With that level of word recognition at such a low volume I see the point you’re making, Jim.
@jay_man2: That’s my only point of contention. You know, from my many prior posts on this subject, the deleterious effects that I have suffered from being “under-assisted”, so I’m not going to lead someone else down that path.
But, in this case, I have something of a “use it or lose it” attitude.
(But that don’t make me right!)
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What you folks are missing is that the test was conducted with headphones on and in the total absence of background noise (in a soundproof room!).
It didn’t mimic real-world conditions at all. I’ve already said that I have trouble distinguishing speech in noisy environments.
I think people need to read more carefully before they post.
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It’s fallacious reasoning. It’s not like the hearing aids are somehow replacing or bypassing the auditory cortex. They are helping to provide stimulation to areas that otherwise would be understimulated.
What you’re affirming runs exactly counter to what my ENT told me.
I did read your post carefully: IMO, everybody has difficulty with speech in noise.
You’ve introduced a few important bits of new information that may impact my initial opinion. Please bear in mind that it’s just that - an opinion based on a cursory description of your situation. ( So yes, @SpudGunner has, probably, gone out on a limb … ).
I’m not insisting on anything, and am totally open to being both educated, as well as corrected.
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Everyone has trouble with speech in noisy environments. Your word recognition scores in that test conducted in a soundproof room at that decibel level are still outstanding, IMHO. I had the same test in the same environment and did not score nearly as well.
And there is absolutely no need to insinuate that anyone needs to read more carefully in this thread.
Perhaps some need to have their expectations adjusted with regard to hearing loss and hearing aids, and what they can do.
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Fallacious reasoning. Some people have much more difficulty than others. This is obvious to me when I’m at a restaurant: people I’m with have no trouble making out the conversation, and I do.
I post about difficulty hearing in noisy environments, and someone responds, “Oh, but your hearing is great! In fact, you shouldn’t even use hearing aids if you want to preserve your hearing!”
It’s just absurd.
Thank you, but it’s really irrelevant to the problem that I’ve had to state and restate. Reminding me about “expectations” is also unempathic (although your correction of Spudgunner was helpful).
My experience with the word recognition test is that the words are sent to one ear and noise is sent to the other ear. My audiologist uses a set of headphones that plug into my ears. For me that means that at 90db my word recognition is 55 to 60%. I have a lot is speech in noise issues and speech understanding in general is poor.
Okay people lets take a break and cool off.
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I wonder if you can give me the link to that discussion so I can review? I’d have to see the context of our discussion to see why I didn’t mention about trying bass dome to help with noise reduction for folks using open domes. It might have been that the issues weren’t tied together in an obvious way within the context of the discussion so I didn’t put two and two together.
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And here’s a picture of a beach we went to today and ate ‘Fish & Chips’.
Everyone relaxed? Lovely……
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@happymach: Please! Your comments are generating more heat than light.
I’m happy to better understand your circumstances if you can explain them civilly!
Yeah it’s not great, you have a loss of up to 60dB in the higher frequencys, so contrary to what other people are saying from 4Hz to 8Hz you have this problem of background noise filtering in, this is what’s causing your issue, this is why HAs will do good to help with those sounds.
Have you heard of the “cocktail effect” a known issue for so many people. This is where you should look for the solution for your problem.
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Yes this is something I had to relearn after getting hearing aid. I had gone so long without needed hearing aids that I had to relearn how to separate the noise and speech. It isn’t that easy when you are coming out of so little stimulation to almost overload in a heartbeat
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I don’t really have time to search. But the semi-open domes are called “bass domes,” and will still allow sounds falling in the lower end of the spectrum (below 4-6 KHz) to be heard properly by the ear itself?
did you take that wide angle photo with Widex?
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My audiogram looked a lot like OP’s about 7 years ago. At the time I was told by the audiologist that I was on the edge of needing hearing aids–that I may or may not find them beneficial. My issues were speech in noise and difficulty understanding my daughter. I got Costco KS7 which were similar to Signia Primax. They worked like a charm for understanding my daughter.
Speech in noise? Not so much. I tried a more occlusive fit (Signia’s closed click sleeves) and also a remote microphone. I was always overwhelmed with noise in loud restaurants (TVs playing fairly loudly and lots of conversation) My take was that my low frequency hearing was so good that even with a more occlusive fit too much noise got through. I “verified” this by turning hearing aids off and things were still too loud.
I did keep the hearing aids for being able to understand my daughter, but they were of little help with speech in noise.
Edit: Oh yeah, meant to mention. I also tried some Bose Hearphones with closed domes intended for streaming and I still found noisy restaurant situation overwhelming.
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It is use it or lose it, but they’re right you’ve got it backwards. Without hearing aids, Happymach’s brain has no access to soft high frequency sounds–that’s where it’s “use it or lose it”. The hearing aids return those sounds so that the brain can use them.
While I would say that while Happymach is in the hearing aid ‘grey zone’, that’s not an insignificant loss and I am absolutely not surprised that he’s struggling in noise with it. But open domes and a boost at the high frequencies may be all he needs to improve things.
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