and clear. i also working at a restaurant during weekend where it’s actually not too busy . im a cashier and i check people out . a lof of time i cant understand what they are saying or when they are trying to talk to me. i hear them mumble. im thinking about asking her for a different brand new pairs to try. i dont know if its ok. in my last appointment, she decreases the some of brightness she said maybe my problem is due to too much brightness/ sharpness because some words sounded different to me, like it didn’t sound like how it should . Like the word test sounded like something else to my ears. She said too much brightness can distort the sounds . still no improvement though. 🥹

I know right. I can only notice difference in things like fan, chair creeking and AC sounds With speech understanding I don’t think so. 🥹 people at work keep asking me if I’m wearing hearing aids when I ask them to repeat. They say “ you’re wasting $6k”.

@Rain.Drop said:

im thinking about asking her for a different brand new pairs to try. i dont know if its ok.

I assume the emphasis in what you said above is different “brand” to try, not another “brand new” pair of Real 1 to try. I think it’s a reasonable request since you’ve had no success with the Oticon brand so far. If I were your audi and I were customer-focused enough to make sure my client is successful, I would let you try another brand like Phonak or Widex maybe. I’m surprised that at this point, she hasn’t proposed for you to try out another brand yet. I wouldn’t hesitate to ask her. You have nothing to lose for asking. You should be more assertive in telling her that you’ve tried in earnest to give the Real 1 plenty of chances to succeed, but it’s just not doing it for you. The next logical step that’s even obvious to YOU is to try another brand to see. So your audi as a professional should even see this option before you do and suggest it to YOU already.

I meant to ask for another brand new oticon real 1 to try because I’m assume maybe this pair is not working properly 🥹. Audi also did wanted to let me try on phonak but i said no because i like how the oticon sounds. i like how natural it sounds. Last time I tried on phonak for a few minutes when I was in the office and didn’t like it. I’ll should just probably try phonak for longer period this time

A/B comparison simply means that you play the same music on the same speaker at the same volume in 2 different scenarios. Sorry, it’s kind of an engineering thing, and because I’m an engineer, I presume that it’d be obvious to everybody, but apparently it’s not.

1. Scenario A → listen to the music without the hearing aids on via the speaker. Note that we’re not talking about streaming music from a smart phone or whatever device to the hearing aids directly here. You’re playing music from whatever device you choose to the speaker, then you listen to how the music sound directly from the speaker, through the air to your ears.

2. Scenario B → next, listen to the music with the hearing aids on. Preferably on the same song that you just listened to in scenario A. Does it sound better with the hearing aids on? Specifically, do you notice more high frequency sounds from the music? If yes, then as a sanity check, this is implying that your hearing aids is working and amplifying your hearing loss in the high frequency area and that’s why you can hear the music sound better in this scenario B.

You can switch back and forth between scenario A and B as many times as you like, maybe play different songs of different types, etc, until you’re sure that scenario B with the hearing aids on makes the music sound better. Specifically, it should be brighter, more treble, richer, fuller, and not dull like without the hearing aids.

The reason for trying to do this with music is that usually music is much richer than just speech or normal every day sounds. The normal every day sounds or speech may not have enough of the high frequency sounds that you can’t hear as well on, so in those cases, you can’t really tell whether the hearing aids are helping you that much or not because those normal sounds may dwell mostly in the low and mid frequency range where you don’t have a hearing loss. But with music, especially full and rich music, it should be much more obvious whether the hearing aids are amplifying the high frequency sounds in the music for you like it’s supposed to or not.

Thank you for explaining. What sounds are considered high frequency? Like when I do the test what should I try to focus on ? Understanding the lyrics right?

Below are 3 frequency charts, the first one is your own audiogram, showing that your left hearing loss starts dropping significantly at 1,000 Hz, and your right hearing loss at 2000 Hz. The second chart show how the vocal sound spreads across the frequencies in the yellow area, with some other types of sounds in there for reference. The third chart shows the spread of male and female vocals and many musical instruments.

But if it’s still not obvious to you and you don’t quite understand how to use these charts, that’s OK. It’s not just the lyrics, but overall, just focus on the overall sounds. The hearing aids should help make the music sound more treble, more tinny, more clear, more sharp. It should be quite unmistakable how music would sound differently with and without the hearing aids on based on your kind of loss. If even music sounds the all same to you in your A/B comparison with and without the hearing aids, then something is wrong with your hearing aids and you should return them.