Word Recognition Score (WRS)

Yes i understand about background noise and i should have asked why accessories are still needed in a quite background? I guess many HOH are watching tv with background noise such as aircon and perhaps other people talking nearby.

Yes i will be trialling hearing aids very soon. Your low frequencies are mild and wonder if that is the reason you don’t need accessories for watching tv? The high frequencies i can understand you probably would need accessories. I guess everyone if different but i am pleased to know from your experience that you can watch tv without captions/subtitles from a few metres away! That’s awesome and hoping to get a similar result.

@Deafas

That’s why you need a fitter who follows best practices and can measure stuff and explain to you how your loss really looks like, what aids can and cannot do, if external mics can or cannot help and so on.

In short, again, tonal audiogram says that you have frequency loss, what type, how severe and might imply if there are dead regions.
WRS, word recognition score, tell us what we can expect from aids.
SNR with quicksin or similar tests tell us what are our needs in speech babble noise.

My working theory is that those from WRS lower than 70/80 are probably screwed up, because they hear too good for CI, but too bad for HA.
No HA in the world can repair your cochlea, and damaged cochlea and especially dead reagions in it is what distorts sound, brain interprets it, and you get your WRS. The more damage there is, the clearer signal you need in order for your brain to have better chances in deciphering that.

If your SNR is high that means that your brain is really struggling in any noise, and ideally you’d do best with full noise cancellation of any noise and disturbance of the sound. That being said, many youtubers have bad sound quality, because they use wrong mics and don’t have acoustically prepared rooms, so mics pick up everything, and that gets into the mix soup for your brain to decipher. Add to that all noises between your speakers and you, and you’re asking your brain to do some heavy lifting.

SNR 2-4 is ‘you struggle but aids should suffice’, ‘5-10’ usually means ‘aids won’t be enough, try with external mic’, higher than that means ‘you’re screwed’. Guess where I stand if mics won’t help me to get clear signal

HAs just bring signal, louder, in front of your eardrum. And tries to clear it up, however, it isn’t perfect. Mics do the same, with an advantage of shortening the distance between sound you want to hear and your ears effectively.

HAs mics indeed are weaker by distance of sound source. I think 4m at 65db could be already tricky, even in quiet (because quiet isn’t sound booth), but I forgot the exact number for distance, I think 6-8m means probably unusable for many people. You might heard that something is said, but not get enough information to comprehend what is being said. That’s why speaking from other room just doesn’t work, no matter if you wear HAs or not, but it seems that many spouses expect that when you wear HA you can magically hear them from another room when they speak in normal voice.

When tests if HAs are fitted properly are done, it’s on 1m distance and 65db source. 65db is normal speech loudness.

That’s property of the sound - it losses power over distance.

That being said, why we wear aids in the first place?
So that we don’t have to suffer through listening situation (so hard).
Why use mics and other stuff? So that we further reduce that suffering.

Normal hearing people don’t have to focus on hearing, they don’t get fatigue because they try to understand what’s being said.

I asked my husband why he likes to listen stuff somewhat louder than I do, and his answer got me thinking. He said that he doesn’t want to think about listening, he just wants to hear it.
That and the fact that my ear is really bad, got me to 2 aids and mics, and struggle to comprehend is real, however, without them, so only one aid - I don’t struggle, I just give up.

So, no, it definitely isn’t necessary to use any aid, if you don’t have issues with your hearing loss.
Nor you need accesories, if aids work great for you.

However, aids have limits, and SNR the top tech provide in ideal environments are I think at most 7?
Your daily environment isn’t ideal environment.
And your brain may or may not cope well with additional help that aids bring, that mic/tv connector bring…

Best thing you can do is - try and compare.
Try aids, if they work great - awesome, you’re done.
If some situations are better but you still struggle, try accessories, if they work great - awesome, you’re done.
If they help a bit, but not completely (mind you, no aids beside CI in the world can repair your cochlea and improve your WRS from 50s into 90s), then you have to decide if they’re worth the money for what you get or not.

Also, if without mics you’re screwed, but with mics you work fine, I’d suggest going with cheaper tier aids and external mics, since mics will do the heavy lifting alone anyway, so why pay for that 5 snr boost from aids if you don’t see benefit and you need 8 which mic provides, for example.

But, my takeaway from this world is that if I can pay, I’ll use any accessory that makes me strain a bit less. Becaue that means that I can be not exhausted at the end of the day, or enjoy longer dinner evenings and be engaged.

Every bit counts.

If you’re lucky and you need ‘just’ HAs, by all means, go for it. It definitely happens.

However, bunch of folks here on forum use accessories, my guess is probably since most of us came here because we were so frustrated with our losses, and had to dig more and more, and help ourselves with informations and so on. So it’ definitely a biased community

That being said, if you realise you enjoy streaming youtube from your phone, just keep in mind that with tv connectors you can get the same for your TV.
I didn’t know that (both) until last year and it was really a gamechanger for me.
And I use my mic for video calls on speakerphone, since that sound is really distorted, even if I’m half a meter away, with HAs alone is just hard (yes 2 aids and 1 normal hearing ear). WIth mic I don’t have to even look at people talking, you know, like normal hearing people can do Not to mention that I can go in the kitchen and still hear them talking loud and clear

@Deafas said:

I realise i must be an expert at lipreading as i see people talking with masks on but wonder how on earth the other person can possibly understand what is being said with the cloth covering the other persons mouth? Really amazing!

With your hearing loss, you’re only getting about 6% of speech cues at a soft conversational level. Yes, you are probably a fantastic lip reader.

What a lovely list of new sounds you’ve described. It made me sit and listen to the soft sounds in my enviroment. I can hear the radio on in the kitchen, the chirp of birds outside of my window, the sound of traffic going by on the street outside. The world really isn’t very quiet.

@Deafas said:

I can understand these accessories may be of great assist for profound hearing loss although i don’t understand why they would be needed for moderate or severe hearing loss? This tells me that hearing aids still do not work over 2-3 metres distances? Please correct me if i am wrong?

You’re not wrong. Others are correct about hearing aids only being able to boost signal to noise ratio so much, but also sound degrades very quickly over distance. Within 2 meters is the optimal listening distance for hearing aids. This doesn’t mean you won’t be able to hear things that are further away, but if you can stream it directly into the hearing aids and eliminate the distance problem it will be a much clearer sound. Knowing this beforehand is valuable. Planning to make good use of remote microphone technology is valuable. Clipping it to your friend when you are fishing is a great idea.

Thanks for the replies everyone which is much appreciated. I will read everyones comments and sometimes twice and three times again as it’s a lot of valuable information to absorb. Since i am a new member i feel like i have been swimming in a sea of information in the past few weeks.

Can hearing really be that complicated i asked myself while driving my car along the coast today? Why is is that an audiologist will spend 6 years training as much as a medical doctor and may not always have good fitting skills? Is it better to have an Audiometrist who has years of fitting experience and little medical knowledge? Why did a childhood friend think i am deliberately ignoring what he tells me? He says i have hearing amplifiers so what’s the problem?

Then i thought to myself why scientists haven’t figured out a way to do cochlear transplants like they do for liver, heart etc.

Nearly half a century has passed since i have worn a BTE hearing aid from 6 yrs old to 52 yrs old and not much progress has happened in that time in regards to bringing hearing loss back to normality although can understand hearing aids have progressed since analog was around.
I guess the same complexities would apply to the blind as the human eye is just as complicated as hearing loss.

Today i was on my iphone 7 to Australia Post staff without my hearing amplifiers and it was loud enough to hear on the speaker in my right ear at full volume (left ear i hear only distortion the speaker) and i got around 60% word recognition although it sounded distorted. I tried briefly with the speaker off and it sounded much clearer although the full volume was not loud enough.

Next week i will go for a half hour impression appointment for moulds to be made for the Starkey livio ITC or ITE if not powerful enough.

I will stay here and read more than i contribute…as the saying goes listen twice as much as you speak, lol

Best wishes to everyone during the pandemic. Please make see through masks mandatory so those of us HOH can read lips.

@Raudrive I met a fellow at the shops that i talk with and he has a nucleus 7 cochlear implant in one ear and Resound H/A in the other ear. As i am a regular customer i noticed he seems to be able to hear and respond to staff that speak to him from a distance of 5-6 metres. There is a fair bit of background noise but not a lot. If you stand near the checkout area of a supermarket it is not as noisy as the fridge/freezer areas and where they stack crates/pallets of food. Do you get speech understanding from long distances assuming low background noise? How about long distance conversations in background noise? I find Cochlear devices interesting and seeking to know their limitations. Thanks

@Deafas said:

Do you get speech understanding from long distances assuming low background noise?

Pretty good speech understanding at distances. A hundred feet away is not a problem if there is not a lot of background noise.

@Deafas said:

How about long distance conversations in background noise?

This is much more difficult. It depends on what the background noise is. We live out in the country. Certain times of the year locusts, cicada and even birds can drown out speech when trying to listen to someone. Road noise can also hinder understanding. Otherwise the CI’s are amazing but remember that when the processors come off, you are deaf.

Fingers crossed. I am lucky to have found an audiologist who follows best practices including REM. I’m learning to trust better these days with great members contributions including yourself on this forum, Dr Cliff and customer reviews. It makes life much easier. Before Google existed it was just logic and gut intuition for everything for life and business decisions. Apparently our gut has a mind of it’s own if there is such a thing!

I understand. Good on you for forcing some trust and open mindedness…

I wish you nothing less than life changing good results from your quest.

[… as @kevels55 would say!]

Much appreciated Jim.
I always found these lyrics by little river band amusing And I never will go to Singapore
The people there will cut your hair
In Singapore
And i have trust issues

@Sara82 said:

Ive been rejected with CI route three times and I do not think Im ready for CI

When the last rejection took place?

The CI assessment took place in 2020.

It was a long time ago. The guidelines are changing, updating. I was ineligible in 2011 and then suddenly was eligible 1-1,5 year later with the same hearing loss. I think it’s worth to get another chance, maybe with another audiologist and ENT otologist?

actually, I may ask to be referred to ENT Otologis and take it from there.