Diagnosis with hearing loss in one ear. Not hearing all sounds in hearing aid

It’s just a bit odd. I would expect reasonable amplification through 4k eve with open domes unless your ear canals are odd or you really aren’t getthing them in there.

With the caveat that hearing aids have a shorter distance limitation than the natural ear. How are you testing these sounds that you cannot hear?

It does feel like they aren’t going in particularly deep. I will be looking at this with the audiologist.

Regards to testing. It’s mainly been with music. For example, mariah carey - all I want for christmas. If I cover my good ear then I dont hear a lot of the bells etc.

Same with wilson philips - hold on. The tapping sounds at the start and throughout. I can only hear with my good ear.

Those tickity ticks in Hold On are about 7.5k. The chimes at the beginning of all I Want for Christmas are an easy 2/3, but the sleigh bells are around 6.5k. That is getting into feedback zone and, particularly if the domes are fit deeply into your ears, the gain may be compressed at that region.

How big are your domes? The ear canal tends to slope up and back. With full insertion, the wire should be flush to your skin. Is it in all the way? If not, if you remove the domes can you get it in all the way?

Thanks Neville

Did you want me to take a photo of them and the aid? I believe they are the 2nd size out of three of the open domes.

The wire does feel a bit short. The domes do appear to go into my ear but now I am not confident they are going in deep enough.

So, take the dome off the hearing aid and just insert the wire?

With my hearing loss do you think a hearing aid should be able to provide enough amplification to hear those tickity tocks and sleigh bells.

I am using a widex moment 440. Are there better alternatives.

Thanks Neville

I will be asking these questions to the audiologist. Hopefully seeing them next week.

Am I correct in thinking that as my loss is mild, they should be able to provide appropriate gain without introducing feedback. Compared to say a moderate to severe? I understand anatomy of the ear is a factor also.

Hi Speedy,

Thanks for your input.

I’m certainly willing to try a more closed fit. Actually, I am having trouble with rumbling/fluttering in my left ear, when hearing bass or low frequencies. This is why I initially went for a check up. I didnt notice the hearing loss.

The fluttering is a real nuisance and effects QOL. Even car engines can make it flutter. So a closed dome may even help that.

I have gone over the trial period of 60 days but I expressed on my last appointment that I wasnt satisfied. So I think they will help still. They are a highly rated audiologist who have won many awards.

@Brother_Luke said:

Am I correct in thinking that as my loss is mild, they should be able to provide appropriate gain without introducing feedback.

One thing to understand is that hearing isn’t as simple as the anatomy of the ear. The nerve and your brain play a role. If your brain doesn’t want to make sense of the sounds, making them louder doesn’t help. There are a lot of issues that people can have where multiple issues gang up and fixing one (a little gain on the volume) doesn’t help the other (making sense of what your ear can hear.) Explain your perceptions to them. It can help them figure out what is going on.

WH

@Brother_Luke said:

Actually, I am having trouble with rumbling/fluttering in my left ear, when hearing bass or low frequencies. This is why I initially went for a check up. I didnt notice the hearing loss.

Did you have bone conduction audiogram? And tympanometry? As @Neville asked, there is possibility of conductive hearing loss.

So when I went initially, it was conductive. The tympanometry showed this.

However, a couple of months later when I finally got to see the ent. It wasnt showing conductive. It was sensorineural.

I personally think something was going on and I should have been treated with steroid injections, but I am not sure.

I’ve attached my first audiogram

Just to update on this. If I use my phone and hold it up to my ear, I CAN hear these sounds in my left ear.

When listing from PC speakers though, I dont hear them. Or if I hold the phone futher away.

My own experience: 63 years old, high freq loss in left ear. My audiogram shows a nice, flat, normal range that goes downhill in the high freqs to moderate-severe. I also have a single Widex 440 in my left ear. I’ve been using it about 4 years now. My right ear shows the same curve but it’s still in the normal-moderate range and I decided to just go with one aid.

I was really surprised when I drove home at the new sounds I could hear. It took me a little while to learn them all, like the keys jingling on my keychain while I waa driving.

Definitely keep working to get them dialed in. But not every device works for every person. I hope it works out fir you.

Thanks for your input.

Did you have any feedback issues? What program do you use as default? Puresound or universal? Did your audi do REM?

If you listen to Wilson Philips - Hold On. Can you hear the tickity tocks at the beginning and throughout?

I can definitely see an improvement when wearing it. If I mute it in the widex app then I am missing a lot from that left ear. Its just that I want to be hearing the 2k to 8k frequencies more.

First: thanks for that song suggestion. I hadn’t heard it in a long time and forgot how good it is.

I just tested in my family room, streaming to a Bose speaker at a fairly low volume.

The ticks in the first few seconds:

1. with both ears and no aids I can tell they are there, but not clearly and they tend to blend in with the background ambient sounds.

2. with “universal” and my right ear plugged I hear similar to #1

3. with “music” and my right ear plugged I hear them more clearly.

4. with “party” and my right ear plugged I hear it the best.

I normally use “universal”. Widex 440 can be programmed with 4 presets. I have “universal” as the default, then “music”. The next is “party” which (I think) helps in a busy, noisy environment by focusing the microphones where your head is facing and favoring voice frequencies so it makes it easier to hear whoever you are facing. The 4th is a custom setup that turns the volume way down. Because the only way to turn these off is to open up the battery tray, I was running into problems at the barbershop. If I pulled out the aid when getting my hair cut and held it in my hand it would squeal. And if I opened the battery tray I ran the risk of dropping the battery. This custom setting acts as an “off”.

Since I had the best success with “party”, there’s definitely some fine tuning that can be done.

The Widex app has a way to customize a profile. The inconvenience is that it’s lost each time you turn off the aid and you have to reload it from the app. You might be able to find a way to get it working for you that way.

Edit:

I forgot, you asked about feedback. I used to get it, not very often, but usually when something was near my ear. If I tilted my head to one side while driving and got too close to the window. If I wore a wide brimmed hat. If I wore my rain jacket with the hood.

But I rarely get it now unless I try to force it. I might have mentioned this at one time and maybe my audiologist made an adjustment. I can’t remember.

Is it possible that a noise suppression setting is causing your poor high frequency hearing. I have experienced aggressive Noise Suppression having a drastic effect on things I wanted to hear. Noise supression can be confused about what is music and what is noise. Might be labelled wind suppression.
Do you have any accessible control to adjust noise/wind suppression?