Later today I will get my hearing aid (left ear only) in an attempt to reduce my tinnitus. I have a hearing loss of 20 dB @ 8 kHz in my left ear compared to my right causing the tinnitus.
9 years ago when my tinnitus started they tried a hearing aid which worked well but at that time I was only 48 and was not ready for it. I had no hearing loss in my right ear so setting up the hearing aid was very straight forward: compensate for the loss in my left ear.
Now I am 57 and I have additional age related hearing loss of 25 dB @ 8kHz on both sides. My question is, do you set up the hearing aid to correct the total hearing loss of 20+25=45 dB or do you only compensate for the 20 dB difference between left and right?
Other than my tinnitus my hearing is excellent so I am only looking for the optimal solution to get rid of my tinnitus. I am afraid that full correction will cause a disbalance the other way possibly triggering tinnitus on the other side.
That’s not how gain figure are calculated. Your hearing loss of 45dB will yeild a gain figure of around 12-15dB plus or minus what the aid does using AI.
Tinnitus tuning is slightly different, there’s a couple of approaches to ‘notch filtering’ and ‘peak matching’ which you can try, once you’ve established the frequency (pitch) tonal spread and nature of the Tinnitus.
Thanks for your reply but I am new to this and don’t understand your remark about gain.
Up to 4kHz I have perfect hearing on both sides, then at 6kHz it is -15/-25 (R/L) and at 8kHz -25/-45.
My tinnitus is a hiss at 8kHz. I am not attempting to mask my tinnitus only to remove the R/L imbalance which is the proven cause of my tinnitus, which I hope will lessen my tinnitus.
Hi. I am doing the same thing…made an appt for my first hearing aid at Costco. This is all new to me so I am struggling with its realization of what my future hearing issues will be. Hope you have a positive resolution.
Di