Age related hearing loss

[salymap]

Today I tried with left side aid only. Much clearer but I only need Coates' Knightsbridge March and it would sound like 'In Town Tonight'. The traffic noise cuts through my triple glazing and is intrusive. Blame the Council - we are now a short cutbetween the A20 and the A2, both over a mile away.

[salymap]

This happened to me and I went back and asked them to lower the level of amplification and the range so that on minimum it was effectively zero. This means you can amplify from nothing upwards. They did this but left the original extra large boost range in place (which I now have more need of!!) and available by the selection process e.g. press once for this, a second time for theatre LOOPs etc..

Specsavers phoned today for a 21 day check on how I am doing. When I see them I shall mention your suggestion Clive Heath, thanks.

Thanks also to Ferret and others, nextstop, strong spex, judging by my typing now.

I must persevere with the hearing aids but still can't really hear music.

[amateur51]

Today I tried with left side aid only. Much clearer but I only need Coates' Knightsbridge March and it would sound like 'In Town Tonight'. The traffic noise cuts through my triple glazing and is intrusive. Blame the Council - we are now a short cutbetween the A20 and the A2, both over a mile away.

This isn't a smart-aleck reply, I promise - it could be that your problem is not with your hearing loss so much as with the hearing loss PLUS the high level of background traffic noise that you are required to bear, salymap. Have you told the hearing aid people this?

[salymap]

This isn't a smart-aleck reply, I promise - it could be that your problem is not with your hearing loss so much as with the hearing loss PLUS the high level of background traffic noise that you are required to bear, salymap. Have you told the hearing aid people this?

My front windows are triple glazed ams and family agree they work very well atshutting out the noise. With the aids the noise comes 'into the room'.

[alycidon]

It's reassuring that so many in this forum suffer from tinnitus and we can sympathise, and compare notes, with one another. I believe that I have read that musical people are more prone to the affliction - possibly because of their greater sensitivities to life generally. Mine went through a phase of sounding as though I was stuck in an aviary with thirty budgerigars, although that is now unusual and I just experience ringing/whistling to a greater or lesser degree.

Hyperacusis, however, is quite something else, and noises of realtively low sound can cause pressure in my ears to the extent that it feels as if my head is going to blow off! I do have a national health hearing aid which I have to wear for most daily matters, but I much prefer to listen to music without it. I have recently started precenting in church, and I cannot tell if I am better with the device, or without it.

It's good that we can talk to one another about these problems.

[salymap]

Thanks alycidon [and cairn]. Yes I appreciate all commenta because I've only noticed this degree of hearing loss recently although the swishy bath filling noises, [tinnitus ?] have been with me for some time.

Piano music and chamber music isn't too bad for me, orchestral works are awful at the moment.

[Ferretfancy]

It's reassuring that so many in this forum suffer from tinnitus and we can sympathise, and compare notes, with one another. I believe that I have read that musical people are more prone to the affliction - possibly because of their greater sensitivities to life generally. Mine went through a phase of sounding as though I was stuck in an aviary with thirty budgerigars, although that is now unusual and I just experience ringing/whistling to a greater or lesser degree.

Hyperacusis, however, is quite something else, and noises of realtively low sound can cause pressure in my ears to the extent that it feels as if my head is going to blow off! I do have a national health hearing aid which I have to wear for most daily matters, but I much prefer to listen to music without it. I have recently started precenting in church, and I cannot tell if I am better with the device, or without it.

It's good that we can talk to one another about these problems.

alycidon

I don't know if this helps, but the hyperacusis I developed after having hearing aid problems has worn off after a couple of years, and I can now travel by tube and listen to the noisy announcements without distress. Luckily this was quite distinct from"normal" tinnitus which doesn't trouble me. I've decided not to look to hearing aids for a while yet. I do sympathise, hyperacusis can take different forms and is very distressing.

I did search for solutions online and there are a number of places in London that offer therapies, such as low level sustained pink noise on earphones, but they are costly and I have not seen any genuine information about effectiveness.

[alycidon]

Thanks for that, ferret. It is very kind of you.

alycidon

[clive heath]

Since I started this thread, my friendly audiology group were sympathetic enough to my love of music to give me a second aid, one for each ear!! .....

.....but the purpose of reviving this thread is to mention a meeting recently which left me rather chuffed and my informant also. So my academic career at Imperial College was not that brilliant, I failed my second year for a combination of reasons; not that bright, not that hardworking ( I changed later), couldn't get to grips with Dirac Notation and Hamiltonians and , Erroll Garner was at the Hammersmith Odeon the night before one of the exams- amazing watching him sit with several London Telephone Directories on the stool, do the out-of-tempo intro and then off they went.

However, there were several of us who had not failed by such a large margin that they wanted to chuck us out, so we repeated some courses, did some new ones and for practicals we were farmed off round the Physics Dept. to assist Post-Grads with their research. This proved very enjoyable and my guy, a New-Zealander working on 4th-order tensors relating to supersonic resonances in metal cylinders (Acoustics Dept.) gave me a job accurately measuring the frequencies of some of these resonances ( to about 5/6 figures). The machine doing the readings took three hours to warm up and stabilise! Anyway this was OK and by all accounts I did well, well enough so that at the end of the Summer Term having got my ( even rarer than a third) degree, Prof. Stephens, head of Acoustics ( who incidentally had interviewed me 3 years earlier for my place) said if I wanted to go for a M.Sc he had some money from a Hearing Aid firm that would help me to help them. So that's what I did for the next two years which includes 1964.

One of the things that occurred to me was that the tube from the behind-the-ear aid to the moulded ear-plug (mine are not like this, they're a newer design) was itself going to have resonances and that these would affect the sound produced by the amplifier in the aid, so I put a very small plug of polyurethane foam at some point or other in the tube to damp the resonances and improve the delivery of the required sound to the mould. I told the Hearing Aid firm who agreed it was interesting but were otherwise non-committal.

I am at a party a few weeks back and finding myself talking to a lady Audiologist, and after we've agreed that in these chattery surroundings most hearing aids are useless, I mentioned the bit of research and she said "but they are still in use today!!!" isn't that nice!

https://www.cliveheathmusic.co.uk

[amateur51]

Since I started this thread, my friendly audiology group were sympathetic enough to my love of music to give me a second aid, one for each ear!! .....

.....but the purpose of reviving this thread is to mention a meeting recently which left me rather chuffed and my informant also. So my academic career at Imperial College was not that brilliant, I failed my second year for a combination of reasons; not that bright, not that hardworking ( I changed later), couldn't get to grips with Dirac Notation and Hamiltonians and , Erroll Garner was at the Hammersmith Odeon the night before one of the exams- amazing watching him sit with several London Telephone Directories on the stool, do the out-of-tempo intro and then off they went.

However, there were several of us who had not failed by such a large margin that they wanted to chuck us out, so we repeated some courses, did some new ones and for practicals we were farmed off round the Physics Dept. to assist Post-Grads with their research. This proved very enjoyable and my guy, a New-Zealander working on 4th-order tensors relating to supersonic resonances in metal cylinders (Acoustics Dept.) gave me a job accurately measuring the frequencies of some of these resonances ( to about 5/6 figures). The machine doing the readings took three hours to warm up and stabilise! Anyway this was OK and by all accounts I did well, well enough so that at the end of the Summer Term having got my ( even rarer that a third) degree, Prof. Stephens, head of Acoustics ( who incidentally had interviewed me 3 years earlier for my place) said if I wanted to go for a M.Sc he had some money from a Hearing Aid firm that would help me to help them. So that's what I did for the next two years which includes 1964.

One of the things that occurred to me was that the tube from the behind-the-ear aid to the moulded ear-plug (mine are not like this, they're a newer design) was itself going to have resonances and that these would affect the sound produced by the amplifier in the aid, so I put a very small plug of polyurethane foam at some point or other in the tube to damp the resonances and improve the delivery of the required sound to the mould. I told the Hearing Aid firm who agreed it was interesting but were otherwise non-committal.

I am at a wedding a few weeks back and finding myself talking to a lady Audiologist, and after we've agreed that in these chattery surroundings most hearing aids are useless, I mentioned the bit of research and she said "but they are still in use today!!!" isn't that nice!

www.cliveheathmusic.co.uk

Lovely stories clive and I do envy your having seen Errol Garner

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Lovely stories clive and I do envy your having seen Errol Garner

Agreed on both counts. (In any sane world, going to an Errol Garner concert would automatically have earnt ten marks before you even started your answers!)

[Stillhomewardbound]

Gor blimey, if I can only echo Am51 and that there Ferney 'Off ... Errol Garner at the 'Ammersmiff Palais!'. Would that Scotty could actually beam me up and then beam me back down to that very moment in time.

If it happens and it works, Clive, look out for me at the bar and I'll buy you one at the interval!

[Lento]

To go off on a slight tangent, I heard something yesterday about research into birds, in order to find out how certain regenerative processes in the ear work. This cannot happen naturally for mammals, but apparently can for other vertebrates with hearing loss. Ironic that they are looking at birds, whose song can be the first thing we humans miss as our hearing deteriorates.

http://birdnote.org/show/hearing-loss-and-birds

[amateur51]

To go off on a slight tangent, I heard something yesterday about research into birds, in order to find out how certain regenerative processes in the ear work. This cannot happen naturally for mammals, but apparently can for other invertebrates with hearing loss. Ironic that they are looking at birds, whose song can be the first thing we humans miss as our hearing deteriorates.

http://birdnote.org/show/hearing-loss-and-birds

I'm glad you've raised this lento. Many a morning I lie there listening to Tweet of the Day straining to hear birdsong of any sort at all

[gamba]

I'm very satisfied with my two hearing aids from the NHS. Hi frequency is still a bit too high but they'll alter that when I get a chance to call in on them. Music, from almost any source is listened to on my reliable old Sennheiser HD 600's with which I'm still very happy.

My goodness me, I do sound very complacent !

I've decided I' ll remain quite happy with my present ears - even after 91 years !!