Age Related Hearing problems and hearing aids

For quite awhile I had been losing interest in listening as a result of having developed a significant sensitivity to certain sounds which caused discomfort unless listening was at very low volumes. At the extreme, this condition is called hyperacusis.

Because listening at relatively low volumes is what I do anyway, this didn't seem like much of a sacrifice. However, I've spent over 50 years building, upgrading and modifying my various setups with one of the goals being the reproduction of accurate instrumental sound that, at least, approximates the volumes that would be attendant to various live venues. In my case this interest is mostly related to solo guitar music.

For many years I have used large dipole radiators including those from Acoustat, Magnepan and, for the last 25 years, Martin Logan. Sometime 13 to 15 years ago I bought the ML Odysseys which seemed to satisfy all of my listening needs. During the last several years, though, it seemed like they were not producing the detail, timbre and clarity at frequencies above 2000 Hz or so that I remembered them to be capable of, unless I used higher volume settings. The problem with this is that at these higher volumes, because of my hearing issues, resulted in a perceived brilliance that not only sounded terrible but was painful to me.

Because I didn't want this problem to be my speakers, I began looking at other potential fixes such as DAC's, interconnects, speaker wire, etc. None of these except, to some degree, addition of DAC's helped much.

After much help and advice from Audiogon members I finally broke down and purchased a pair of high end bookshelf speakers and, what a difference. I'm assuming that because of their much higher efficiency, I'm able to achieve detail and crispness at lower more comfortable volumes. I was also amazed at the magnitude and effortlessness of their bass output and was ready to keep them and find a buyer for my Odysseys.

Finally, the reason for this post....My wife finally convinced me to visit an audiologist who identified a hearing issue that warranted the use of hearing aids. For most uses, the jury is still out regarding my general satisfaction with them but, for listening to my music, the difference is huge. With them in place, the Odysseys have returned to the speakers that I originally was so impressed with. As a matter of fact, I initially thought that the higher frequencies were being exaggerated by the aids. I've concluded, though, that I was simply hearing what was really there after being reacquainted with my hearing ability of 10-20 years ago.

One of the things that I've also noticed, and it seems counterintuitive, is that, even though those frequencies that bothered me so much are being amplified, the level of discomfort associated with them is significantly reduced. For solo guitar music I still prefer listening to the bookshelves but for almost everything else, I'm keeping the electrostats.