Just wondering what is working for you? I have the oticon real 1’s open domes and it’s not perfect but doing well. Since my low frequencies are good, this is a tricky loss to fit I think. Add to that my canals are tiny, flat and twisty so custom molds with receivers inside are not an option as oticon said they can’t make a mold with the receiver I need to fit my canal. I am a singer so natural sounding low frequencies are important to me (vs feeling plugged up). I feel I can hear a lot more (microwave beeping, etc) word recognition is improved with the aids but I still can’t hear birds outside…
Your ski slope hearing loss is very typical. There would be A LOT of folks on this forum with similar kind of hearing losses like yours. Your smaller ear canal may not be as typical, but your kind of hearing loss usually can be fitted with open domes and wouldn’t require custom molds anyway, so it’s no big deal.
If you still feel like you can’t hear birds outside or some of the other very high frequency sounds, try using the frequency lowering technology Speech Rescue. Use the lowest configuration (2.4) which would be most suitable for your loss. Keep the High Frequency Bands option ON so that you still receive the normal amplification in the highs just like before. Then adjust the Strength value to vary the volume of the lowered sounds to your level of liking.
You can see that my hearing loss is fairly similar to yours (not as good in the lows though), and with Speech Rescue, I can hear birds and crickets chirping just fine.
2 Likes
Thanks so much for your reply. My aud said she is reluctant to use frequency lowering since she is worried it will sound strange to me and throw me off since I am so in tune to pitches. Did it bother you at the beginning?
It’s been a journey for sure. The first aud I went to told me hearing aids would not help me and I needed a CI. Then, I got a second opinion.
You don’t have to choose between having it or not, you can have both. Just ask your audi to create a new/duplicate program from your default P1 General program into P2, then add Speech Rescue to P2. That way you can do A/B comparison by switching between the 2 programs to see how different they are. If you don’t like it, then remain in P1 like normal. If you like it, or when you’ve become accustomed to it and want to use it all the times, then next time ask your audi to add it to P1 permanently and get rid of P2. Or just leave as it and whenever you feel like using Speech Rescue, then go to P2.
I’ve used Speech Rescue extensively in ALL my programs with no issue at all. If it sounds like too much lisping for you, then just adjust down on the Strength setting until it sounds more natural. I’m not a professional musician, but I do play piano and drums, and when I play the piano, even on a pure tone note, I don’t notice anything funny to me (like something is off tune). But everybody’s musical ear is different, so I can’t say that you won’t find it off-putting. But at least you can try it in P2 and decide for yourself.
Actually, I really enjoy it when listening to music because I can hear a lot of high frequency timbres and tones lost to me before now restored. The Oticon frequency lowering is based on frequency transposition and composition, instead of frequency compression as used by other hearing aid brands. So I personally think that it lends itself much more natural to music and not cause off-tune sounding weirdness because it’s not like the whole high frequency range is compressed.
If you want a completely pure music listening experience, you can always ask your audi to add the MyMusic program into one of your 4 programs, and not have Speech Rescue enabled in there, but use Speech Rescue for normal everyday non-musical listening environments. Or you can have 2 MyMusic programs with 1 not using Speech Rescue and the other one using Speech Rescue and decide for yourself which one sounds better. Then just delete one and keep the one you wanted after you know which one you like better. There are a lot of ways to experiment.
2 Likes
This is incredible advice. Thanks so much. I will ask my audi about this!
Agree that any high frequencies you hear are going to be through frequency lowering. What kind of word recognition scores did you have. A cochlear implant eval could still be a good idea. With an open fitting you’re going to struggle to hear anything at 2000 Hz and above.
1 Like
My word rec binaurally was good like 78 percent. My right ear alone is a lot worse.
Great. Surprisingly good.
I have a loss like yours. And frequency lowering lets me hear birds. It can be set at different degrees of lowering. You could start with a minimal change and increase until something detectable happens. Of course, I may be hearing birds because my setting is fairly strong. I say that because I found something amusing happening when I use voice dictation for emails or texts. Words that start with S, as I pronounce them, are often transcribed as starting with SH.