Age related hearing loss

[amateur51]

After some delay I've now been fitted with hearing aids in both ears. This rectifies a problem I was having, in that everything sounded lop sided with exaggerated background noise in my left ear.

There is no doubt in my mind that the aids are an improvement, and they have a choice of programmes, one of which reduces intrusive noises from behind. This is very useful in crowded situations.

There is one snag though. Listening to stereo on my nice surround system gives a very strident effect, with excessive high frequencies. I've been trying a few ruses to mitigate this effect by reducing the treble on my sound control unit and boosting the bass by a couple of notches. I've ended up with about 4dB down at the top, which is then compensated for by the hearing aids. This works surprisingly well, giving precise imagery. False? Well, yes I think so, and naturally others listening at the same time experience rather woolly sound, but it means that I don't need to keep removing the aids from my ears.

The audiologist has said that at my next visit he will reduce the sensitivity for me if I request it.

It would of course be asking too much to expect these tiny devices to be completely natural, but I'm pleasantly surprised by their performance. However, I think that when the novelty wears off I'll revert to my old listening habits where music is concerned.

It would be interesting to hear how others with aids organise their listening.

I've been using two digital hearing aids for about six years. i have both hearing loss and tinnitus caused by penicillin therapy when I was about age four, in the 1950s.

to my surprise I've discovered that my hearing problems are not static.: they vary in intensity depending on factors such as my tiredness, time of day, the type of music/theatre/film, conversation I'm involved in etc. Once I grasped this, I realised that I need to spend a few minutes at the start adjusting the digi-aids to accommodate the new surroundings. sometimes in fact i'm better of without them altogether. But allowing for this, and refusing to get het up about it, means that I can quite quickly get to a satisfactory sound 'picture' quite quickly with practice.


I hope that you manage to achieve a similar accommodation in time Ferret

[Ferretfancy]

I've been using two digital hearing aids for about six years. i have both hearing loss and tinnitus caused by penicillin therapy when I was about age four, in the 1950s.

to my surprise I've discovered that my hearing problems are not static.: they vary in intensity depending on factors such as my tiredness, time of day, the type of music/theatre/film, conversation I'm involved in etc. Once I grasped this, I realised that I need to spend a few minutes at the start adjusting the digi-aids to accommodate the new surroundings. sometimes in fact i'm better of without them altogether. But allowing for this, and refusing to get het up about it, means that I can quite quickly get to a satisfactory sound 'picture' quite quickly with practice.


I hope that you manage to achieve a similar accommodation in time Ferret

Thanks for that, Ams. Yes, I'm sure you are right about such things as mood or state of well being affecting the way we hear things. Tiredness can be a big factor, as you say. I think that I have a slight problem, as in spite of the fact that I'm now retired I still have the critical attitude that I needed to do my job as a mixer properly.
Listening for pleasure or intellectual satisfaction should be very different from listening for a living, but I can't always turn it off as it were.

There is also the fact that we tend to listen rather differently to reproduced music compared with the live experience, and the pleasure of that cannot really be matched by even the best recordings.

Bws.
Ferret