Hearing Aid Dome Tips Closed & Open?

Hearing Aids
#1

054-1987-1
Question for those more knowledgeable than I, I’m newer to HA’s, 4 months in and have a question about hearing aid domes. Many domes, Oticon, Widex, Phonak… feature a small “cover” over the tip of the dome, I’ve seen others that have little to none. I’ve circled the tip on the attached picture and wondered if this is strictly a wax guard of sorts or? Asking as this covers the speaker/receiver and in the audio world, any time you cover or put something in the way of the speaker (mainly the tweeter) it can impede the higher frequency sounds and distribution of that sound.

Does this logic apply to hearing aids? Any ideas why or why not?

Appreciate your collective thoughts!

#2

Hi there, good question, I’ve never heard anyone state this, and yes it’s designed to help stop the wax from entering directly into the receiver, have you noticed this, as in you could easily cut the small bit off and see if makes a difference for you, I doubt it have and noticeable difference.

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#3

No, they’re designed to be acoustically transparent (there will be a tiny part of attenuation from the reflected wave-form, but nothing like an Alpine or Stepped filter). Putting damping on a tweeter is a little different.

The ‘loop’ design is just to stop wax getting stuffed down there upon initial insertion.

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#4

Good question. I clean mine when I think of it. There are trace amounts of wax on the little tool when I do that.
Suggestion–put an index finger in each ear. See if the volume goes up. Mine did! Twice as loud. So I changed domes. (my audi never suggested a change. Shame on him.)
I’ve tried open–like you’ve shown; closed–with two tiny holes in them; power domes–awful. they didn’t work in my ears.

Question–do you change the real wax guards you can see if you remove your domes?

DaveL
Toronto

#5

@DaveL

I bought some power domes out of curiousity. Wow, everything got super loud. I think you need to change the fitting in the Target software to reflect the change. :slight_smile:

Peter

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#6

My new practioner has changed the setting to the proper one for the closed domes i use.
He has also set so the two hearing aids are linked.

Those are the changes he mentioned when I was there.
And my hearing aids work!

Thanks so much

Power domes really bother my ears. So I stopped using them twice.

I’m glad you tried them! 50 cent piece of silicone can screw up our hearing aids. Who would have thought that?

DaveL

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