With hearing aids should I expect to hear people in a noisy restaurant when it is so noisy that I cannot hear my own voice? I have Specsavers (Unitron) top of the range Elite fitting with REM. I have to shout and ask people to repeat themselves. Or are my expectations too high?
Yes, unfortunately this is quite common, and itās the same for people with normal hearing.
Hearing in noisy environments and filtering out the background noise is the holy grail of hearing aids, the cocktail effect I believe.
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Your hearing loss is fairly mild to only moderate, and mostly in the high frequencies. In the kind of VERY noisy restaurant, so noisy that you canāt even hear your own voice, I think even normal hearing people would struggle themselves, let alone people with hearing loss. So yes, I think your expectation is too high on hearing aids if youāre in a place where you canāt even hear your own voice.
Having said that, if you have had your hearing aids programmed with front beam forming directionality to block out sounds on the sides and in the rear so that you can hear more of the sounds in the front, then it should help with front speech, and with such a mild to only moderate high frequency hearing loss like yours, the hearing aids probably even give you an advantage because it helps block surrounding sounds to let you focus on sounds in the front.
If you had a closed dome fitting, then there would be another advantage with hearing aids because all sounds are blocked from being able to enter naturally into your ear, hence the closed domes would attenuate all sounds and the hearing aids will deliver more sounds in the front, and if itās too loud, you can always turn down the volume on the aids to adjust to a more comfortable level.
But most likely with your kind of hearing loss, you would be fitted with an open dome with very large vents to minimize occlusion, and also to let in the low frequency sounds so that your ears can hear them naturally because your ears still have good audibility in the low and mid range, thus any advantages mentioned above with using close domes donāt really exist anymore. And you donāt want to use the hearing aids to be the middle man to deliver the low and mid range sounds to you, because the middle man with amplified sounds can never deliver the same kind of natural sounds that your ears can pick up on.
So in places so loud that you canāt even hear your own voice, then donāt expect too much from the hearing aid, because even the sounds that are blocked from the rear and sides still get totally diffused and immerse the sounds in the front as well. Plus your open domes wouldnāt help with any kind of attenuation.
In noisy places that you can manage to hear your own voice, then you can have higher expectation from your hearing aids.
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Thereās not much you can do in extremely noisy restaurants.
My wife has normal hearing and she has problems in really noisy restaurants.
The only thing you can do is avoid them or go on off days and off times.
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See about a microphone. Phonak has several different kinds. Have your partner wear the mic in the restaurant. My Roger on mic does a phenomenal job in this situation.
WH
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Try a little app for your phone called Live Transcribe. I have it on my iPhone and iPad.
I used it last weekend in a noisy restaurant for the first time where I have trouble hearing with my HA and CI. It worked amazingly well in my opinion. Other than the fact you look at a screen and least you know what is being said by your companions.
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Actually no, the app allows you some quite good directional refinements. Plus youāve got a mild loss - most of the suggestions above ignore this and are meant to cater for more extreme losses in the same environment.
I expect that youāre running āreallyā open vents and a lot of speech in noise advantage is actually just slipping out of your ears via venting. Take them back and ask for more tuning, especially for speech in noise. Thereās sliders in the settings for the max amount of noise reduction and speech enhancement that the aids do - I bet that theyāv not been tweaked from the defaults.
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I used to design HVAC in another lifetimeā¦
Take a look at the restaurantās features. Does it have a ceiling? Many restaurants do not and they are very noisy.
Maybe best choice is to pick another restaurant. And be careful where you sit.
@freezerman404 great suggestion!
Someone here recommended an amazing book. Thank you!
HEAR $ BEYOND
Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss
Shari Eberts
Gael Hannan
Reading this book changed my life. Truly. I have the e version and a printed copy.
I would also think that tweaking could definitely make this at least somewhat better, but it might take some time to work out what the right settings are for you. Iām a new HA user with HF loss a bit worse than yours and I havenāt worked that out for myself very well yet as I rarely go to that kind of environment, but what I do know is that when I use the āspeech in noiseā program on my hearing aids it can focus on a voice at the other end of the table and bring it to me as if itās shouting in my ear (though it doesnāt always focus on the voice I actually wanted to hearā¦ but it sort of showed me that the principle works). On my aids this program gives an ugly harsh sound but it works for understanding, which I guess in those situations is the goal. If you can have multiple programs on your aids then itās worth tweaking the one specifically for speech in noise so that you can keep the standard program for everyday stuff and then switch to the most aggressive speech-pickup one just for this kind of nasty environment. There are also some other threads on here that have recommendations for where you should sit (do you put your back to the wall or your back to the noise) that might help?
I donāt think you intended this reply for me.
Thanks!
I had real issues in a departmental Team meeting today. I regretted not having transcription available.
By the end of the meeting at 11:45 am my battery was dead in my iPhone.
Use a portable phone charger when you need it in a meeting. When I call my mom, I know Iām in for 1.5 hrs, so I just park my Samsung Flip-4 right on its charging base as Iām talking.
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Some more info on deciphering speech in noise using Live Transcribe on my iphone.
Four of us were in the car driving to see relatives. I was in the back seat, the worst place to be for speech comprehension with hearings aids and Cochlear implant. I pulled out my iPhone and fired up Live Transcribe. No wifi in the car so just on the standard setup. I was shocked. The Transcription was very good with all three of the other occupants. I had no problems following along with the conversation - much better than with my normal hearing equipment.
In a restaurant or noisy room you may have wifi available. The performance is even better with wifi activated on the phone. In our house we recently had 6 people in for a gathering. Normally a deadly situation for me. Fired up Live Transcribe with wifi and was able to cope fine,
Live Transcribe was developed by Google and is available on Android phones. A modified version was made for iPhones. You pay by the hours you use the service. Its not a costly item. Iām glad to pay it just to have something that works in noisy situations. Give it a shot - I think you will be impressed,
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More on using Live Transcribe, I was wrong earlier when I said the app I use was tied in with Google. This little company is located in California and is almost a one-man-band shop in that three people are involved from what I can tell. The use of their Pro version which uses wifi is the much superior version. Unfortunately the monthly hours allocation is limited to two five hour shots in a month so donāt waste any hours. Hopefully as this company grows the hours allocation will expand also. Their name is Mighty Fine Apps
The workaround I use is to have another installation on my iPad. Not quite as handy due to the larger size but the word transcription is still fine.but sure beats being without the help. Yesterday I was at a funeral reception - large room at a golf course - lots of tables for guests. It is still best to be located as close to where the speakers stand as you can, Everything has limits. Around our table in a noisy room it worked fine. As the distance spreads there are more errors. Use in the car with no wifi was still fine.
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There is also NALscribe for voice to text translation. It is a free app created by a government-backed organisation in Australia. However it only works on iPhones and iPads.
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The Jabra-ReSound Multi-Mic is also a superb external mic for use in any kind of noisy situation for hearing one-or-a-few companions. Works w/ that brand of HA.
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I go to restaurants to have an enjoyable time. If I have to practically scream to have a ārelaxingā conversation with the person right next to me then I write that restaurant off my list. It seems to be a trend to have noisy restaurants with loud background music nowadays (if I can call it music!) and I canāt stand it, so the solution for me is to avoid it altogether. Never mind if hearing aid help me understand the conversation, I aināt enjoying it one bit so why spend a weekās worth of grocery money on a single meal?
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