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Thoughts On Frequency Shifting?

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In reply to @Ed_R1

Real Ear Measurement is done at your audiologist or specialist and is part of a complete fitting measuring what your particular ear is “hearing” with the hearing aids on. You can’t do it yourself without the special equipment.

My loss is so bad, there is no hope without frequency shifting. I did find it off putting at first. All the lisping and sibilance seemed to get in the way. But, I stuck with it. After a while, it actually seemed to be working. I could watch a TV show, or movie and get almost everything. The down side is that I have become so dependent on subtitles, I just about won’t watch anything that doesn’t have them. While seems to work well for TV viewing, out in the real world, it is another story. I can’t tell that it makes speech any more clear than before. That is why I no longer wear my aids. Out in the world, they just make an already bad problem worse.

If you are setting it yourself, see if you can get someone to stand about a meter away and make sustained /s/ sound, or perhaps a recurring “ts” sound because the /s/ might come out a bit more natural, and then put the settings to the minimum possible where you can still hear the /s/.

If you are still hearing it more like /sh/, you can try increasing 4 kHz gain a bit and/or decreasing 2 kHz a bit. For some losses (and acoustic couplings), separating them is just impossible.

I don’t love the demant strategy compared to other manufacturers. However, be aware that there’s some pediatric research out there showing that it can take 6-8 months to adapt to frequency lowering. Interestingly, for some participants it was a slow adaptation over time but for others it was a sudden perceptual flip.

For what it’s worth, here’s the frequency content of /s/, /sh/, /f/, and /th/.

image

Thanks Neville, that’s a great idea. I’m going try and make some audio recordings with the “S” sound. I’m baffled that the Philips Hearsuite and Oticon Genie programming S/W doesn’t have these samples in their Sound Studio audio generator. Can’t even find them on YouTube :slight_smile:

In reply to @Ed_R1

I failed on YouTube as well. A recording should be okay. If you have a separate device with the sound meter app, you’re aiming for about 65dB at the ear. Until a few years back, we had to plug a calibrated /s/ sound into our machine with a USB, but happily it’s built in now.

In reply to @Ed_R1

@Ed_R1 said:

I’m going try and make some audio recordings with the “S” sound. I’m baffled that the Philips Hearsuite and Oticon Genie programming S/W doesn’t have these samples in their Sound Studio audio generator. Can’t even find them on YouTube :slight_smile:

Install Phonak Target, and then sound add-ons from its update module. I regularly play woman “s” voice, which is in highest frequencies.

See video here:

Diagnosis with hearing loss in one ear. Not hearing all sounds in hearing aid - #51 by Bimodal_user

I must also buy calibrated sonometer, because sound meter app without calibrating seems unreliable for me.

Edited

@Ed_R1 I think you have what you need above and that you’ll find what works for you based on intuition (“that sounds right”) alone.

This may delve a bit deeper than you need or want, but Joshua Alexander has developed a Frequency Lowering Fitting Assistant that measures something called “ERB”—a way of describing the bandwidth of the human ear. This metric is central to determining whether sounds like “S” and “SH” are distinguishable. For effective differentiation, the ERB value must be sufficiently large. Links to his fitting assistant tools and explanatory videos are provided below:

https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~alexan14/fittingassistants.html10

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