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Best aids for hearing your *own* voice clearly?

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Okay, I know that “best” is subjective, but I was just wondering about other people’s experiences with different hearing aids.

I have significant, to me at least, hearing loss in my left ear but only minor loss in my right (see attached ).

audiogram Sep2025

I’m trying to learn Italian which I do primarily by speaking aloud, so being able to hear my *own* voice clearly and distinctly is really, really important to me. Not being able to do so is really quite demoralising.

I have an NHS hearing aid (left ear only) but struggle with it, it sounds very unnatural and also hisses and crackles a lot.

So I’ve decided to splash out on a pair of aids, with a budget max of around £2000.

I was thinking Signia aids with Own Voice Processing might be good, but after doing some research it seems OVP doesn’t actually make your voice any clearer or more distinct, it simply addresses occlusion, by modifying the amplification on your voice. (I may have misunderstood that though, in which case please let me know!)

So anyway, any help or guidance would be really appreciated, thanks ..

Hi, @Paul604, and welcome to the forum! I’m sort of a newbie, just got my first-ever hearing aids in July, but I do read a lot on the forum.
Questions that come to mind are, what type of hearing aid are you using? If receiver in the ear, are you using domes? If so, how occlusive is the dome type and the fit? If not, what type of molds are you using?
Acoustic coupling affects how you hear your own voice a great deal.

I do have Signia C&G 7IX. The OVP works quite well. Using different “programs” change it as well as modifying volume, etc… I use open domes since my hearing is better than your one ear and worse than the other but the loss is mostly in the higher range. I imagine other brands accomplish similar results, they all have their strengths. But I am saying that OVP protocol works quite well as the chips recognize your voice and modulate to overcome occlusion.

Edited

The purpose of OVP is to avoid the compromise of reducing gain for all sounds to make the own-voice acceptable, which happens when people with good mild low/mid freq hearing loss (like your right ear) use closed or power domes (occlusion).

If you are using open domes, I don’t think OVP will make a significant difference because you have no occlusion effect.

IIn my opinion, what you’re describing should be fixed with proper programming (and/or good selection of domes/molds) by a specialist rather than relying on features advertised by companies. This is especially important considering that you have conductive loss in your left ear.

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