Audiophile hearing aids

@Um_bongo said:

how it works at a gooey level whe the tyres hit the tarmac.

This is a great phrase that captures what happens in real life inside my ears

I find myself once again wishing I could just sit with my HA’s and play with the EQ. No not 3 bands of it, I want all the bands and I want to access them all day every day from my phone. respectfully, I don’t care what an audi says to me, Hearing is my primary sense it’s how I communicate with the world and I know what sounds right to me, not what some audiogram says or how an instrument thinks it should be calibrated. As far as I’m concerned, you can studdy this stuff for years and years, stick a set of HA’s in my ears and I’ll still say they sound rubbish or great and it won’t have anything to do with what the marketing blurb on them says or what the audi thinks, it’s just the way they sound to me. A prime example of this is Oticons. When I tried Oticons I’d heard they were “life-like” “real”, sounded natural. I put them in and I was horrified. They had warble they had a horrible comb effect, they sucked all the life out of sound and yet people seemed to like them. All very subjective.
It’s also really hard to do testing in a room or even walking around outside for a few minutes. You need hours days for the devices to settle in, then tweak, tweak and tweak again. I get I’m not that normal in this regard and I get that HA’s are not made for this type of market. I just wish there were some that were. I’d love to have an app on my phone with an attached device that communicated with the CICs for example so I could tune them exactly the way I wanted. Heck I’d pay more for this even. Widex and Phonak come fairly close in this ability but nowhere near as nuanced as I’d wish for.

Yeah you’ll never get this tho, you see there’s no money in it for them, but there is a way, a DIY project! With the correct software and hardware you can do this all day long and in your own time whenever it suits, get them set up just how you like them.

Well and the DIY project has to be accessible for a blind user with a screen reader or on PC or Voiceover on the phone. Given how accessible the HA apps tend to be on the phone I do not hold out high hopes that their fitting software would be

Imteresting article regarding sound “naturalness”:

20Q: What Exactly is “Normal” Hearing? -Article 2893821

This course provides an overview of rationale for revising nomenclature for describing hearing loss.

I just got some new hearing aids and they were of course programmed using the audiogram. I knew this would lead to problems because I had done my own testing and my hearing was not nearly as bad as the audiogram indicated. I have described this in an earlier message on this forum. Well to no one’s surprise the new set up based on the audiogram was awful. Way too loud and voices sounded like hissing steam pipes. My own breathing sounded like I was Darth Vader. I did install a phone app that allowed for limited adjustment of the volume and of the higher frequencies (“sharpness”). I ended up setting the volume at less than half level and the “sharpness” as low as I could get it. A return visit to the hearing aid specialist got a reset based on my observations and now it is tolerable although still not as good as I could do myself if I had the software and the blue tooth transmitter. The audiogram is a threshold test and simply does not give an accurate indication of hearing at low or normal levels. This I learned from doing my own testing as I have described on this forum. It was, however, interesting to confirm my own test results. Kind of an “I told you so”.

I think it is good to repead the audiogram test in another places. If the results are repeatable within a 5dB margin of error - it means that they are reliable. I wouldn’t trust home methods of measuring too much, even when I myself had not very reliable measurements and I have to repeat them

Have you tried to get used to the new settings for at least a few weeks first? It is essential in auditory rehabilitation. In my case, I set up +6dB in 1-2.5 kHz range and at first the sound was terrible - very clear and sharp. However, I lasted a few weeks and now the sound is perfect, even with music.

Auditory perception is like a muscle trained with weights - at the beginning there is much soreness, and then they are strong enough to withstand it.

Did you have REM? If so, maybe ask your audi to set 80%-90% of final targets, train your hearing a few weeks and then come to get 100%.

Thank you!
Good listening…!

@Jlm86

Thanks for your service!

I’ve had Ontario Workman’s Compensation for about 20 years. 3 sets of Phonaks. Last 2 I’ve had problems. Perhaps good hearing aids, but setup was terrible. I got new ones because I was almost hit from behind 3 times. Couldn’t hear old diesel loaders coming up behind me.

My program usually provides a lesser hearing aid. And selected brands, because they negotiated lower prices. I’d like to hear cymbals too…and I’ve stopped listening to music except in the car. Good listening back to you.

Over here in UK, and most of us no way wealthy, there are few options through our loved but languishing National Health Service.
Trialled on Signias, I endured grizzly distortion, pitch shifting, and unbalanced mechanical resonances, on live and loudspeakered orchestral music.
By great fortune, my young Italian audiologist appreciated music. She riffled through her spares box and found me an obsolete pair of Phonak M70 - reserved here for children she said!
A short session of me playing my keyboard and she tweaking EQ and overall compression, as well as removing the lethal deafness to rear-approaching traffic - and the result is a revelation.
There clearly are not enough ‘audiophiles’ working in design, manufacture or even clinical training. Just compare the vitality and passion of the best loudspeaker companies, USA, UK and Europe, across some 60 years. Just compare the prices, too!

Hearingtracker has

About Us - HearAdvisor8

Welcome to HearAdvisor, America's leading independent hearing aid evaluation laboratory, run by two doctors of Audiology and a Ph.D. of hearing science.

The one decent review I’ve ever seen, by Michael Fremer of Stereophile (2020, Widex Moment). https://www.analogplanet.com/content/two-months-widexs-moment-440-mric-r-d-hearing-aids35

Inevitably this would lead to disappointment. This variables of types and depths of hearing loss and the search for the “best hearing aid” for music is somewhat like looking for a hammer or a knife for people missing some number of digits. The best knife maybe for one person could be found for a particular use, but generally? The grip will be different for every person depending on which fingers are missing and how much of them remain. This is without going into stuff like hyperacusis and other issues related to hearing but not snl. But I suppose someone will try.

WH

You guys have to remember that hearing loss is so subjective, just because one says they found it great doesn’t mean it will for you, I didn’t like Widex, I got my Signia (and ReSound for that matter) sounding better.