Audio Crossroads: Hearing Aids?

Hi Skip

You can now have digital hearing aids permanently implanted into your ears.

Apparently these work very well and are totally discrete.

I know a fellow music lover who uses them to great effect.

Hope this helps.

Trev

I tried some of the latest generation hearing aids (Widex, which seemed to get the thumbs up from an audio perspective) a couple of years ago and did not get on with them at all. It made listening to music something like very low quality mp3; not surprising as even the best available at the time was 10 bit (or less). After a couple of days I gave up and had my money (£3k) back.

I still struggle in noisy environments like restaurants and pubs but that allows me to concentrate on drinking and eating. The one thing I do not struggle with are the strident voices of children (much to my disappointment).

Unless you are very very very deaf I would rank even the best hearing aids at the bottom of any audiophile rank; I think a litre of Peter Belt treated water would be of more benefit.

Hi Skip

Crossed this particular audio road last year. I went for the ReSound Linx2 9 with RIE (receiver in the ear). These are Made for iPhone hearing aids and come with an app to change settings.

The most important thing I have found, as far as music listening of any kind is concerned, is to get your audiologist to setup a program to turn off as much of the digital processing as possible - noise control, wind noise cancellation and the like - in particular the translation to lower frequencies of the higher frequencies now likely to be out of your hearing range. While this processing greatly aids speech understanding, I find it can interfere with harmonies when listening to both live and recorded music (and playing my own instrument). You should make sure this option is available to you during the trial period.

These particular hearing aids fit neatly enough over the ear that I can also comfortably use them with over-the-ear headphones and get enormous listening pleasure when using my P7s.

I am happier for accepting and crossing this particular road.

Happy listening

Roger

impy posted:

Hi Skip

You can now have digital hearing aids permanently implanted into your ears.

Apparently these work very well and are totally discrete.

I know a fellow music lover who uses them to great effect.

Hope this helps.

Trev

 

Sounds like April Fools.   Right?   Not sure I am ready to go that route.

I would recommend that you take off the speaker covers , and watch the cones movements much like you would do someone's lips in working out visualy what's going on.

..true. The more you can put other receptive conduits in the mix the better. Subwoofers can make you feel it of course.

I struggled for years with poor hearing. For example endlessly repositioning speakers trying to eek out better sound probably emphasising upper end over overall SQ.

So when i got my hearing aids i was quite taken aback how much i had been missing. Overall the experience of listening has been improved. 

Do i know if my hearing aids are distorting? how would I know except that someone of 30 years age would probably be hearing a truer sound from my system, but how would i ever know?. I bought a decent pair of aids ,Unitron i believe, but unlike a Naim dealer i couldn't ( or didn't try to) bring home several pairs for  listening room demo. But most suppliers willed you try a pair without a financial transaction so do try! 

Surely source first still applies and i am really enjoying my Radikal upgrade from Leicester last summer.

I find  Rogers ideas above interesting and i will try for a minimal digital setting the next time i am in with the audiologist.

Michael

My other half has Phonak , has been for 2 years now. Still haven't found the right levels with them , but Phonak dealers are superb and are there to sort through any issue that will happen. Ears can change  sensitivity and focus throughout the seasons. Having a vendor that is able to provide comprehensive tests and evaluations and provide a service to alter anything whenever is important.

Thanks to NONAME for sharing your positive experience!

My own situation is hearing loss for high frequencies in one ear (through ear infection at young age), whilst the other ear is (hopefully!) normal for my age (late 50s). I'm accepting that my perception of soundstage etc. must be affected, but it's remarkable how the brain copes with this - I'm pretty happy with music listening, though I know I must be missing a bit.

If anybody else is in this boat (one-sided hearing loss), what's your experience with hearing aids, please?

Stefan

Skip posted:

Many of us on this Forum are coming up to a crossroads and may need to augment our hearing.     My doctor tells me that, while not profound, my hearing loss might be an issue.  He says "You might benefit from a hearing aid."  I can do without them among men and music but for nuance of conversation, I struggle.    I spoke to a man about my age with three small girls and a wife.  He started his family late in life and says that his hearing loss falls into the range of a young girl's voice.  He does not want his daughters to think he is ignoring them and his lovely wife is much happier as a result.   He wears his all the time except around the shower, lake and pool.  My boys are grown and gone, so the issue is less acute for me, but it is still an issue and might be off-putting to women.  That is never good!

He has Phonak and highly recommends them.  I have not researched the Phonak model or the competitors.

I expect many of you have hearing aids and your wife is now smiling even more than she does already.   I could use some of that, and am likely to make the plunge, particularly since my health plan will pay for them, and help me swap them out every three years if needed.  

I would love to hear about your experience at this crossroads.

More relevant to this Forum, how have they affected your enjoyment of your music and your Naim and related choices?   These Phonaks are about $3500 a pair, before insurance.   My Naim habit is not covered by my plan of course.  But I am trying to place the hearing aid question in the context of a "system upgrade"    There are a number of system upgrades in that price range.  SuperLumina.   Power Lines and related products.  A Fraim set up.  Phono cartridge.  A box upgrade or additional power supply?  

How do your hearing aids rank in this context?

Thanks for the help.

 

 

noname posted:

Hi Skip

Crossed this particular audio road last year. I went for the ReSound Linx2 9 with RIE (receiver in the ear). These are Made for iPhone hearing aids and come with an app to change settings.

The most important thing I have found, as far as music listening of any kind is concerned, is to get your audiologist to setup a program to turn off as much of the digital processing as possible - noise control, wind noise cancellation and the like - in particular the translation to lower frequencies of the higher frequencies now likely to be out of your hearing range. While this processing greatly aids speech understanding, I find it can interfere with harmonies when listening to both live and recorded music (and playing my own instrument). You should make sure this option is available to you during the trial period.

These particular hearing aids fit neatly enough over the ear that I can also comfortably use them with over-the-ear headphones and get enormous listening pleasure when using my P7s.

I am happier for accepting and crossing this particular road.

Happy listening

Roger

I've been wearing hearing aids for about 20 years and for quite a few of those years I didn't listen much to recorded music because it sounded so terrible and my memory reminded me what that album on that hifi should sound like. Five years ago I started buying the best hearing aids I could get in order to be able to keep earning a living, spending a lot of quality time with the audiologist to get them tweaked right for normal life and for music and changing models about annually.  A leading edge hearing aid habit is like a Naim habit, extremely expensive.

I tried Phonaks, but they sounded very artificial and "digital" to me. Then I tried two models of Widex.  (When I say "tried", I mean bought a pair and spent hours getting them adjusted and used them for about a year.) Then a couple of years ago I tried the Resound Linx "designed for iPhone" aids. These were much better, more natural sounding and the iPhone app gives you tone controls as well as volume controls. After a lot of adjusting sessions with my audiologist, I discovered one day that contrary to what I had thought, I could now again easily tell the difference between a 320 kbs MP3 and a WAV. That started me on the Naim journey as I replaced my home office Brennan JB7 with a Unitilite and then added a US. Then Resound brought the Linx2s out and I now have the same ones as Noname. The first music I listened to with them sent shivers down my spine.  It was like suddenly being 20 years younger.  I could hardly believe it. That's when the real Naim expenditure started and I started buying lots of Naim kit, replacing the Unitilite in my office with a SuperUniti for example, and lots of music again.

I don't suppose what I am hearing is anything like what many forum members are hearing, but I'm sure I'm enjoying listening to my music as much as any of them.

I completely agree with the advice of turning off as much digital processing in the music  programme as possible, but Resound pretty well does that in its default settings for music anyway. If you do get hearing aids then the other advice I would give is that it is better to get a pair than try to manage with one, unless your better ear really is good, because for normal listening (non-Naim) the clever processing and multiple microphones helps a lot with intelligibility of voices in tricky situations. And if you have two aids, whatever the make, it is worth listening to some familiar music with each turned off in turn and write down (important to write down because you will otherwise forget the details) what you think is right and wrong about what you are hearing in each ear alone. With both ears on together, the brain does interpolate and you can miss the fact that you are missing some frequencies in one or other ear.

Of course I would rather not have to use hearing aids, but there is no doubt that my current ones transformed my musical life. But the hearing aid and Naim journey taken together has been extremely expensive and I am sure neither is over yet!

best

David

One major limitation - or rather cruel irony - with our hobby  is that the cost of decent hifi means it is not uncommon to find people can only afford the better systems they have aspired to all their lives when they reach an age that hearing liss is starting to kick in.

For someone needing hearing aids, a more 'hifi' approach to music listening might actually be to take off the hearing aids, and use headphones and add a DSP EQ capability to get the hifi system to boost the missing frequencies - ideally using the info from hearing tests to define the required 'shape', but for those who haven't got such information, it could be set up at least tolerably using a test tone. Of course only achievable up to a point, and with a disadvantage (or depending on domestic preferences it could be an advantage) that the system becomes a one-user one unless the DSP and headphone amp are used in parallel with a normal speaker output.

Innocent Bystander posted:

For someone needing hearing aids, a more 'hifi' approach to music listening might actually be to take off the hearing aids, and use headphones and add a DSP EQ capability to get the hifi system to boost the missing frequencies - ideally using the info from hearing tests to define the required 'shape', 

This would be a dangerous approach, IMO, because you risk the little sensitivity in the respective frequency band that is still left. A, say, 20db drop at, say, 3khz in your audiogram can't be compensated by simply increasing the volume by 20db at 3khz. A 3khz tone at 100db, which is just bearable, would be amplified to 120db, which would not be beneficial. Further the tonal balance doesn't fit anymore, when a 3khz peak stands out in the music.

Hearing loss is loss of the dynamic range not just a lowered volume. You need a tool that compresses the dynamic range of the signal to the range that you are still able to perceive, which is what radio stations and modern hearing aids do.

Hi, Just to add my own experience on hearing loss and wearing aids, something I put off doing for quite a while mainly due to vanity, stupid but true.

I Have now been wearing hearing aids for the past 5 years, I have slight to moderate loss in both ears mostly in the upper frequency range, I have NHS aids, I was advised by a friend NOT to go down  the private route, she had spent many thousands of ££££ on different cutting edge digital aids and had so many problems, from breaking down, to just not being able to hear clearly her opinion was echoed by a client who also spoke highly of the NHS. so I thought what do I have to loose.

I decided to give them a try before going to a private audiologist and spending 3K plus. It was a good decision, my first aids were good, much improved hearing especially in the upper frequency range, voices were clearer but not great in noisy environments but all round pretty good. After 3 years I went for a further test, luckily my hearing had not deteriorated in that time but I was offered a new set of aids with improved feedback rejection and better clarity in the mid frequency's, I have been really impressed with these, they are an over the ear model but pretty discrete, and hifi sounds natural, dynamic detailed and clear, if I take them out, there is no comparison as everything sounds flat, muffled and compressed, just awful and this is someone remeber with slight to moderate hearing loss, I fully appreciate here in the U.K. we are very fortunate to have the NHS and I am posting this for our U.K members.

Interestingly I know of someone who is quite a bit older than me, he also had NHS aids fitted, his were more conspicuous (larger) as his hearing loss is much greater than mine, they worked very well, his wife told me he had no problems hearing her or the TV but due to vanity mostly he did not worn them much, he has now swapped them for an in ear model, has tried a few, although they are less obtrusive visually his hearing is now far worse when using this new desecrate and very expensive model costing around 3.5K so by going privately and has been back and forth umpteen times to get them adjusted and his wife tells me they are nowhere near as good as his original NHS hearing aids he had a year or so back, I think she is right as when I see him he is constantly missing part of the conversation.

Just my experience, all I would say is don`t dismiss the NHS option out of hand, I am so glad I gave them a try.

ATB

jfritzen posted:', 

This would be a dangerous approach, IMO, because you risk the little sensitivity in the respective frequency band that is still left. A, say, 20db drop at, say, 3khz in your audiogram can't be compensated by simply increasing the volume by 20db at 3khz. A 3khz tone at 100db, which is just bearable, would be amplified to 120db, which would not be beneficial. Further the tonal balance doesn't fit anymore, when a 3khz peak stands out in the music.

Hearing loss is loss of the dynamic range not just a lowered volume. You need a tool that compresses the dynamic range of the signal to the range that you are still able to perceive, which is what radio stations and modern hearing aids do.

 

Point taken, and clearly laying my ignorance bare. However, it begs a question as to whether  it might not still get closer to hifi if that DSP compression and whatever other processing may be applied to be done within a hifi system and played through full range hifi headphones, possibly with the potential for greater satisfaction for the person who has invested heavily in top range hifi? Just a thought.

This must be an area of investigation that a headphone amplifier may be made that actually is “safe” and brings back most of the quality that was possible with perfectly unfettered hearing. 

This must be an important field for the manufacturers as the age of the average “hifi” enthusiast increases. 

ATB from George

Innocent Bystander posted:

jfritzen posted:', 

This would be a dangerous approach, IMO, because you risk the little sensitivity in the respective frequency band that is still left. A, say, 20db drop at, say, 3khz in your audiogram can't be compensated by simply increasing the volume by 20db at 3khz. A 3khz tone at 100db, which is just bearable, would be amplified to 120db, which would not be beneficial. Further the tonal balance doesn't fit anymore, when a 3khz peak stands out in the music.

Hearing loss is loss of the dynamic range not just a lowered volume. You need a tool that compresses the dynamic range of the signal to the range that you are still able to perceive, which is what radio stations and modern hearing aids do.

 

Point taken, and clearly laying my ignorance bare. However, it begs a question as to whether  it might not still get closer to hifi if that DSP compression and whatever other processing may be applied to be done within a hifi system and played through full range hifi headphones, possibly with the potential for greater satisfaction for the person who has invested heavily in top range hifi? Just a thought.

If it's done properly, why not? Eg, there are apps that can process your music to ease a tinnitus by filtering out respective frequencies.

This is all very interesting and pertinent for me as I'm on my third day wearing Phonak Audio V70 hearing aids for a mild to moderate high frequency hearing loss.

I have to admit that music through them does not sound that great and my thinking was to try the DSP option for hifi listening and listen without them in. It's interesting to hear there are types of hearing aid that seem more  in tune with the music/hifi. Early days yet and I have at least 2 audiologist visits and a 30 day trial. Thankfully I can hear my daughters and wife much more clearly.

I'm using the equaliser extension on foobar to fill out the frequencies I can hear with the hearing aid in. A kind chap on another forum is then helping me save this to some sort of wav file that can be used in a convolution engine through HQPlayer into my (new) Hugo TT. An early attempt at this seems quite promising. This apparently could be accomplished using DIRAC as well.

Great and timely topic, thanks to all contributors.

SJB

Sloop John B posted:

This is all very interesting and pertinent for me as I'm on my third day wearing Phonak Audio V70 hearing aids for a mild to moderate high frequency hearing loss.

I have to admit that music through them does not sound that great and my thinking was to try the DSP option for hifi listening and listen without them in. It's interesting to hear there are types of hearing aid that seem more  in tune with the music/hifi. Early days yet and I have at least 2 audiologist visits and a 30 day trial. Thankfully I can hear my daughters and wife much more clearly.

I'm using the equaliser extension on foobar to fill out the frequencies I can hear with the hearing aid in. A kind chap on another forum is then helping me save this to some sort of wav file that can be used in a convolution engine through HQPlayer into my (new) Hugo TT. An early attempt at this seems quite promising. This apparently could be accomplished using DIRAC as well.

 

Great and timely topic, thanks to all contributors.

 

 

 

SJB

 

 

I don't know those aids. Do you have a remote control? Can you change programme and adjust the volume? If not then it's not the right hearing aid. If you have just a high frequency loss then you will get a lot of sound direct and maybe the aids are over-reinforcing the higher frequencies. You can have the music programme adjusted so as not to overdo the amplification, separate to the programme you use to talk to the family!

Also don't limit yourself to two more visits to the audiologist. I use Amplifon and they are used to me wanting 10-15 visits over several months to get things how I want.

best

David

Cheers David,

In fairness they said weekly visits for the 30 day trial period. The Phonak automatically adjust to the conditions. Their blurb with them and on their website emphasise their music potential. I suppose there may be some expectation bias at play too as I "expect" my system to sound better direct from my speakers with my weaker frequencies boosted rather than what I presume is through a tiny ADC, back to a DAC and onto my eardrum.

Part of me is attracted to having control to change settings (which I don't have) and yet the idea of this all being automated (what I have currently) is attractive also, the nest week at work will tell a lot.

SJB

You can indeed have a remote control for those Phonaks and I really would recommend you do. Even if you don't use it most of the time, being able to turn them up or down a bit is great, especially if you don't like what you are hearing.

When you are through your first week or two, I'd be happy to chat on the phone if you would like.

best

David

Hello Skip. At the hearing crossroads too here. Bought an amp with 'tone' controls and have never enjoyed my music so much since the loss began and have decided not to use a hearing aid for my music until things get very, very bad.

I will be getting a hearing aid soon for conversations I miss out on ( find bars and lively restaurants v. difficult )

JoexNaim posted:

Hello Skip. At the hearing crossroads too here. Bought an amp with 'tone' controls and have never enjoyed my music so much since the loss began and have decided not to use a hearing aid for my music until things get very, very bad.

I will be getting a hearing aid soon for conversations I miss out on ( find bars and lively restaurants v. difficult )

Thanks.  Good idea, to a point.   But I am happy with my preamp.

If i'm lucky, i won't need to revisit this thread in around 35 years time. If not, i'll be back as my old man is starting to suffer from hearing loss. Could be selective though as it tends to kick in when my Mum asks him to do something. 

Joking aside, it is cruel that just at the time you're likely to be able to afford the gear is when your hearing starts to take a step back. 

Let's hear it for cheap (but good) hifi! 

Thanks for all who have contributed to this thread my visit to the audiologist yesterday was far more productive than it might have been.

My main questions based on this tread were:

• iPhone app
• what sounds were being amplified (and not being amplified)
• music setting
• Volume control

So yes there is an iPhone app but it needs a separate little box in order for the phone and hearing aids to "talk" to each other. A little unwieldy as a lanyard must be used to hang this box around your neck. (I've enquired about price and may even purchase it, as I can see in some situations it may be useful).

I was shown a graph and indeed it is only high frequency sounds that are being processed so for the lower registers they flow through to my ear as they would normally. This probably explains why the hearing aids did not cause me any bother as reading up before I got them I was expecting a torrid week, when in fact it's quite easy to forget they are in.

There is a music setting which can be activated (once set up) by a button on the top of the hearing aid. I obviously went for this option and wow does it make a difference. Tracks and albums that I had memory of sounding great but had become "flat" now had life again - particularly Neil Young's Zuma. And just as importantly tracks that I would have thought had a slightly harsh treble have not become paint strippers. The difference with the music setting is dramatic and I have no feeling that I'm getting a poor quality radio broadcast through headphones which it could sound a little like on the "auto" setting.

The difference with understanding speech has been quite an improvement but in some situations meetings in a boardroom for example I can still miss the odd phrase so I would like to be able to increase the volume to hopefully catch these. So the switch on the right hearing aid gives a 3 step volume increment.

All in all I'm so much happier than I was a week ago and now thankfully see that my hifi days are definitely not gone. I had thought I'd have to try DSP to get something like hi fidelity sound into my ears where patently this will not be the case. I was looking sadly at my CD555 thinking I'd have to sell it as it wouldn't be able to utilise the DSP. Now the CD555 is staying out for a few more years at least.

I had thought a hearing aid was a bit of a death sentence for one's hi-fi, where now it appears no more fatal than someone needing to wear glasses to watch their UHD TV.

SJB

Sloop John B posted:

Thanks for all who have contributed to this thread my visit to the audiologist yesterday was far more productive than it might have been.

....

 I had thought a hearing aid was a bit of a death sentence for one's hi-fi, where now it appears no more fatal than someone needing to wear glasses to watch their UHD TV.

 

Excellent news. Long may your batteries last 

Roger