Retired last few months, have chased hifi equipment my whole life, mainly hard rock genre…
I’m so down now as I cannot hear anything in right ear.
Really have had significant loss last 2 years.
Have Starky HA, getting BAHA soon from VA.
Q. Can EQ of a receiver be dialed in based on audiogram?
Wonder where my hearing is while listening to music it sounds so artificial and I can’t stand the way they feel in my ears (surgical ear).
I find myself feeling ridiculous still looking at all this high-end audio equipment thinking it’s going to bring me the magic sound…
Q. I would love to hear some people who have that high frequency hearing loss and what methods they have used for a compromise…
I’m kind of thankful for my hearing loss, as it’s saved me from spending tens of thousands in my retirement chasing “the perfect sound.” Last year a friend invited me over to hear his “retirement” system. He’d spent about $40k on it, and had picked up several items like the amp and speakers pre-owned to get even more bang for his buck. The sound was incredibly clean and detailed, and the soundstage! He played Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” and Kris Kristofferson was standing “right over there” holding the bongos and cowbell for Ken Buttery. But no matter what the music, I couldn’t hear cymbals, and on a Derek and the Dominos tune it sounded like the band was just vamping for eight bars, but I know actually Eric or Duane was playing way high up on the neck of their guitar.
An EQ could help with the frequencies under 2k, but I don’t think you’re going to get enough gain to make the music sound like what you remember. Me, I’ve accepted that music isn’t going to sound like it did 30 years ago, but I’m going to listen to as much as I can now before my hearing gets even worse.
In my experience, digital streaming directly to the hearing aids via Bluetooth, or TOSLINK to a BT transmitter, or the new Auracast is by far the best music experience for me, now. My Phonak HAs have a separate streaming program for music, so my audiologist can tune the HAs response across the number of channels that the HAs support… essentially a graphic equalizer.
I don’t much use Bluetooth streaming for music as it isolates me. Instead, I listen to music over my Sonos system. I got a pair of Era 300s because they support Dolby Atmos. I get a better listening experience when tracks have been recorded for Atmos. I recently added a sub-woofer which allows the speakers to focus on highs and mids for greater clarity. This small system fits nicely into our smallish sitting room. I’ve also fine tuned the music program for my Phonak spheres. It’s taken a good amount of time but I’m now on an extended test of 2-3 weeks to let my ears and brain adjust.
Another ex-audiophile here due to age and especially an acoustic neuroma. The big Thiel CS 3.6s got sold if that tells you anything. My Phonaks sound horrible and no amount of tweaking in Target over 2 years of experimentation has significantly improved it. Live music is laughably defective to the point I simply remove my HAs and listen with no high end. I’m planning to try Widex as soon as my provider has things set up. Many good reports from the music lovers, as you can read on this list.
At the moment my best listening experience is to use Apple’s Headphone Accommodations feature on my iPod/iPhone with earbuds. This allows you to use your audiogram (entered thru the Health app). It’s not perfect in that it only uses the EQ for your “good” ear on both channels. But the earbuds do have decent freq response and distortion is pleasingly low. WAY better than my HAs. On the Mac, they also support this feature but you have to buy Beats headphones. Pretty sad when the hi-end equipment is sitting there unused while I listen to MP3s in earbuds but that’s the best solution I have at the moment
@Gary_NA6O has the best value for $ solution.
As earpods keep falling out of my ears (one ear canal is distorted) I am looking at the Topping DX5 ii DAC/headphone amp with headphones as it has a 10 band parametric equaliser.
I have been doing hi-fi, broadcast & audio engineering for about 65 years.
Well my inner ears are broken, so its been a while since I listened to hi-fi.
Yes you can do a reciprocal of an audiogram with a multi-band EQ.
But you can only go so far.
It will be a challenge for your Left ear, I think that your Right ear is beyond hope.
I think the main limitation of regular EQ systems is not enough boost… Typically 10-15 dB, compared to our losses which can be like 40+ but it’s better than nothing. At least it’s clean, and you can fiddle with it anytime.
I looked at the OP’s audiogram which shows quite a variation between left and right ears.
The RME ADI-2 DAC/headphone amp is a more suitable hifi device as it has separate left and right channel equalization, but it is costly.
In practise a hifi equalizer can supply up to 20db of sound level variation, e.g. for my hearing loss where low frequency has no loss but high frequencies are in the -40 db level I would compensate to a limited degree using a hifi equalizer by setting low frequencies to -10db and high frequencies to +10db.
Yeah, you have a steep loss. Phonak, and Oticon have good frequency lowering technology, which brings those highs down into your range.
It may sound off until you get used to it, but it’s worth a shot.
Afaik, the Phonak uses a compression algorithm, and Oticon uses frequency shifting. @Gary_NA6O may also explore this option.
I use Sennheiser HD 6XX with my HAs for excellent music listening.
I mainly stream from amazon music unlimited Ultra HD through the headphone amp of my Xonar Essense STX soundcard.
I’m thrilled to be able to hear from 30Hz to 8.5KHz.
