A Question to those using hearing aids for HiFi listening if I may:
I’m finding that my Oticon Intent2 aids have transformed my music listening - using the standard Oticon ‘MyMusic’ setting, revealing just how much high frequency information I’ve been missing for quite a while now.
I’m extremely happy about this!
However, when I play guitar, I notice that an electric guitar played acoustically without an amp sounds overly smooth, sweet and even - almost like it’s going through a compressor or mild fuzz box and on the higher strings it sounds like I have fret buzz (which I don’t). Acoustic guitar is also falsely smooth and even from string to string and it makes my 6 string sounds a little like a 12 string.
If the HA’s are doing that to musical instruments then I’m assuming they’re also doing the same to my HiFi listening.
My audiologist tells me the MyMusic setting fulfills the following list of recommended settings for music:
The primary purpose of aids is normally for communication (speech) and day-to-day essential living needs, and certainly they may often apply some degree of compression, depending on what exactly your ears need. However themusic setting should minimise such things, and I don’t know if that list from your audiologist covers everything (I note it says reduce not cancel compression). Somewhere on this forum there is a list of settings to request your audiologist to apply, in a thread earlier this year.
@davidhendon can probably give you far more informed and helpful advice,
The list looks about right. You can’t cancel all compression because the power required at the higher frequencies would probably cause damage and anyway the batteries in the hearing aids wouldn’t last very long! Don’t forget that every 3 dB gain a a doubling of power. And 10dB gain is ten times the power! So looking at the audiogram, to get 4kHz to about the same level as the lower frequencies would need about 30dB gain.
But another problem is that if you have a 40dB loss, then that can’t be fixed just by amplifying by 40dB because the dynamic range is likely 40 dB smaller. Or to put it another way, compression is how you make quiet noises loud enough without loud noises blowing your head off!
Another thing is that if you have a serious hearing loss, then your cochlears are likely damaged and then become quite non-linear, sounds can come across as distorted or you even can get some notes sounding out of tune.
It’s probably worth chatting to an audiologist, but I doubt there is any absolute fix to the OP’s issue.
Thanks for your response David. I was hoping you would comment!
So, you don’t think it’s an Oticon specific artefact and any other brand of HA is likely to sound the same to me if I understand you correctly(?)
