1 or 2 hearing aids for unilateral hearing loss?

Hi, Not exactly an answer to above, but an FYI regarding my experiences and experimentation with CROS set-ups. Warning. It’s long-winded, and unfortunately no golden solution at the end is provided. Sorry! : (

• I have had single-sided hearing loss, unilateral hearing loss, assymetrical hearing loss (actually don’t have HL in one ear, so may not assymetrical) for last 15 years; from my late 30’s! My HL in my left ear is 70db level; so not gone, but hardly useable. Also, sensorinaural; so not improved with increase in volume.
• Trialed CROS set-ups over the years (most recently last year), as HA technology improved. Trials were generally full 3~6 months periods; since the audiologists were also very kindly and professionally intrigued to find the best solution for my type of hearing loss.
• The main issue I felt was that as good as the sound transfer to good ear is, and further background noise reduction ability of the HA in your good/perfect ear, the ear tip/dome needs to be OPEN to let in natural environmental noise too, which will also let in and allows for the noisy background & environmental noise to seep in. This “seeping in” noise greatly overcomes/exceeds (over-shadows?) any signal or HA transmitted noise also coming in the ear from the HA. (i.e. Seeping Noise>HA Noise)
• Maybe it works a treat in a perfectly quiet environment, with minimal, low-volume environmental noise; however normally most UHL suffers can “get by” in such environments. Also, personally sure I want to fork out +$9000 just to avoid person on my left tapping me on the shoulder to re-ask their question.
• Whacking up the volume higher cannot compensate enough, will probably damage your good hearing ear, and of course your Audiologist will not adjust to such a setting.
• Also tried one potential solution, changing the HA tip to a fully closed tips; so more limited natural environmental noise seeps in. However, would only use the expensive CROS HA ($9000+?) in specific environments; or rush to put them on when such environments suddenly arise. Also, you will lose all your “natural” hearing, and totally rely on the mechanical sounds and voices produced by the HAs. I did not keep the HA in all day, since most of the time I did not want, and would be dangerous to have the fully-closed HA tip/dome my good hearing ear blocking out all sounds!
• Other idea, I tried was a remote mic device (e.g. Phonak Roger) + HA, to serve like and instead of a CROS transmitter hooked onto my bad ear side. Price is about the same; and maybe allow for more on the spot flexibility with directional mike capabilities etc. However, same issue about the fully-closed sound-blocking HA tip.
• Final observation. With the fully-closed HA tip in a good ear, I was surprised how much annoying & distracting background noise was also being transmitted by CROS transmitter; even supposedly after being further processed by the very top tier (90+) HAs in my good ear! (Maybe the just released Infinio AI-powered HA will change this?)
  These are my observations and the frustrations I found. However, I am constantly being told of how many people are very happy with their CROS set-ups. Our experiences, expectations and satisfaction must be a very individual, personal, and relative thing.
  Really hope you will experiment yourself; and if you find your own “golden solution”, please share it with us all here, so we can try it too. Thank you!

Have you tried activevent with cros? I don’t know if such a configuration is supported but it would block off in noisy situations and be open in quieter situations.

WH

@WhiteHat Thank you for the great idea. Yes. The Phonak active-vent RIC solution might work to deal with my “seep-in” noise frustrations!
Can I ask about your experience with your Phonak active-vent tips/domes?
To what extent do you find the closed vent helps you with being aware of and being actively engaged in on-going conversations in a noisy environment (e.g. busy cafe, packed restaurant, walking alongside friends on a busy street with traffic etc.), compared to when you did not have them or have them activated/on?
Does it (reasonably) smoothly accommodate & adjust to changes in background noise to provide a balanced hearing experience? (e.g. when walking off busy, noisy street into an only slightly noisy street.)
Are there any drawbacks of the active-vents (besides, additional cost, or increased maintenance related) that you can think of? e.g. if sometimes blocks out too much or specific noises, which might be better or safer to be heard etc. Thank you.

@andyf said:

To what extent do you find the closed vent helps you with being aware of and being actively engaged in on-going conversations in a noisy environment (e.g. busy cafe, packed restaurant, walking alongside friends on a busy street with traffic etc.), compared to when you did not have them or have them activated/on?

They only close when not streaming during speech in loud noise by my experience. I’d have no ability to hear in that situation at all. The isolation from outside sound is ok, but not extreme. Your HAs look forward in the case, so people to your side disappear. But I have rarely had speech in loud noise activate outside. It is usually a hall or conference facility. Or restaurant. I could see it at a baseball game or similar when something big happens.

@andyf said:

Does it (reasonably) smoothly accommodate & adjust to changes in background noise to provide a balanced hearing experience? (e.g. when walking off busy, noisy street into an only slightly noisy street.)

The change is abrupt and sudden. It can be quite annoying when the situation is next to the cusp of speech in noise vs speech in loud noise. Flipping back and forth. I usually manually set program when this starts up. When the program changes, “click,” and there you are.

@andyf said:

Are there any drawbacks of the active-vents (besides, additional cost, or increased maintenance related) that you can think of? e.g. if sometimes blocks out too much or specific noises, which might be better or safer to be heard etc.

Some don’t like the click. I don’t mind and it is a tell to me that the hearing aid has switched modes I might not otherwise know. Like a device starts silently streaming. Your aids aren’t listening to your environment then. But I could see not being able to abide the click.

When I am streaming it has caused consternation on my wife’s part. She has no idea. And I can’t hear her (well?) at that point. So she has discussions with the room I don’t hear. I’ve tried a little led clipped to my hat brim to flag. But haven’t used that in months. Just wasn’t working out. You can be in your own little world. There are risks associated.

Hope this helps!

WH

CyCol, did you happen to find out if the Sphere AI works wearing only 1? Its a lot of money to spend if none of it works with only 1. I could buy two, but would mean wearing one in normal ear all/sometimes.

@Amy_C I started out with a single Unitron. I was thrilled with it at first. It helped with speech in quiet environments, watching TV, even going to our favorite restaurant with just my husband and one other couple who also favored that restaurant, which had great acoustics and was never noisy unless there was a large party of 8 or more sitting nearby, which was rare.

I worked from home at the time, but every couple months I had to attend conferences. We also went to dinner with three other couples once a month, and two of the couples routinely chose trendy restaurants with horrendous acoustics, places with high ceilings, no carpeting, industrial look. In both of those scenarios, the single aid made it worse, the noise from the aid drowning out the sound from my good ear, so I had to take it out.

The pair of Phonak Marvels made a huge difference. The first time I wore them at one of those trendy restaurants, my husband remarked that it was the first time I hadn’t “checked out” halfway through the evening.

Hope that helps!

Im subscribing here too, as Im looking for a solution also.

The Sphere DNN stuff works unilaterally.