First Day Wearing Hearing Aids - Help!

That’s my problem.
They look at my loss and go woa.
Then I tell them about the distortion in my left ear and they just stare at me.
They don’t know what to say.

Thanks, I looked up a local supplier in my area. I have left a message for them to call me

The permanent low level noise is likely the gain applied to low level sounds. It’s commonly done to help with comprehension. I had the same thing with Widex and had my audi flatten the gain out to resolve it.

Also, that you reported nothing over 5k, is possibly the phase shifting, where 5-10k has mapped down to overlay on a lower range, something up to 5k. Again, with comprehension being the goal, your brain learns over time and adjusts. Naturally, if your listening critically, that mapping and delay will be noticable.

While Widex does have hardware/internals that are better for music applications, there may be an adjustment for the audi on setting the HA for your needs.

There is a AUD referenced on this site called Marshall Chasin.
He’s done a lot of work with musicians.
If you search the forum you will find numerous references to his work.

user715 has mentioned something you should ask your audi about. He calls it “phase shifting.” It is also called frequency lowering, and the various brands have different names for it as well. What it does is, it takes the sound at the high frequencies where your hearing is worst, and plays them back at a lower frequency where you hear better. It takes time to get used to this. I have not heard what this sounds like, but I bet it is terrible for music.

With your great loss at high frequencies, your audi might have thought it was a good idea. Although with the steepness of your slope in the 1500-3000 octave, I bet it would be hard to make frequency lowering work.

Just for fun, I entered your audiogram into the another brand fitting software (the only version I have) and asked for the default setup. It did in fact recommend frequency lowering.

One other experiment I did with the software was to try some different “rationales”. A rationale is basically the algorithm that maps an audiogram to the amount of amplification to use at each frequency. There are several standard rationales used in the industry, and I think each brand has their own proprietary rationales. Well, with your audiogram, there are big differences in the amplification they prescribe. So your aids could sound very different with a different rationale. But I can give no advice about what rationale would sound good.

@1Bluejay said:

I’ve been SUPER happy with my Phonak Lumity Life aids… I’m also an audiophile… I can’t do Widex cuz speech is simply too critical for me

That’s pretty much my experience, and then made the other choice. My trial with Lumity was jaw droppingly effective for speech in noise, picking out voices in a crowd. It’d been over a decade since I was that functional socially. But for music and instruments, I still found wasn’t good enough for what I needed and Widex was. It was a hard choice to make!

WOW, that is amazing that the Phonaks opened up functional social activities. I can VERY much relate to that - ever since getting the Lumity Life rechargeables even. The ad promised 10% better speech comprehension, and I found that over time it was more like 15-20% improvement for me. The difference was being able to comprehend what hubs was saying upstairs when I was down in the kitchen and he’d holler out something. Or he’s 20 feet away, back turned to me and I could understand what he’d said. Those little events help build confidence, and now I actively engage folks no matter if they speak with an accent or wear a face mask or whatever. I don’t have to ask to have them repeat themselves as much and I don’t mis-hear a comment and respond with something unrelated. LOVE IT.