Hearing Aids


I have used hearing aids for 20 years, but primarily for understanding voices in movies and TV. I was considering selling my Merlin TSM speakers, but in the meantime, my wife and family were starting to complain about my hi fi levels. I put the aids in, and...WOW....what a difference in clarity and depth! Why the heck didn't I try this sooner? This was one reason why I decided to stick with the Merlins. Well, as luck would have it....I have lost one of my aids. They (Phonak) were going on 10 years old so maybe it’s time to upgrade those. However, my insurance plan will only pay $1200 towards new hearing aids. The Phenol, at least 10 years ago, were quite pricey. Any thoughts from this sage group?

troutbum

The problem is that, aside from Widex, the hearing aid  designers pay no attention at all to the sound of music. As others point out, they are designed only for speech recognition (i.e., focused around  the 2-3 khz region).  One of my friends, who is an engineer who helped design the Lyric, the last great analogue aid (still on the market) confirmed this.  Btw, every other ha on the market is digital.  Most of the advances have been in the software and are focused on noise rejection.

Widex claims that they have improved the latency issue enough that their bte aids are good with music.

   I had Oticon, several generations back, and they were not very good for music.  Sure, snare drums sounded about right again, but the rest of the spectrum was worse.

   Unfortunately, the best aids cost $4-6 k per pair.  Costco's are about 2 levels down from the latest and greatest.

@curiousjim I have found hearing aids help with tinnitus, however not through their tinnitus programs. Some suspect tinnitus is caused by your brain trying to hear ‘better’.
I have pretty constant tinnitus. Many times, my tinnitus goes away with HA use particularly while listening to music.
I then wake up the next morning to tinnitus. Unfortunate, but they can provide temporary relief. YMMV

@lloydc 

 

so what brands do you recommend for listening to music?

@larsman thats an interesting Costco comment.  I don’t want to cause any issue for the Techs, as I suspect they don’t determine what the store carries, but I will speak to management.

  I have dealt with 2 Audiologists outside of Costco, one of whom is a family friend who works for a private practice , the other at a tertiary care medical center .  They are both in their mid twenties and don’t know diddle about music reproduction.  They both insisted that I buy the hearing aids associated with their practices.  I’d like to find an independent audiologist that gives a hoot about music lovers and who has experience with a variety of different companies.  I could do a Zoom consultation; they could at least see my audiogram and at least discuss different brands.  Heck, considering this is a $5K and up purchase, I could even travel a distance if they are located somewhere worth visiting 

@mahler123 - that's not a bad idea about a Zoom consultation. 

More than a few audiologists are musicians themselves and understand more 'audiophile' needs.

As far as hearing aids being designed only for speech, for most hearing aids, that is just not so. Most any good hearing aid today (audiologist hearing aid, I don't know about the OTC ones) has multiple programs - for speech in noisy settings, speech in quiet settings, music, television, and a number of other options, and you can work with the audiologist on setting up a music (or any other kind of) program that works for you; mine has a 'music' program which also works well for speech on the TV, plus it has an EQ of sorts where I can adjust low, mid, and high frequencies to some extent, and I've found that quite useful. 

I've also got a pair of in-ear hearing aids for headphone listening....