OT: Hearing aids

The thing about the common kind of inner ear deafness (which used to be thought to be age related but is probably more noise damage) is that it limits intelligibility of speech however much the sound is amplified and filtered. The NHS ones have a noise cancelling option which is slightly useful in noisly surroundings. They usually have volume buttons, but operating these or turning on or off the noise cancelling or loop setting requires a degree of manual dexterity

Personally I find the loop system erratic and poor quality and not an improvement on the free field use of the aids, but perhaps if someone is very deaf indeed it may be useful.

I suspect too many adjustable options available to the client might make things worse rather than better.

my hearing is OK but my eustachian tube seams to get blocked and stops my eardrum vibrating....can blow into my ears and open it up and hearing instantly improves.....any cure for a blocked tube ? ...

In the good old days when not all aeroplanes were pressurised, they gave you a boiled sweet to suck to relieve pressure on descent.

Failing that, hold your nose, shut your mouth, and try and blow or exhale, very hard. It used to clear mine, often with a shriek in the ear that was blocked.

OOI how do you blow in your ears? Do you have long prehensile lips? :-)

A diy solution would be to drill a hole in the side of your head and connect it to a water trap; otherwise, don't know.

Note to work correctly on an I phone they have to support the made for I phone system where latency is not an issue I don't know the make. I know some can be configured using an app. Brian

Most of what you are buying with the latest generation of private digital hearing aids is a smaller less conspicuous physical footprint and only marginally better signal processing. Also shorter more expensive battery life that goes with the smaller size.

It was different way back before there were digital NHS hearing aids. Then there was a massive difference between what were basically pretty rough and ready loud amplifiers and the new digital devices.

NHS digital kept pace with my fathers failing hearing pretty well and he was on firing position on WWII anti-aircraft guns for the duration.

Induction hearing aid systems are almost falling out of use again. It hardly ever works well even in ideal conditions and the digital processing has almost made them redundant. You also have to switch modes to use it which many elderly people find tricky at best.

Are you sure it isn't? A search of the manual for the model will tell you how to engage it if the feature is present. Loop is outmoded now.

The latest ones can remap frequencies from dead spots in the hearing profile to aid intelligibility of speech too. It obviously mangles music but it can be useful if it makes the difference between understanding the spoken word and missing out on anything with high frequencies. (takes a bit of getting used to at first)

You could potentially do real harm with incorrect adjustments.

you blow from your mouth with your gub shut up the tube.....simples....same as what you do on a plane when it changes altitude

just wait until you want an answer to a Building question ....

That does seem to be what we see with Mum. She still has most of her marbles but if someone says something and especially where she can't see their faces (lip read, facial expression etc) you often see some extra computational time while she tries to make sense of what bits she has actually heard. Better that (for us) than her constantly saying 'pardon' (when we have specifically spoken up / clearly). [1]

I think Mum was reasonably adept with the controls on her NHS ones and seemed to set them to one step under where they fed back (suggesting they were working quite hard).

Reading the other replies it seems that is a common experience / opinion so maybe that's why the NHS or this private provider didn't bother with it?

Understood, depending on the client.

Mum came from an era when you generally accepted your lot and so as long as she could hear in general, probably wouldn't question if she could tune the system to hear better. I agree that you shouldn't give most clients more than the most basic controls in the same way you might not suggest they get a HiFi with a graphics equaliser or play with the colour settings on their TV.

If it were me however, I feel I could 'tune' the gain / frequency to allow me to hear the things I want to hear better.

Cheers, T i m

I think what she meant was that the pitch of my voice is quite low, certainly compared with my Mrs or daughter and she can definitely hear them easier than me [2]. However, I think this can very much depend on circumstance (background noise levels) and how clear the voices might cut though said noise. SNR etc.

Hmm, so given that your first point wasn't really an issue for Mum (you couldn't see them under her hair) then we are looking at nearly 3 grand for 'marginally better signal processing'. ;-(

And whilst I though the whole wireless rechargeable thing was 'neat', I was concerned about the lack of backup should they go flat and they can only be charged in their dock. I guess she could still take her old ones with her. I wonder if you can get the batteries replaced (when they die in a year) and at what cost. Another question we need to ask inside the money back period. ;-)

Understood. I'm not sure she ever had the pre-digital ones.

;-)

That was sort of the advice the audiologist gave but I wasn't sure if he was just trying to talk us out of having the option of Hearing Loop as he had fitted Mum with the ones without. The only 'reason' he gave was that they were 'a bit bigger' (and still much smaller than her NHS ones)

Understood.

The buttons on these new ones are much smaller. I'm not sure if it would be quicker and easier for her to use them to adjust the default volume over finding / using the app on her phone?

Yes.

Apparently it's an option that has to be programmed in and isn't according to the supplied spec sheet.

Understood.

Cool.

That must be what the 'Music' preset option does on these new ones then?

'One' could but I watched what the audiologist was doing so I wouldn't. ;-)

It was also obvious from Mums reaction (she was told to say 'Yes' when she heard each test tone / sound) and when he took it up a bit high she said 'YES' louder. ;-)

I think what they did initially was preset the gain / frequency of the aids with the previous hearing test profile (showing you a graph for each ear) and then run though the spectrum manually and tweak accordingly (to ensure the aids work to compliment the need).

As we were walking back to the car, she was narrating the things she was hearing and suggesting they were loud, like some workmen taking down some scaffolding or people talking as we walked past. She could even hear a friends clock ticking, something she hadn't done before. However, that suggests to me there was an AGC going on and therefore the chance of hitting her with some loud noises till the AGC had chance to kick in (the opposite of shooting ear defenders where you manually set the desired gain and they clip any impulse noise over that general level).

Given your thought about the abilities of the two types being similar, I would say the biggest difference between the NHS and these Phonak's is the latter have the speaker right in your ear on a wire, rather than having the sound carried down a tube?

Cheers, T i m

p.s. Mum was recommended to insure the two aids separately as if you only want one the individual price was very similar to the price of a pair. ;-(

Tubes occasionally fill up with wax and go brittle after a while with light and at high gain when put down on hard surfaces whilst still on the NHS ones will scream with howl round if they are not switched off. The owner is blissfully unaware of this since they have taken their hearing aids out for the night. Does nothing for battery life. (other NHS plus is that batteries are free)

I'm not sure how the transducers on the in ear ones cope with wax - never having had the chance to study one in detail.

If you need significant hearing correction it is always better to have a matched pair. The initial fitting is much the same for all the digital technologies. My father initially had a first generation private digital hearing aid since the analogue NHS ones at the time simply couldn't do anything for him. He could lip read pretty well for anyone facing him.

When that needed replacement he tried NHS audiology again and was amazed at the huge improvement with digital in what was ISTR about 5 years. The digital technology kept pace with his declining hearing remarkably well.

I have a slight hf loss in one ear, so far uncorrected. I find that, especially whilst concentrating on something else, like TV, what I really need is a handshake signal, a sort of "I am about to say something that you need to listen to".

As it is I am accused of selective deafness, and get the repeat shouted at me. :-(

Chris

This would be my worry having had lots to do with generic deaf aids as used in TV etc for cueing purposes.

If you're not worried about looks, I'd prefer ordinary open headphones. That allow air into the ear.

selective deafness works for me when the wife shouts .....