Hearing Aids?

call me naive or whatever you will, but i'm wondering...for those who do wearing hearing aids, how do you feel the sound compares to when you had your 'normal' hearing (addressing those, of course, who have lost their hearing 'somewhere along the line' that is life)? Is the sound simply amplified w/in the frequency range that you can hear, or does it improve hearing in all 'normal' audio frequency ranges? Perhaps I should just google this, but given that my father has 'good' (read: expensive) hearing aids, yet for some odd reason doesn't wear them, i'm intrinsically interested in this thread.

Any thoughts, views, perspectives etc would be appreciated.

As others have said, the technology has really come a long way. Most of the mid-range and high-end hearing aids now use digital signal processing (DSP) to "shape" the response of the unit based on each individual's exact hearing.

They also use a fair amount of technology to improve functionality in daily life. For instance, they are optimized to reduce background noise and heighten receptivity at speech frequencies. Unfortunately, this tailoring is exactly what you do NOT want for music. The good news is that you can buy units which have more than one program. For instance, you can touch a button on the unit (behind the ear unit) which will shift modes from speech to full spectrum. This is considerably better for listening to music! Pushing the button again can return to the everyday speech intelligibility functions. These same units have sub-programs for such activities as talking on the telephone, or listening in a noisy environment such as a restaurant.

As others have said, talk to a good audiologist and he/she can give you a better understanding of your options. A unit such as the one I described can cost between $1500 to $2500 per ear, so it's not a trivial expense. But to restore the joy of listening to music, it is well worth it IMHO.

HTH!

Just marking this thread for a friend whose on this path currently... he's a drummer by choice and professor by trade., and thought to pass it along to him.

i really should try to sway my father to actually wear his hearing aid devices. He spent over 4k on the pair, yet is so bloody stubborn... not to mention, my mother tells me that every two seconds, he's saying 'huh? what? pardon?' to her (and it's driving her nuts! lol). I just wish he would understand that it's ok to be reliant on devices that improve the quality of life - definitely nothing to be 'ashamed of', which is what he seems to think (alpha males, i tell ya...).

Loose, I hear 'ya. My Mom was the same way. It took a year of gentle nagging to persuade her to take the time visit & revisit the audiologist to tweak the fit and audio adjustments so that her aids were fully adjusted to her liking. She was so embarrassed to be seen in public wearing devices that made her "feel old."