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Is there any hope for hearing aids with a wider frequency range?

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Edited

For most hearing aid and cochlear implant users, the top priority is obviously understanding speech, especially in noisy environments. For someone like me—passionate about both cinema and music—it is equally important to have devices with a wider frequency range; this applies not only to high frequencies above 8,000 Hz but also to low frequencies—specifically those below 125 Hz, which are reproduced by a subwoofer. I have a decent audio system in my home cinema, including a solid subwoofer; however, if I want to hear the bass clearly, I have to turn up the sub's volume, which naturally bothers a person with normal hearing (I measured an explosion scene that peaked at 104 ). Is there any hope that hearing aids will be able to handle these frequencies in the coming years? I had high hopes for XMEMS technology, but I get the impression that major hearing aid brands aren't particularly interested in it.

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30-40 KHz bandwidth mics existed in the late 1990s.

12-16KHz double diaphragm receivers exist; lower frequencies require larger diaphragms.

You can understand most speech from a 4KHz phone signal.

The usable bandwidth on your is about 2KHz.

Pumping sound out to your upper frequencies with 30+ of gain is likely to leave you in a whole world of feedback and distortion in the remainder of your hearing, before you even consider the downward spread of masking.

Edited

What @Um_bongo is trying to explain is that even if hearing aids had the wide bandwidth that you desire, your hearing loss means that you can only probably hear between 1 and 2500 Hz as your loss is profound above this.

You could use technologies to compress or shift higher frequency sounds into your audible range, but you probably cannot perceive sounds above 2.5 kHz without this if your uploaded represents a sensorineural loss.

At the lower end, Oticon claims to process and amplifies down to 80Hz in the mymusic program of recent products from Oticon Real onwards. I don't think any other manufacturer goes this low. Trying to move enough air to go below this is difficult with the small speakers attached to modern hearing aids.

Another solution is EarLens 2.0 (IIRC, frequency response up to 12 kHz?), but:

  1. It's expensive
  2. It's bothersome (involvement of an audiologist and )
  3. Regarding another features than frequency response and gain - obsolete

But the most important part is explained above - you have probably no usable hearing over 2.5 kHz.

The only way to get some tones over 2.5 kHz (up to ~8 kHz) is unilateral cochlear implantation.

I agree with you regarding high frequencies, but despite my profound hearing loss above 2000 Hz, I’ve managed to achieve good recovery thanks to Phonak’s SoundRecover2—which is the main reason why my next hearing aids will also be Phonaks.

At the moment, however, I was more interested in the low-frequency range—specifically below 125 Hz—though I realize that’s very challenging as well.

That said, I seem to recall reading that this might be possible with xMEMS’ Cowell speakers, yet I haven’t heard of any major brands about to adopt this technology.

@lello58 said:

I was more interested in the low-frequency range—specifically below 125 Hz—though I realize that’s very challenging as well.

As mentioned previously, Oticon amplifies down to 80 Hz in the mymusic programme. I don't know of any other manufacturer that goes lower than this.

I get better bass response with music, if I boost the low frequencies in Target. For most programmes (using ) the gains and for the lower frequencies are really low. If I increase these lower frequencies, they do seem to help with sub bass too.

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