Published on 12, July, 2020
Every time the "Turn up the things you love" advert comes on TV, my wife nudges me that I should go and find out about these hearing aids.
The way that they are portrayed in the ad seems almost miraculous; the background noise and chatter is muted and the wearer can hear what they want to, whether that's birds singing softly or their friends / partner talking quietly to them in a crowded pub.
The engineer in me tells me that, whilst some psycho-acoustics based audio processing could help, you'd really need a pretty huge reflector-based microphone aimed at your chosen sound source to duplicate the effects advertised.
Does anyone have any experience with these hearing aids? Can they help with our audio processing issues? I thought (and this seems confirmed by the fact that these ads are targeted at the general population) that these hearing aids were designed to combat age-related hearing loss (which, last time I checked, I don't have except for the normal loss of frequencies above about 13kHz).
Mine are Corda aids (that sit behind the ear) supplied freely by the NHS, who programmed them to boost the upper frequencies I've lost in my 50s. I was only given a choice of these or moulded aids. The Cordas were very effective at first, at least for speech in quiet environments, but as my hearing deteriorated further they had to replaced - surprisingly by a new set, not just readjustment - and now even these are not always effective at normal levels.
I can increase the volume but an irritating side-effect (even at normal volume) is that noises are boosted and often drown speech. I cannot bear to be near a boiling kettle and flushing the toilet sounds like Niagara Falls. I suspect they are contributing to the sensory (in this case auditory) overload associated with autism. I can't filter out background noises so, even (perhaps especially) when wearing the aids, I'm unable to distinguish the voice among many I want to hear. The worst case is when someone is speaking to me beside a radio that's on quite loud; the radio voices are clearer than the real one. I can't hear more than about 50% of modern TV dramas where the acting and sound recording are "naturalistic"; fortunately, I much prefer old films and TV shows anyway when actors had excellent diction and audio was cleanly recorded, usually post-synched.
The aids are also designed to suppress the highly irritating tinnitus that accompanies my hearing loss; in fact, this is more important to me than boosting voices as I spend 95% of my time alone. On the whole, I'm reasonably happy with them, but they are not much good for music, which is often rendered shrill by the treble emphasis. I have become obsessed with adjusting the aids, both the volume control and the plastic tubes which cause abrasion in my exceptionally narrow ear canals that I consequently end up scratching in my sleep, causing ear infections (as mentioned by "Just some guy"). Another problem is that the tubes clog up with wax and have to be regularly cleaned, needing full replacement after about a month (batteries need replacing almost weekly). According to various specialists I've met, hearing aids with tubes also increase the amount of wax pushed into the ears, so mine need cleaning (by micro-suction rather than syringing) at least once a year.
I'd be interested to know of experiences with other types of aids that overcome or mitigate some of these problems.
Cranking up the volume if you don’t have a flat audiogram does not help the clarity at all. I have normal low and very high frequency hearing it’s the middle I struggle with so there’s a 40db difference which makes everything muffled. I started off turning up music because it didn’t sound very clear but it was just loud and still not clear! Even at a concert having a closed dome and turning my hearing aids down to the lowest volume is much clearer than not wearing them
Wow