Could I get some advice please, Audiogram uploaded. (musician)

Downside of either Phillips or Resound at Costco is that they are locked to Costco. Nice hearing that Bernafon’s rep for music carries on with Phillips (and sounds like it’s exceeded)

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I am also a musician, it is why I first came to this board and music was the subject of all my first posts. You are getting good advice here and I agree with most of it. Someday things may get better but for now I continue to say - Hearing aids for speech and improving your quality of life, for music - headphones and studio monitors.

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Thanks for replying mate, unless I am missing something I believe there is only one option in UK Cost-Co well only one that loaded on their website anyway.

Thanks very much for the advice though, much appreciated :slight_smile:

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Thanks buddy, a few others have said the same thing, I have definitely taken it on board.

Thanks for your reply, it’s appreciated :slight_smile:

please tell me which manufacturer’s headphones do you use? thanks in advance

I think one of the joys of poetry is the creation of something beautiful within a set of restrictions. If you are writing a sonnet for example, not only are you restricted to a particular format but as you make choices the restrictions become greater because now you have to match your next lines to your first lines. If one is a fan of comics (or graphic novels), there’s also an art in how you draw within the box–the restrictions. All this is to say that while hearing loss restricts one’s experience of music, I believe there is still lots of beautiful, interesting, clever music to be made within those new restrictions. It is also most likely the case that any famous musician who started out in a time when hearing protection was not the norm in the music industry will have been creating their later work through the filter of their hearing loss, so while hearing loss changes things you may also be sharing an experience with the artists you love. I don’t know, I’m not saying grief for a capability that was lost isn’t appropriate. It certainly is. Just. . . art goes on.

On a more practical note, wax build-up will aggravate feedback in hearing aids. If you have small canals and chronic wax problems, you may need to prepare yourself to see your provider for regular wax removal in order to keep your hearing aids functioning optimally.

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A very positive way of looking at it, thank you for taking the time to post this :slight_smile:

I’ll never stop making music, I love it too much, as for the mixing side of things, I can carry on having fun and anything that is commercially released, I can get someone else to mix it.

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I have used Sennheiser for years, also Sony pro line. There are a lot of good ones. I do not like the sound of Bose but the noise cancelation is good for noisy flights.

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Few audis are used to dealing with the specialized needs of musicians. Hearing aids and audis are focused on speech comprehension.

If you have not already bought hearing aids or if you are considering buying new ones, ask your audi to contact the manufacturers of the hearing aid models that you are considering in order to find out the “input headroom” (There may be a more technical term for this). The idea here is that if your hearing aid has insufficient ability to accept the loud signal produced by live music your hearing aid will clip (distort) the signal right when it enters the hearing aid. The hearing aid will then send a clipped signal to the signal processing phase of the hearing aid and then out into your ear. Obviously not good.

Widex and Oticon are known for high input headroom. Phonak used to (and maybe still does) have significantly lower input headroom. Input headroom is not something most audis are used to being concerned about. But in my opinion it is absolutely crucial to a musician.

Have your audi set up a separate program for music performance (it will probably work well for music listening, too). For this separate music program, in the programming software have the audi turn off all compression and speech comprehension enhancements.

Also have your audi reduce the feedback suppression settings to as low as possible without the hearing aids producing feedback in a normal situation. Feedback suppression works by the hearing aid detecting a sustained note and then introducing a frequency modulation that interrupts that sustained note. The hearing aid can’t distinguish between feedback and a sustained musical note. So the feedback suppression causes a “trill” or “warble” that is especially disconcerting to a singer. With the feedback suppression minimized you might experience feedback when someone hugs you or gets close to your ear. If you experience feedback too often, ask your audi to increase the feedback suppression settings incrementally until you have the right balance between eliminating the “trill” effect and eliminating occurrences of feedback.

Lastly, do a web search for “Marshall Chasin”. He is an audi in Toronto who specializes in fitting hearing aids for musicians. He has some helpful articles online and in audiological trade magazines. Good luck!

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amazing thank you very much for your informative and detailed reply, that helps a lot.
I have already done a fair bit of research on headroom etc, and good to find out what that warble effect was, I was also getting a chorusing/phasing type effect, which was hard to get used to.

The hearing aids were definitely helping, but when I had the custom moulds fitted and the thicker tubes, all they do is whistle so I haven’t worn them for years, but going back to my local NHS hospital on the 27th of this month, to get a new pair, with lots more knowledge gained from this site particularly and from my own research. I should be able to communicate my needs better.

Thanks again for your time, its very much appreciated :slight_smile:

I have seen your custom moulds in your other thread (These are the moulds (molds) I received four years ago, that kept feeding back, advice please)
I can see now, your ear canal is really very small. I suspect, these moulds did not provide enough occlusion. This might be the reason for the feedback / whistle you mentioned.
It is technically much easier for hearing aids to prevent feedback if the canal is as closed as much as possible.
With older aids the main strategy was to reduce gain in the certain freqency where the feedback occures.
In addition, the tube-technique didn’t help as well, since the speaker was closer to the mic. The nowadays used receiver produce the sound right in the ear, so feedback-tendency is reduced.

Im sure, the mould/dome is a very critical part to get you a good fitting. You probably will need to test with different versions.
I hope, the small ear canals do allow to use the receivers. They need a bit more space than a simple tube.

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Great thank you so much, that helps to explain a lot of my problems.
I very much appreciate your time.

Thank you :slight_smile:

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Receivers in the canal won’t really change his auditory experience compared to BTEs with standard tubing.

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Can anyone tell me how to upload audigram to profile?
Thank you

See how far you can get with this

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I too am a musician who performs, writes, and records in my own studio. My loss in the high end isn’t as severe as yours, but is also a ski-slope curve.

I’ve done a few things that help:

  1. In my studio, on the master channel (using Logic on a Mac), I set an EQ curve that is the inverse of my loss. I engage the EQ curve when I am actively mixing, and then disable it just before I write or bounce the mix. That way, I am hearing it the way my ears need to hear it while working on the song, but I am not writing it to the final mix. To do all this, I remove my hearing aids.

  2. I do the same thing as 1 above when I am listening with headphones - to my music or anyone’s music. Since I can’t set a custom EQ curve on an iOS device using Apple’s apps, I’ve found third party players that support custom curves. Doesn’t help with Apple Music app, but helps immensely with non DRM songs, etc. After I write the mix on my computer, I’ll listen to it this way for checks and balances. I’ll note that I am not wearing hearing aids when doing this.

  3. For hearing aids, I settled on Costco KS-9 as they are the best fit, and the best I’ve tried for my loss and ears. I found that feedback rejection distorts music as it involves an oscillation to mitigate what the hearing aids perceive as feedback (think pure tones, or close to pure tones - think “C” at the 8th fret of the high E string), so, I have a separate MUSIC program I use when performing or listening through speakers in an environment where there are other people listening. And, I tweak them myself, though this gets into having to find someone who will give you a copy of the software needed. And you’ll need an interface that works with your aids. But that lets me get the best sound I can out of the aids for music. For every day use, I need to have the Feedback rejection engaged.

Anyway, those are the things I do and, for the most part, it all works rather well.

Bob

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Nice explanation @uburoibob

As you also seem to be able to program/“tweak” your HAs yourself - as well as altering the feedback settings etc, have you also been able to customise a specific music programme the same way - ie with an inversion of your loss? I have been wondering if this is the theoretical HA “ideal” programme for a performing musician…

Would you mind mentioning the player/app? I have been searching for equalisation options for my Mac/ios set-up but most have way too few channels and very limited range (-12 to +12 db Max) that makes them less than useful with my loss…

Cheers :smiley:

In general, the basic idea as I understand it behind hearing aids is to provide a correction that is essentially the reverse of your hearing loss curve. So, it was pretty much minor tweaking on the basic music setting provided with the aids. I got ahold of Phonak Target software and messed around until it sounded good/natural to me. NoahLink Wireless is the interface that works with my Costco KS9 aids.

As far as apps for iOS, Playertronic has a nice parametric EQ. There is also HDPlayer Pro, which is wonderful. ‎HDPlayer - Video and audio player on the App Store

As far as adjusting the curve, you can always go below flat with the low end EQ to get more range from the high end. I’d shoot for making the curve look right, reflecting the steps on your audio gram, but backwards, and use the full 24 dB range of plus/minus, finally riding the overall volume up to compensate for the lower frequencies being reduced on the curve. Usually the EQ has a gain control for the entire EQ. But that might run into distortion. So, I’d say go as far as you can with master volume. Hope this helps.

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Thanks @uburoibob - Will look into those apps!.

Wrt the standard hearing aid correction … My limited understanding is that - rather than correct/reverse the audiogram to ‘flat’ - which I intuitively would have thought is ideal - they tend to relatively exaggerate/amplify the relevant speech frequencies because of the primary need to increase speech intelligibility for people who - as a result of long standing hearing loss - no longer have the same/adequate cortical speech decoding to deal with normal/flat audiogram… I don’t know if the same issues with cortical ‘atrophy’ affect music appreciation in the same or a similar way. However - I am very happy to be corrected!

At least I think the standard NAL-NL2 prescription appears to be skewed this way if I read the authors correctly. Of course I gather many HA manufacturers have proprietary prescriptions as an alternative to the NAL as well but I have no idea how they differ. Their “music” programmes are also somewhat obscure to me in that I don’t really know if they do anything to the fundamental underlying prescription - rather they seem to remove feedback protection (to varying degrees) microphone directionality, noise cancellation, reduce compression etc…

What the corrective hearing prescription does to MUSIC appreciation seems extremely difficult to assess because it is so subjective - with speech you have a reasonably objective endpoint - intelligibility - with music - not so much :smiley:

The route you have taken with using equalisation (without HAs) when mastering tracks, intuitively seems ‘correct’ to me and I wonder if I can get that sort of equalisation/prescription to correct my hearing loss to ‘flat’ in a separate HA program for music listening and performance… :thinking:

I think you are correct about weighting toward speech recognition - and that would be the ‘general’ setting for hearing aids. The pre-programmed music program for the aids, however, turns off as many ‘extras’ that inform the general settings on the aids. From there, for me, I just tweaked to what sounded ‘right’ to me - and it took awhile of going back in and making changes (I tend to over-do things at first, then go back and refine). Am I hearing ‘flat’? I doubt it. But I am hearing something that sounds good to me. If I were doing something to release to the world, I’d have someone come in at the end and take care of any oddities in the mix and mastering that were probably outside my ability to hear. My goal, first and foremost, is understanding others in as many situations as possible, and enjoying the sound of music. So far, others I’ve shared my music with haven’t run away from too much treble (my guitar solos are another thing altogether :wink: )…

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