I think that of course @happymach is entitled to his opinion that none of the big 6 delivers acceptable speech in noise performance and that Whisper delivers it. But @SpudGunner does have a good point that @happymach’s hearing loss is very different from most others hearing challenged people in that most others’ hearing losses are usually much more challenging, while @happymach 's hearing is actually quite normal all the way up to 3 KHz, then only mild at 4 KHz and moderate at 6-8 KHz on the left and moderately severe at 6-8 KHz on the right.
If I were to characterize @happymach’s hearing loss, I’d say that @happymach has an almost normal hearing, except for a mild to moderate loss on the VERY HIGH frequency ends only. I would surmise that most people with that type of almost normal hearing would not even want to bother with wearing hearing aids. At least I wouldn’t personally.
But speech in noise is always a challenge, even for normal or almost-normal hearing people sometimes. That’s why there are over the counter ear buds out there like the one from Bose and a few others that promote the aid of speech in noise assistance even for normal hearing people in noisy environments. If I find speech in noise a challenge and have an almost normal hearing, I’d most likely use those types of over the counter earbuds to help me out with speech in noise as needed, instead of wearing hearing aids full time, but that’s just me. There’s nothing wrong with almost normal hearing folks wanting to wear hearing aids to compensate for their mild loss, either. It’s purely subjective.
Anyway, back to the topic of discussion at hand. I’d surmise to say that a hearing aid would barely help @happymach’s hearing loss at 4 KHz, and maybe a little more so @ 6-8 Khz, but probably not much elsewhere from the 0-4 KHz range. Yeah, there are components of sounds that extend out to the 4-8 KHz range, but they’re only a tiny section of the sound spectrum.
This is not a lot of help to begin with. Not because the big 6’s HA speech in noise performance is mediocre and are not helpful like in @happymach’s opinion, but simply because they’re not really tuned in and designed to serve normal or almost-normal hearing folks that can’t be helped that much in the first place. For those folks, in the speech in noise arena, you need to bring out the big guns like AI, and probably not just AI crammed in a tiny earpiece along with everything else in a hearing aid where compromises for space have to be made, but AI in a (relatively) big box with no compromise like with Whisper, to solve the speech in noise problem for them.
I’d worry more if more hearing challenged folks are critical of the big 6’s performance, specifically in regards to speech in noise. But apparently they’re all doing well and prosper and serve hearing challenged folks just fine in that space. They just don’t aim at serving small niches like the almost-normal hearing folks in the first place, so I personally think it’s no big deal if they’re viewed as mediocre at speech in noise by folks in those tiny niches.
It reminds me when I first started wearing hearing aids years ago and wondered why don’t they service HAs all the way to 20 KHz instead of stopping short at 8 KHz. Afterall, normal human hearing range goes up to 20 KHz. Many audiophile headphones and speaker systems already have a frequency response of up to 20 KHz to match it. But pretty soon, I understood the practicality of narrowing down the scope to focus on helping restoring hearing where it helps the most, between 0-8 KHz. So if you’re only getting help from 6-8 KHz out of this already narrowed down range, that’s a very small ROI in the first place and the expectation should be adjusted accordingly.
Below are the audiogram that belongs to @happymach and a hearing loss level chart for reference.
