Well for me, the technology either works to an extent that it easier for individuals to hear or it doesn’t.
You are claiming that it has improved but then saying improvement takes effort and you need to work on word recognition?
But what about if the technology works and you don’t need to work on word recognition?
This is what the discussion is about.
I understand people may want to accept incremental or limited improvements - the More had a 15% increase in speech understanding. But what I’m trying to get to the bottom of is to what extent these improvements bring you something close to normalcy in a noisy environment? For those with a great SIN score, it may well work. But I think we just don’t know. Oticon have not published this information.
btw - don’t get me wrong - I have always been happy to accept incremental improvements and I know there have been a lot of these.
I couldn’t honestly tell a canadian accent. I have been a few times. My dad’s cousin emigrated north of Toronto in the 1960s and my brother did his thesis on the canadian education system at Toronto university in the mid 1970s - but my experience of all things canadian is limited to Netflix shows like Travellers nowadays.
I guess you didn’t read that my unaided word recognition is worse but my aided is better, so yes technology helps, and I am going to say this. We as a human race have become lazy and allowed technology to take over and it will destroy mankind. I was raised to work hard, play hard and believe that I had to depend on only my own self when the going gets tough, well with my hearing loss it was really tough and I wouldn’t believe it for to long. When I finally gave in, I discovered that I again had to fight the battle but this time with the help of a few good audiologists, and and ever increasing number of hearing aids and hearing aid improvements, but I also found that the audiologist and the aids weren’t enough that I had to bare down and carry my share of the load.
Life isn’t fair or free or without its disappointments, but it is also rewarding if you work at it.
It’s in post 99 which I quoted your post in my reply. I’ll quote it again below and highlight in bold so it’s more clear what I was referring to.
The first quote in bold seems like a definitive statement which implies to apply to everyone, but the physiology of the ear is not the same for everyone who has a hearing loss, and some folks (but of course not everyone) CAN learn to tune into individual voices and not be overwhelmed, albeit it may take a bit of brain hearing training
In the second bold quote at the bottom, the definitive statement is that the fidelity is simply not there in the high frequencies. In your case, frequency lowering is not effective for your hearing loss because you already have quite severe hearing loss starting at 1 kHz, while the destination region of the Speech Rescue frequency lowering can only go as low as 1.7 kHz and up. But for others whose hearing loss is not quite severe at the 1-3 kHz region, the Speech Rescue frequency can be beneficial to them, enough to restore the fidelity of the high frequencies to help them sort out and differentiate the individual voices to tune in on which one they want to hear.
As for the statement about me conflating my individual experience and discounting other people’s anecdotal experiences, I think I’ve already made it plenty clear many times in many places that it make work for some but not others. Then I always say “iI it doesn’t work for you, then just move on to another brand/model after you’ve given it a fair try”.
Note that I don’t normally outright suggest people to try out the OPN/S/More. Most of the times people took the initiative and decided to go on trial on their own beforehand, then they went on the forum looking for suggestions/help. My explanation of how I think brain hearing training is crucial to the open paradigm and the 2 should go hand in hand to get the best success is not the same as “discounting other people’s anecdotal experiences.” It’s only to help explain clearly to people how I think the whole Oticon paradigm should work, and what their expectation should be based on that, so they know whether they’ve given it the right amount of time and know when/how to judge if this approach works for them or not.
Ok. I apologise. I seem to have got the wrong end of the stick here. I was concerned that advice was being given whereby no benefit would be achieved but it’s clear you understand the applicability of the technology and also it’s limitations. Have a good day.
I also came from the Alta Pros and on the basic sound level, they are roughly the same, but in noisy situations the More 1s are far superior. I use the Speech in Noise program in noisy environments, drop the level down a click and they work much better than the Alta Pros; not that the Alta Pros were terrible. I seemed to get on just fine for five plus years with them. I did have to train my brain with them and tweak them from time to time. But I still often cringed when my wife would drag a pot across a slate counter, or turned on the washing machine while talking to me assuming that I would continue to understand her. With the More 1s I can hear her in those environments and the sounds that made me cringe are largely a problem of the past.
The More 1s have been a quicker learn. After numerous initial adjustments, they just work, which means I can forget about adjusting things once I am in the thick of it. What I love is that they allow me to hear what I want to hear of conversations; I hear them all, and that is fun, but I am also able to discern one from another and focus my attention on the conversation of interest, which is the Open paradigm.
My audi tried to dampen my expectations: she said, that hearing aid manufacturers are in the business of selling hearing aids and these should be seen as a replacement for an aging set of aids that I was concerned would just die on me after 5 ½ years of use, but they are not just a replacement, they make hearing easier. I can exist in a noisy world and pull from it what interests me.
I went walking with my wife today on a rail trail in New England in freezing cold weather and enjoyed hearing our feet tramp through huge piles of leaves, marveled as the leaves swirled around us driven by the cold wind in a continual leave-blowing-like-spiral, listened to the water rush down the icy cold river that paralleled the trail, and had a delightful conversation, all at the same time. I didn’t think about the aids at all… I enjoyed the moment.
I have worn Oticon Duals, Alta Pros, OPN, OPNS and now the Mores. I have seen the progress in Oticon hearing aids. Over that time I have tried so many different possibilities in programs and even ear molds. Over the time with Oticon aids I have had only two different audiologists and that has worked to my advantage. I have come to a point that I don’t want to have to have anymore programs than I can possibly get a way with. While with my More1 aids at this time I have the default, t-coil, TV adapter, connect clip mic. I will be adding the MyMusic program on Tuesday. And I am really hoping I want really need it. The t-coil is useful for landline phones and also sometimes at church and movie theaters. Most days I never do any more with my aids than adjust volume or enable the MoreSoundBoost. The More1 aids handles almost everything with out me having to think about even wearing them.
Mark you have a really hard hearing loss to adjust for, you have so much difference between your ears. That makes your issues in noise really hard to fit and still give you the speech recognition you need.
And to be honest I am wondering if Oticon has the best solution for your hearing loss.
