Dr Cliff. It takes how long to program hearing aids?

I used to marvel how folks bought shoes, and wore them. Me, I would buy six pairs, and return five usually if not all six, after trying them at home a few hours. Once I found a pair I actually felt good in, I would buy a bunch of them. Some people need more tweaking. I wonder if there could be a coffeeshop type business where tables were equipped with computers that had all the brands software installed along with a Noah Wireless unit, and amid all the signs of disclaimer and the disclaimer you had to sign upon entering… or being seated at the computer, patrons could along with their coffee and donuts, tweak our hearing aids. Seems like a cool business. Not one I am starting but it reminds of how years ago, before crazy insurance claims… we could go to a place called U-Wrench it and use automotive lifts and tools while repairing our own vehicles!

There definitely is value in a professional HA tweaker. But so too, those pros must come to the realization that all their theoretical knowledge has limitations out there in the real world, and the real world actually is located BETWEEN each of the patient’s ears!
SO if they want to avoid losing a large piece of their business, the time is to do more of a collaborative session. Possibly MFGs could recognize that some patients really do better with hands on ability to tweak their own aids. Possibly a license could be sold to patients - first requiring say three sessions and an online interactive automatic test (and multiple retests till passed) that would give them self fitting rights.
I believe a major problem with most fitting situations outside of our own DIY is that the majority of fitters are deficient in one of the following areas. Caring/Empathy and skilled listening to patient problems, Technical Competency in operating controls/mechanical type things, applying applicable theory to practical situations, overall accuracy and troubleshooting ability, time available.

Yes, I’ve often imagined a model where patients could come in and do their own tweaks communally while I sort of supervised. Like the guy who watches over the self check out systems at the grocery store to make sure people are doing things okay.

Had a pretty classic patient the other day come back with the complaint that: 1) the hearing aids were way too loud where her provider had set them and 2) when turned down to her comfort she couldn’t understand what people were saying. I’m sure her provider had done all sorts of adaptation counseling before and…I don’t know, it didn’t sink in or she didn’t believe it. But it was useful to hook her up to REM and show her very clearly that at her preferred level her hearing aids were doing very little and her audibility was only about 30% of speech compared to 70% at the “too loud” volume, which supported re-discussing her role in adaptation.

I have one of those at the moment; teetering between, ‘my voice is way too loud’ and ‘I can’t hear the phone/Tv without subtitles’. Neither option seems to be better than her old aids.

70 minutes is just one person’s observation in some situations. But I personally figure that over the hearing aids life, which did include swapping out a defective unit, upgrading firmware, redoing various tests including REM, with different molds… one fitter spend over twenty hours doing varied things… but never in all that time could he ever hear what I was hearing! Nor did he present to me, sounds like I would be experiencing when not at his office. Ultimately it all seems like a recipe for a misfit!

I am a PhD engineer and have done some of my own testing. The audiograms test for hearing threshold while we normally listen at higher levels. What I am learning is that my hearing does not drop off nearly as much at normal or even quieter levels as the audiogram indicates. Also, my hearing is much more even between my two ears with less difference. As an electronic engineer I would love to do my own calibration of some hearing aids that my wife had been using but are still very functional. They are Siemens Binax Pure 7 AM26730 and PL89798. Could you provide the software so I can do my own programming? Or perhaps let me know how to get it? That would be much appreciated.

Hi there, great your giving DIY a go, you can head on over to the DIY forum here.

Hearing Aid Self-Fitting and Adjusting [DIY]

This forum is a place for consumers to discuss fitting and adjusting their own hearing aids.

Did you convert dB HL to dB SLP?

@Neville

I don’t understand.

(I’ve just graduated from “louder is better”)

Way-back in grade 1 I took speech lessons

What are SLP?

Don’t worry, it would make things worse not better anyway, so it’s probably that guy’s calibration methods that are suspect rather than his math.

But in general terms, not all decibel scales are the same, so while average conversation is about 60 dB sound pressure level (SPL) it’s only about 45 dB hearing level (HL), though it’s not a linear transform across frequencies. So you can’t take your audiogram and compare it directly against the more common SPL level measures.

I remember sizing plumbing for high rise apartments and hospitals. ASHRAE used fixture units. And an obscure graph. Handbook I had was about 12 years old. All that because s…. Has to flow downhill. Two years of that and I knew I didn’t want to be a consulting engineer.

When we worked on sound and silencing I thought we really didn’t know what we were doing. Way back. ‘72.

Tenkan is totally right.
Self-programming is very doable with the appropriate software, I had good results with 2 HAs (Evolv and Sphere).
Just use NoahLink Wireless 2. Last month I wanted to check my REM (curiosity!) the audio could not find any real thing to tweak. If you like to tinker that is for you.
You will save at least a couple of Ks this way (Buy a premium HA online).

In our typical home, office, and car environments we encounter sound levels in the 30 to 50 dBA range – well above threshold. What got me started on this is that my audiogram showed a 10 dB difference between left and right ears and a 30 dB drop off in both ears from 250 to 2kHz. However, I could not detect a significant difference from my two ears at normal environments and while playing a piano I did not hear any drop off from low to high notes – 30 dB is a very significant change and should cause major hearing problems. That is why I set up a test at sound levels of around 35 dBA with an audio frequency generator, high quality over-the-ear phones, and an oscilloscope to measure the sound level being fed into the earphones. What I found is that indeed there is almost no difference (less than 2 dB) between my two ears and that my sound level response is essentially flat out to about 5 kHz and then drops off by about 10 dB at 8 kHz. This is quite a different result than what we get from the threshold test. For those of us interested in high quality audio listening, we may not get the result we need from adjustments based on a threshold test vs. one based on normal listening levels. I can provide a more detailed explanation of how I did my test if anyone is interested but that may best be done by a longer write-up that I could create and send by e-mail.

And to answer the specific question, I did not try to calibrate to dB HL and dB SPL did not seem to be all that important at moderate listening levels. My baseline was dBA.

@Electroniker said:

That is why I set up a test at sound levels of around 35 dBA with an audio frequency generator, high quality over-the-ear phones

How did you measure the sound level?

I used a digital sound meter and stuck the sound meter microphone inside one ear cup of the headphones. I should mention that normal air movement in the room gives fluctuating readings of around 30 dBA so at 35 dBA the tones are at a low volume but above the threshold of my ears. My goal was to do a comparison at various frequencies. The loudness measurement in dBA is just an approximate value to give you a reference of what I was doing.