Throwing in the Towel

The “tinny” quality goes mostly away when you plug your ears because the sound only comes from the HAs, ditto from your ithings or any set of headphones. But if you let the sound from the outside enter your ears then the two soundwaves are going to interfere, and since the soundwaves are not static tones that interference creates a “beating” which produces this “tinny” quality.
Maybe Widex sounds better, but I don’t give much credit to manufacturer claims (or, better said, hype). I did a simple test with audicity (sound software) mixing a voice recording with itself delayed and for a 0.5 ms delay there was a noticeable “distortion” too.

And yet all the papers (none of them done recently) on this subject “claim” that 10 msec and even more delay is OK. I do not believe them either. Yes it’s the Coulomb filtering that I am hearing and to me it’s distorted and so I have MORE trouble understanding speech at times rather than less. I have read that if the amplitude difference between the boosted signal and the actual one (at higher freq for most of us) then the delay tolerated can be higher. Analog HA didn’t have this issue like digital ones and the more bells and whistles they add the more potential delay. Do some people just learn to ignore this? I hear so many new users so dissapointed with the tinny sounds when they expected the Marketing Hype of “rich, vibrant clear speech without the bother of noise”, lol. I’ve managed to tune most of this out using neural network program but my tech will want to give me a hard time about that when I see her this week, lol. And this tuning has no doubt lowered the gain in areas where I need the gain. It’s a real balancing act this is so inefficient to reach with the tech making guesses and then sending me out for 2 weeks (I know in a day if it helped). Now only a few things “break up” at times

I would say, having listened to the Moments that for me it’s a significant technological step. It’s a very pure and natural sound, and to my ears having moments when I feel my own natural hearing has been increased, rather than hearing through technology. You will always have personal preference based on hearing loss and perception but happy to say it’s definitely significant progress in hearing technology.

That’s what I’ve heard others say about the moments. Well today my left BiCore shut off on it’s own for the 2nd time in two days. And this time I can’t get it to restart. I was noticing that it was making a lot more distortion of my voice compared to the right (not sure if that’s new) and I was outside for about a half hr and just started to sweat so came in and it shut itself down. The right stayed on. Tried a restart with the button, putting them both back in the case and plugging the charger in, restarted the app and all combinations. I have it in the descant bottle right now and will try starting later. I see my tech tomorrow and will either get a replacement ordered or another brand. I don’t think CostCO deals with Widex though and it would cost a small fortune compared to what I paid at CostCo. I guess it all depends on how much I think I’m missing and how bad I want to hear better.

I did get a dryer today at Costco (had been using a descant bottle to dry) because my Rexton Bicore quit again. 3rd time in 4 days and always the left one. This time I had shut it off for an hr to nap and when I tried to turn it back on it remained off. Put it in the charger too and plugged in still dead. I made it to Costco before they closed, bought the drying and they managed to get it running again but said we should send it back for a new one. So Tuesday it goes back. I think this left one may be most of my issues now with distortion too. The lastest adjustment is getting better except for the left one which seems to break up easily with many voices. Did a lot of comparing with one side off and then max volume and the left one is the one that really crappy, thin, garbled, etc.

I think that sounds like a good plan. By getting them both checked and in the right working order you can then check what the situation is before deciding how to proceed. That’s great you have bought a dryer. My son sometimes runs it through twice after a bike ride. Moisture can build and by eliminating it daily it can make all the difference. You may keep removing a little bit of moisture enabling it to start up, but it quickly becomes overwhelmed again. A service and running the dryer daily may prevent a lot of issues for you. Let’s hope you get some good progress soon.

phonak phone support may help walk the Audi thru the adjustments. Often they are very experienced and better at programming than the Audi, All h/she has to do is follow their directions.

I can imagine the money lobbying against any form of hair cell regeneration, lol.

Yes, BUT…small molecules capable of provoking hair cell regeneration means it’s going to be big pharma companies going at it. Once they buy the successful tech from the small biotechs that develop it, that is. Blindness and deafness have been cured in animal models. We know hair cells can regenerate if given the right instructions. It will not happen for every blind person and every HOH person. But it will come along. For now, as much as I struggle with hearing aids, I’m grateful to have them. The difference in speech clarity with and without them is night and day.

I’m all for re-growing hairs and no doubt they will crack this someday. I just had a fellow mtn biker (sorry Spudgunner, lol) who had ear crystals causing her balance issues. They put her on a machine that did some very complex whole body rotations to get the crystals into an area where her vertigo disappeared. Never knew! Crystals are still there (working on methods to dissolve them I’m told by my doc) but in an area where they won’t cause any balance issues.

I’m hopeful that if I actually get a good hearing aid in my left ear (sent the old one back after it failed to re-start for the 4th time) I can FINALLY make some progress. By turning one to 15 and the other to zero, alternating sides with this while listening to something that sounds broken up (when they both worked) I found that the right one is pretty good and only heard the high volume and very little if any distortion while the left one really sounded all broken up and tinny at almost any volume but the extreme volume really contrasted how very bad it was compared to the right. Yes I am so thankful it failed like this since they will not repair, it was easy to show Costco it didn’t work and I’ll get a new one. I kept the right one since “don’t fix what isn’t broken”, lol.

@fbacher1 said:

Crystals are still there (working on methods to dissolve them I’m told by my doc) but in an area where they won’t cause any balance issues.

Crystals are suppopsed to be there. Should disolve on their own once they are out of the semi-circular canals and back into the utricle.

They don’t always do that for all people and in this case they were causing this lady severe vertigo.

Yes and some docs do it without the machine and there are series of specific positions the patient is put in to slide the crystals around. Maybe a good mtn bike endo would do the the same thing, lol?

Had it a couple of times over about a weeks time - Googled it - It’s called BPPV for Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. I did the recommended exercises, and have not had any vertigo issues since.

A number of my friends have had BPPV over the years. Some have visited ENT’s who often order tests including MRI’s. Nothing abnormal was found with any of my friends MRI’s and Physical Therapy was prescribed.

Can’t imagine having a BPPV episode while riding a bike, or driving a car…might ruin your day unless you have some of SpudGunner’s Dilithium.