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Active noise cancellation and the "noise paradox"

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I’m new here and I have experienced something recently that has actually been quite surprising.

I have moderate hearing loss due to what my audiologist referred to as a “noise notch.” I suffer, additionally, to the “noise paradox,” that annoying or loud noises are startling and tiresome and stressful over time.

Totally unrelated, my wife gave me a pair of AirPods 4 with active noise cancellation for Valentine’s day. I was impressed with how well the noise cancellation worked. I would have never expected this level of effectiveness outside of an over-the-ear headphone.

Anyway, after using them for awhile to watch streaming video on my workstation and listening to music, I have ended up wearing them at my desk even when I’m not actively listening to anything.

I have found, much to my surprise, that I’m much less cagey and nervous during the day if I work at my desk while wearing them. It’s really quite a pleasant surprise.

This has lead me to ponder two questions:

  1. Is this experience shared by others who have experienced the noise paradox, and if so, does it last?

  2. Is there a particular hearing aid that is known for it’s noise-canceling capability? I’m on old ReSound LS961s and I find them very noisy, and I’m am looking for something new.

Any feedback would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,
Abuser

8 people in this conversation5 min readJump to latest
  1. Sudden loudness growth is a known issue with certain types of ‘recruitment’ - where your dynamic range effectively becomes narrowed; through worsening hearing thresholds and less tolerance of louder sounds. Particularly a problem with sounds arriving or rising in intensity quickly: like when a fighter jet flies over.
  2. Many of the newer based technology aids are much faster dealing with non-speech sounds. See if you can get a free trial to evaluate whether they work for you.

Note that what hearing aid companies call “noise reduction” is different from what earbuds and headphones call “noise cancellation”. With noise cancellation, the earbud listens to the outside noise, and plays it back 180 degrees out of phase. That removes the noise from your ear canal.
What hearing aids do is identify the “noise” part of the sound, and then amplify the non-noise sound according to what your need is, while amplifying the noise sound by a lesser amount. I don’t know of any hearing aid that does the earbud-style active noise cancellation.

In my case, I have only a small amount of loss at low frequencies, therefore have little amplification at low frequencies. That makes hearing aid-style noise reduction useless for low frequency sounds, for me. I wish I could have real noise cancellation in my hearing aids, because I have a lot of trouble hearing conversations in the presence of mechanical noises (air conditioners, automobile noise).

I recently visited my hearing instrument specialist.

I said that loud noises really bothered me. My Springer Spaniels loud bark has recently scared me. So do overhead aircraft 1,000 feet overhead. Said I was overtired at work. By 2:00 pm I was done; needed a nap when I got home.

Dont know what he did. It’s magic. My hearing aids are much more comfortable.

Not sure if this is relevant to the OP but my Widex Moments have an installed program called Comfort. This reduces the sound from sudden impact noise such as clanging dishes, clashing cutlery and shrieks from toddlers. I use it a lot as it mitigates “sudden sharp noises”. Other manufacturers probably have a similar program.
I found out about it through my own research and then asked my audiologist to install it. She seemed surprised, so my guess is that often audiologists forget how such a program could be helpful.

In reply to @stevepriceloco

It’s almost like you’re writing my biography here. My audiologist said, “It’s a shame about that notch because your low frequency hearing is 20/20.”

My wife and I recently took a road trip in my truck, and we couldn’t carry on a conversation at all.

@Xonic83 said:

Phonak spheres

I have not, although I am interested in them. I haven’t seen my audiologist in nine years and I want to talk to him about these. I recently read a review of them and was encouraged by the test results.

Take a bit of care. Auditory processing can worsen over time with consistent sound deprivation. Sound sensitivity can also worsen. I’ve had one memorable case where the patient had worn earplugs 24/7 for over a decade and could no longer tolerate an average-soft conversational level.

Thank you! It’s only been a few days, but boy, it sure was peaceful. I’ve put them down.

In reply to @Um_bongo

@Um_bongo said:

Sudden loudness growth is a known issue with certain types of ‘recruitment’ - where your dynamic range effectively becomes narrowed; through worsening hearing thresholds and less tolerance of louder sounds. Particularly a problem with sounds arriving or rising in intensity quickly: like when a fighter jet flies over.

Does recruitment is felt usually worse (which can be seen as lower ) in lower frequencies?

I imagine that mechanical energy of lows must move the whole basilar membrane of organ of Corti to reach apical part of cochlea, where is converted to electrical impulses.

In reply to @DaveL

Does he turned on the Speech in 360° program? You can request him to print the report from fitting, however I know there is usually time pressure. Glad from your improvements!

In reply to @Bimodal_user

Not necessarily: it’s usually (not always) worst where the hair cells are most damaged. Some people have really good tolerance of loud low frequency sounds, but when you get to the highest pitches during testing, things can get uncomfortable pretty quickly.

It might be that for the lower pitches, we enjoy normal loudness perception, but when the frequency is higher, we’re not able to determine/accomodate the differences in energy so easily.

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