Noise in cars

I guess I am so old and old fashioned I love hearing road noise. I love driving with the windows down too. I also ride a motorcycle and I love the sound of the road. Not so much the loud exhaust of certain motorcycles. I ride a motorcycle with an extremely quiet exhaust. I wear the Phonak Spheres and they kill so much of the road noise it is like I am in an overly quiet room. Now my aids have custom ear molds. If you have domes then the domes let in a lot more sound into your ear bypassing the aids.

Yes, I admit I know of that explanation too. But I still find it difficult to accept . .
I guess it ‘s not only the brains possibly noise cancelling, it’s more that a normal hearing has the ability to filter out the speach through all the noise. When with friends at the pub, they also complain sometimes of the high background volume, the big difference is they still can hear what’s being said.

Naturally we all have different preferences of what noise is and what’s tolerable. My neighbour has a Harley and to him I believe the insane load exhaust is music. Dont misunderstand me, when I go to veteran airshow, I expect to feel physically the wonderful blast of the WW2 engines. But in my car I hate wind and tire noise.

@Raudrive said:

I try not to use any noise cancelling features with CI allowing the brain to relearn hearing. So far this has worked out for me except wind noise. Still working on that one.

That’s interesting, but I’m a bit sceptical if that would work for me with my Signia C&G.

Hi, @Morton54 ,

I also have had the loud car noise problem. To address this, my audiologist set up a program in my aids called “riding in car.” It helped me to hear my husband over the car noise when I was riding in the car with him.

I have Phonak Audeo P-90s.

Hope this helps!

Katy

@birdcountry99 said:

I also have had the loud car noise problem. To address this, my audiologist set up a program in my aids called “riding in car.”

Yes, as I said before that’s the easy solution. I dont have a dedicated program for car ride, but the generic “noise” program wotks fine. I also noticed that when I upgraded from Signia Silk NX to Silk Charge&Go IX, the standard program is much more clever to mask the unwanted sounds.

Another thing I did was to install sound deadeding material in my car, but that’s a story for another forum.

Hi Katy

I’ll check and see. I’ll let youknow what I find

I retired. Starting to feel better

DaveL

Drive an EV

Didn’t we used to have a trick of typing a bunch of periods and the system would truncate them to 3 periods and that would satisfy the 20 character problem. Sigh.

Funny, I am one of those Harley guys or used to be. Sold it 6-8 months ago.

An example. When I got CI’s the word understanding was the first obstacle. Lots of people think that’s all there is but there’s so much more. The first year or two with CI I did great but noises from the kitchen absolutely hurt to hear. I always tried to get my wife to be nice to dishes, pots and pans. I thought she was trying to break them. Slowly all these painful sounds got quieter and eventually disappeared, went away.

This to me is my brain relearning to hear. It’s real life hearing. It takes time that many can’t wait for. For some it happens faster than others. Everyone’s hearing is different.

It all depends on you and how well you explain your needs to your audiologist and how well your audiologist responds to your request and needs.
I grew up and drove for so much of my life with windows down and on open vehicles that to be in a closed up vehicle is way too quiet.

@Raudrive said:

So far this has worked out for me except wind noise. Still working on that one.

I have the P70, and for wind, I stood out in it and created a program on the app to reduce the wind noise but keeping the hearing around me acceptable so I can hear cars coming behind me when walking, so far I manage to get rid of about 90% of the wind noise. As for car noise, my 2025 Forester is pretty quiet and hearing my wife talking is important, so a bit of road noise is no real issue, my Ha’s are set by default to quiet in noise program.

The brain thing I reckon. For me, these have at some point driven me a bit bats… Keyboards when I first got aids, audi dulled it for me for some months & tuned up later by degrees; nowadays I’m at 100% script with no issues. Running water. Pigeons drive me nuts; anyway, yeh brain & how you/we all have varying abilities to tune things out or in & especially when we gain the actual sound back it can be a challenge at least initially.

@someozi said:

I’m at 100% script with no issues. Running water. Pigeons drive me nuts; anyway, yeh brain & how you/we all have varying abilities to tune things out or in & especially when we gain the actual sound back it can be a challenge at least initially.

You are doing great. Pending on how long you have had that hearing loss it can take more or less time for you to acclimate. Noise reduction technology has gotten to be pretty slick. It’s an easy way to tone down those unwanted sounds. In the process we have to be careful not to take away the sounds we need to understand things around us. It’s a fine line to challenge the brain or use technology.

Right now I am outside drinking coffee taking in nature and listening to birds. We live near a highway that can be noisy at times, like now people are driving into town for work. I have learned to hear the birds over the road noise very well. It took lots of practice and patience. Had I tuned the road noise out with technology I probably couldn’t hear the birds as well as I do.

I do not know how hearing with CI versus hearing aids would affect what I am talking about or if it even would.