By far the dominant effect will be the individual hearing loss. We fuss about fiddling with cables that add or subtract a dB here or half a dB there. Hearing loss can be 40 or 60 or 80 dB or more and vary massively across the frequency band and equally massively between your ears. Also don’t forget the difference in audio power level between 1dB and 60 dB, because dBs are logarithmic, isn’t 60 times, it’s about a million times.
So setting up any hearing aid for music listening is a very particular matter and the audiologist needs to understand what is being looked for. Some hearing aids are regarded as being better for music listening than others, but really a massively more important thing is that whichever aid one proposes to use is set up the right way. Also the one that is best for me is probably not the one that is best for the next person.
The best hearing aids you could buy with the best support package might be about £5K for a pair. A cheap and cheerful pair might be less than £1K a pair. So it’s hardly Atom versus Statement in any case.
What I’d be looking for would be to hear the system, with the aids, exactly as I would without aids if I had perfect hearing - with no distortions introduced by the aids. Is that reasonable or realistic ? I’m guessing not.
@Canaryfan
Your story almost mirrors mine exactly, the only addition to the symptoms was that I could fall asleep halfway through a conversation at the dinner table especially when in company and I couldn’t follow what was being said.
Fortunately I’m at the mild top end hearing loss diagnosis, however part of the hearing test involved repeating a spoken sentence mixed with background noise in that test I am almost in the severe hearing loss category I can apparently hear clearly words contains lots of consonants but not vowels.
The aids are used to tidy up my high frequency hearing loss and to some extent help with the vowels (apparently there are audio physiotherapy exercises available which can help further if necessary.
Since the arrival of my Phonak Paradise 90’s I stay awake, keep hearing things I haven’t heard in a long time (e.g. birds singing) and ac you say music is great.
Thank you for posting your findings re HIFi I have been a little hesitant on upgrading as I i wasn’t sure I would be able to discern differences.
One of the other benefits of the aids is the Bluetooth connectivity so I can stream music whilst out at work and even when sitting down reading a book on an evening whilst the better half watches TV.
I am still working with the audiologist to tweak the sounds quality as bass can be a little light at times.
They try to amplify the bits that are lost because of hearing loss, but there is a limit to what can be achieved. If you can’t hear 8 kHz then you can’t hear 8 kHz and making it louder does nothing helpful. It’s as if you became blind to blue light. Shining a bright blue light at you doesn’t help.
Also hearing loss reduces sensitivity to quiet sounds, but generally speaking doesn’t reduce the sensitivity to loud sounds as much. So your dynamic range might reduce from say a normal 100 dB to say 30dB. You can’t get that back with a hearing aid.
Makes sense. I always, intuitively, assumed what you are saying to be the case. I dont use aids but at 62yrs old I’m sure they are a realistic possibility in the future. My hearing is certainly not as good as that of my wife. Nevertheless I can still discern the benefits of a good system over a lesser one, and also the benefits of specific upgrades.
I fear having one day a hearing loss. It would be hard to live for me. So I am interested in that thread.
I wonder if the music is perceived in the same way with aids or is there a feeling of something not natural, like amplified artificially?
I’ve been taking note (no pun intended) of what devices work for people with a strategy of building a shortlist to try. Whatever works best regardless of appearance will be the one I get.
It does need to be user adjustable though from an Android app.
I recently got Oticon Opn S miniRITE R they’re really shocking good. iPhone app, Bluetooth lots of cool stuff. My advice is whatever brand you buy get them from a good Audiologist. It’s as much the fitting and customization as it is the hardware.
@Canaryfan firstly let me say how sorry I am to learn of the terrible situation you in which you found yourself, I was genuinely shocked as I continued reading.
Your post highlights an issue many of us will or already are very aware of whether it be through personal experience or family and friends.
It’s good to know that there is hope for us all as we continue on our own journeys. Thank you for sharing your personal thoughts and feelings.
If you have hearing loss and then have to use aids, this is your new normal. The fact you can hear better than without them means that the concept of artificiality doesn’t really apply. The time comes when it sounds worse without them than with them. So you listen to music with them.
I can still remember how specific albums sounded when I was 25 or 30 and they don’t sound remotely right now. But so what? You are dealt a hand and you make the best game with it. There are lots of worse things to have than hearing loss, especially as one gets older.
A bit if a generalisation perhaps, but I guess there are two types of hearing aid users; those that have had the misfortune of a health/ accident related cause of hearing loss and then those that have gradual deterioration over time.
Most in the latter category probably just keep putting it off for vanity reasons and I’m in that category. But following this post I’ve started to research the options and have mentioned it to my wife who has been telling me for ages that I need them so I think there is no turning back now.
I am not an expert here by any means, but I think you will find that the aids mentioned in the thread are not specific Hi Fi (not even sure there are such things), but are all expensive, top of the range aids from the various manufacturers.
I am sure they will all be like the Phonaks I use & will be able to be tweaked to the users satisfaction/requirements by the smartphone/tablet apps available for the user. Want more/less bass, midrange or treble? All doable using these apps although I haven’t found this necessary in my case, the audiologist’s initial default settings proving more than satisfactory.
Luckily, suffering from straight forward, age related hearing loss (pretty much the same in both ears) my aids are not providing the majority of the sound but merely supplementing the frequencies that are noticeably lacking. This is providing me with a natural sound that does not sound artificial at all. I feel that , once again, I am getting the full benefits of my audio system.
But there is a third category who have hearing loss which is gradual, and slowly worsening over years, perhaps as a consequence of genetics, but gets them to “old age” level of hearing loss when they are still young. That happened to my father and then to me too, more or less at the same age it happened to him.
Regarding vanity, I remember being outraged when I found that hearing aids came only in a basically pink skin tone. I wanted something that was more of a statement, like people can buy designer frames for their glasses. Now you can have your hearing aids in many different colours. One person I met had bright blue for the left aid and bright red for the right aid. He said he was never going to try to put the wrong one in his ears again! There is even a “pimp my aid” movement and you can get all manner of decals, wraps and paints to decorate your aids if you want. (I believe this is mainly an American interest!).
Anyway a majority of people wear glasses and no one thinks anything of it. Why don’t more people wear hearing aids? They are a lot more expensive than glasses, but that shouldn’t stop people who can afford it.
Depending where you live, you can even expect to be able to try before you buy. In UK if you buy privately then you could certainly expect 2 or 3 weeks before you have to pay up and you could try multiple different models at 2 or 3 weeks each too. In the US Costco allows people to return their aids for a full refund anytime up to 6 months after purchase.
If we were both in our youth with perfect hearing I suspect we would still hear the same system differently.
I am certainly not getting any distortion with my aids & can honestly say the sound I am hearing appears totally natural to me with no hint of electronic manipulation. If I switch the aids off, in my case, the overall volume drops about 20% which I think is perfectly liveable with. However it is the remarkable loss of treble & some midrange that is most obvious. It’s like having a heavy blanket wrapped around my head that is muffling the sound as well as reducing the volume. As my ears are now listening without the aids is the option that sounds unnatural rather than listening with them.
I think @davidhendon hit the nail on the head when he stressed the importance of consulting a professional audiologist to get the aids set up correctly in the first place.
Poor as my hearing was getting I could hear the differences between various components but due to the type of my hearing problem I may well have ended up with a system that would sound awful to a person with full hearing.
For example, I have always found the more expensive KEF speakers far to bright for my taste, hence choosing ProAcs. If I were buying now, without listening via my aids, I am pretty certain I would find the ProAcs vey dull & lacking detail but the KEFs would be much more to my taste. As it is the ProAcs, with the aids, sound clear, detailed, image well & have a non-fatiguing but sparkling top end. Exactly why I choose them in the first place.