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Hearing aids for a musician and a music lover

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This is last minute, as we are going to Costco tomorrow. I am getting the Jabra 30’s that I ordered in June(!)…

My husband, who is a professional musician, was going to get the same model. (I haven’t loaded his —in fact, I’m not sure if I updated mine or not). I should have posted about this before, but it looks like it is a complex issue, and non-Costco might be the best. Or the hardware isn’t so much the issue.

I don’t know if one Costco HA is any better than another for a musician. We both have really bad speech recognition, so that needs to come first. But as a musician, hearing music (and lyrics) are really important for him. And as a former dancer, listening to music and going to live performances are crucial for me, too.

From a thread about this from February 2024, I gleaned that learning to optimize the programming yourself is the most helpful by far. I can’t imagine that he’d have the patience for that, at least at first. But otherwise, he might just be taking off his HAs for music, which isn’t ideal either.

Thank you!

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Tricky one, and there’s plenty of chat on here recently about speech and music. Personally (with Phonak), I’m trying to exercise some patience to help with performance in music (live and streamed), without sacrificing speech perception. Most modern hearing aids have different gain structures for these scenarios, so there’s plenty to customise.

Currently, my speech is “ok” in the calm, and speech in noise programmes, but when I switch to Music or streaming, the surrounding speech recognition is poor. I really have to switch out of that programme to talk. I’m happy with this, as I manually switch anyway, but it does make me understand that hearing aid programming is basically a compromise!

I don’t know the Costco models, but they should all have similar adjustments. The Audiologist should be able to help.

For what it’s worth, my Music/Streaming programmes, have increased low and mid frequency and gains, while the high frequencies have remained the same. I’m guessing the increased gains are “upwardly masking” the high frequencies, for speech recognition?

While investigating this, as an electric guitar player, I decided to research the frequencies that have likely caused my loss. I was quite suprised how narrow the frequences were:

Low E (6th string, open) 82Hz
High E (1st string, 24th fret) 1.318KHz

I was quite stunned that the very top note is only 1.3 KHz. My biggest loss is much higher than that, so I blame the drummer!! :grinning:

Peter

@PeterH said:

While investigating this, as an electric guitar player, I decided to research the frequencies that have likely caused my loss. I was quite suprised how narrow the frequences were:

Low E (6th string, open) 82Hz
High E (1st string, 24th fret) 1.318KHz

I was quite stunned that the very top note is only 1.3 KHz. My biggest loss is much higher than that, so I blame the drummer!! :grinning:

Peter

Good joke with drummer :sweat_smile: As a classical guitarist I recommend playing to the app like Spectroid (on Android). You’ll see that In addition to the basic tone, there are many harmonic components that make the octave higher. So A4 = 440 Hz isn’t a pure tone in musical instruments, because it has also 880 Hz (2×), 1320 Hz (3×), 1760 Hz (4×), etc… Many places to cause hearing loss.

There is also many superposable sounds from many instruments, which may effect in very high peaks.

There is just in time an open-access (yes, you can download / read the full text for free) journal paper on this topic:

Hake R, Bürgel M, Lesimple C, et al. Perception of Recorded Music With Hearing Aids: Compression Differentially Affects Musical Scene Analysis and Musical Sound Quality. Trends in Hearing. 2025;29. doi:10.1177/2331216525136866922

Have fun reading! :smiley:

Thank you, all three of you. Yes, you can always blame the drummer! Or the sax player . . or the bass player, etc. But the bass player isn’t so loud usually.

I’ll have to look up that article.

I have greatly improved my experience of listening to recorded music through speakers (ie not streamed directly to aids) by fine tuning the music program on my phonak hearing aids. It does call for patience but once you learn what to adjust and how, live testing enables you to customise to what sounds right to you.

There’s always debate on what is “best”. And there’s a big difference between streaming music, listening to speakers, and Making music with your instrument.

But there are helpful strategies online developed by an audio named Marshall Chasin well worth looking up. Basically, have your fitter create a separate program for you that dials down compression ratios, disables noise reduction, turns off feedback management and frequency shifting.
Performance with those strategies depends a great deal on how open your fitting is - can’t process sound that directly reaches your ear canals through dome vents. For me, results sound more natural through more-. Phonak Power Domes in my case. Good luck!

Thank you, everyone! I/we have to look into all this.

Well, we had an appointment for both of us a while back, but after a big, expensive (cab rides) trip to Costco, we found out that the fitter wasn’t coming in for the day! They had left me a vm that am, but I checked my email and texts, but forgot to check vm! They rescheduled us for today. BUT they rescheduled me and forgot to reschedule my husband! Arghh, life. So he has to wait until I come in for my first follow-up appointment in 3 1/2 weeks. Sigh. But that gives him more time to think about whether to also get the Jabra, or whether to get a more premium , like Phonak. I don’t know what might be better. But considering the price difference, he could get the Jabra, see about optimizing it, and see if it works for him.

For both of us, this is the first time using HAs, when we both have badly needed them for a long time. Especially me; I had 3 bad experiences with audiologists prior to this, hence the long delay.

In reply to @jedilin

@jedilin said:

There is just in time an open-access (yes, you can download / read the full text for free) journal paper on this topic:

Hake R, Bürgel M, Lesimple C, et al. Perception of Recorded Music With Hearing Aids: Compression Differentially Affects Musical Scene Analysis and Musical Sound Quality. Trends in Hearing. 2025;29. doi:10.1177/23312165251368669

Have fun reading!

Thanks for the link! It explains why I understand music better in the “harsh” automatic program with fast compression of the sound processor (Nucleus 8) compared to the Music program, in which quality and smoothness is somewhat better, but at this stage I often lose melody and have more difficulties differentiating instruments.

Of course, the music program apparently has slow compression.

Try the Jabra for a few months, then you can always switch. I started with the Jabra as recommended by Costco fitter then after 2 months switch to Rexton Reach and I’m much happier. It sound more natural and less tinny/hissing. The Rexton app mainly controls with angle of the hearing cone. Otherwise it is all automatic.

Thank you, everyone! Thanks for the links to look into. My husband doesn’t have his aids yet; he’s the musician. I think that he has two more visits before he gets his aids. (Our appointment was cancelled, and when he rescheduled, they only rescheduled me—we found out when we went for the visit supposedly for both of us).

We’ll have to look into the links.

Btw, I got mine on August 26th, and so far they are hissy and tinny. But I am getting used to and they need to be adjusted further. (Someone in the thread mentioned the fact that they were hissy and tinny for them.

As the drummer… sorry about that. But in my own defence, I was mostly playing that loud because I had two Marshall stacks aimed at me.

I don’t have mine yet, but I’ll be fitted for the brand new Rexton Reach R li-t Plus next week. I’m already planning to invest in a Noahlink wireless interface (which I believe is required to make any adjustments beyond what’s standard in the app) and find a place to get the Rexton audiologist software so I can make my own adjustments. I have no expectation that a single session with an audiologist in their office is going to lead to good results when listening to music in my home, for example. That will likely take a bunch of tweaking, in the actual environment, so I don’t see a way other than learning to do it myself.

Ha, ha, no offense there for being a drummer!! Some of our best friends are drummers (for real, 1/2 a joke, and 1/2 reality)! It can be rough as you get older, both on the hands and wrists, neck, etc., and on your hearing. Not that you wouldn’t already know.

I’ll be interested in how you find the Rextons, and on how you get on with the tweaking of the on your own.

I got the Jabra 30’s. But as a first-time user, who needed them years ago, it’s a difficult adjustment, which is to be expected. I may or may not end up with these. But every little sound is so LOUD, even with using a different program and turning the volume way down.

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