So my new 9050’s have multiple mic’s, directional control, movement sensors, ai learning and God knows what else. Our hearing starts failing and we demand new ears when we buy a &1500 hearing aid. 3 year warranty puts the monthly cost at $40- Starbucks money…
Two things- remember when your pc took 2 minutes to boot up? Remember trying to get your elderly parents or grandparents to wear their ha’s with screaming feedback and ring volume controls and battery powered junk for $5000 or more? Why can we not be happy with a huge ( but not perfect) difference. I remember cupping my ears to hear something better and covering my ears for loud noises as a child 65 years ago. Why should our bionic ears be any better than our original issue?
Thanks for reading.
Well i don’t drink coffee and don’t go to Starbucks. But I wear the Oticon INTENT1 aids. But then again I am a veteran with service related hearing loss and my aids are part of my benefits. Without my VA benefits I wouldn’t be able to afford my hearing aids.
Technology is a wonderful thing, but we are wearing hearing aids and not replacements for natural hearing. Audio engineers can’t possibly replace our natural hearing, which took millions of years of evolution to perfect, with an electronic replacement. Many of us boomers were reckless with our natural hearing in our youth by damaging it with loud rock and roll music concerts, or as a result of military service, or in my case exposure to loud engine noise from small airplane while giving flight instruction. I knew that I was damaging my hearing, but the only solution, at that time, was wearing yellow foam protectors in my ears. The problem was that I couldn’t hear my own voice and was yelling at my students. Today, all training airplanes have a noise canceling inter-phone system.
I’m absolutely amazed that my hearing aids are able to do such a good job of allowing me to turn the TV volume down to a normal volume, or be able to converse with my wife without me saying to her, “Please say that again”, or “I can’t hear you, speak up”, or worse, “Why are you mumbling “.
I remember my mother-in-law’s late boyfriend going to Costco again and again complaining about his hearing aids, or just turning them off when he didn’t want to be part of a conversation. He used his hearing deficit as a means to get his needs met. Unfortunately, I resisted being fitted with them sooner because I was too stupid or vain to get my hearing checked. Regardless how good they are, they are just aids. They are not 100% perfect at being able to distinguish speech in a noisy environment like a restaurant. Maybe, in the near future, medical science will be able to repair or regrow the damaged hair cells in our own inner ears and restore normal hearing.
Think you I have been saying this to people for 20 years.
That’s the only part that is most important, here it’s genetic from my father. As with 5 of the 7 siblings in our family.
YES - this. I agree totally. There is a lot of complaining that things are normal hearing when normal hearing is gonzo. My CI is a great step ahead for me for my left hear.
Different perspective: I am totally blind, I have no eyesight. If you take away my hearing, you are basically taking away the majority of my world. Sounds dramatic, it is. Every day I lose a little bit more hearing. My hearing loss is still considered upper end of mild going into moderate, but since it’s the primary sense I rely on, it’s devastating every time more goes, which it seems to be doing on a yearly basis. I’m 42 and have a 1 year old son, I struggle a lot now. I give you this as context.
so, why do I complain? simple. Hearing aids are getting better and better, but they are so far away from replacing my hearing it’s just not funny.
firstly, the RIC style which is so easy to make and fit. The mics are now in the wrong position. Suddenly I can’t hear above, behind, in front of me, just a sort of fuzzy left right. Before anyone tells me to get them adjusted etc etc, no, I’ve done it all, tested them all. I’m not using the natural shape of my ear, so I never get the same 3d image with RICs that I do with something actually in my ear and don’t even get me started on wearing headphones with RICs, which I have to do every day for work as I listen to my computer speaking to me. However, ITEs are always behind. Heck it wasn’t until about a year ago that we got rechargeable ones. The best I’ve found for this is Phonak Lyric, but of course there are very few adjustments you can make to those. Maybe in 15y time that will be the standard form factor for HA’s.
Second problem, AI. i use the term broadly, but basically it’s HA makers thinking they know what I need to hear. Turning the volume up and down automatically for me, cutting sounds out that they think aren’t important, giving bias to high frequencies, switching programs automatically. This is not good. Changing my environment so drastically is not something I want. I want an analogue sound, with frequency band control. for thousands of £, I want something simple but instead I’m told hey, skynet is going to get rid of traffic noise for you unless you really really work hard to turn it all off. No don’t turn traffic noise off. Traffic noise means death is coming towards me. I want to get out the way of death coming towards me and I want to know exactly where the noise is in 3d space.
Third thing, frequency bias. Most people have high freq hearing loss. Loss from the top down. I don’t. Yes I know Hydrops is a weird condition, but since HA speakers are so so so so tiny, they can’t really replicate the power and strength of the frequencies I’ve lost down the bottom. They hardly get down to 150 hz and anything below that is just off the radar. Now you may think those freqs aren’t important because that’s not where we’re told speech resides, but I pick up a huge amount of detail when listening to bass in those freqs. Also, a lot of the screen reading software I use that has synthetic voices is very bass heavy. So those become more important. HA makers will tell you and in fact I’m sure most of this forum believes the most important thing to restore is speech. That’s fine, until you’re in a busy city and have to dodge things coming towards or going around you using your ears alone. Suddenly speech… not so important.
Final thing, A lot of the apps that control these HA’s have not been made accessible for blind people. That means that when I use the built in voice software on the iPhone to use the app, it doesn’t work. Oticons app doesn’t read properly at all or didn’t the last time I checked. Starkeys also had issues. Phonaks app only works if you’re not streaming to the phone at the same time or else it gets locked into the streaming program and you can’t adjust any other settings. So now the device I pay thousands of £ for is limited in what I can even do with it. A lot of devices only have 1 button. Heck Widex now has no buttons. So adjusting them without the app is almost impossible.
I know the above comes off like a rant for which I apologise. But, I wanted to give a different perspective as to why I personally complain. Hearing is my life and I am very very very well informed on tech. I’ve worked in IT for 20 years and I do a lot of research. I have tried it all and I can tell you, it all kind of falls short at the moment, when you need to rely on it like I do 
For what it’s worth though I’m glad the people who do find HA’s a game changer, do find them that way. Ultimately I will need to get some and I will live with them, but it’s going to be a very sub-optimal experience.
That’s a list of what hearing aids have, but I am disappointed because of their outcomes. I have difficulty understanding family and friends even when it is quiet, and then it’s impossible if there is any background noise or the wind is blowing on my microphones. For many years most of the companies R&D budget went towards trying to make their hearing aids invisible rather than improving their function.
Your thoughts give my pause as i have severe hearing loss and also macular degeneration. My audiologist and eye doctor are very vigilant at insuring that I have the best aids for both my hearing and eyesight. I am fortunate so far that my macular degeneration is only a minor issue for my sight. And I am fortunate that my MiniRite aids from Oticon are able to allow my to hear as well as they do. My biggest concern is speech understanding at this time. But my aids do allow me to understand speech in an almost 360 degrees around me. I am still doing reasonably well with telling from where sounds are coming from. I walk and hike in the forest so I need to be able to hear all around me, so far that is happening for the most part.
But your thoughts does give me pause as my sight slowly is fading away. Thank you so very much for your insights.
Hi Xonic83,
Fascinating post. Interesting to read a totally different perspective. Your thoughts about the way hearing aids are presenting us with what people think we want to hear resonates because I do a lot of bike touring and it seems to me that I hear cars from behind me very poorly. If I am in a really built up area, particularly in a foreign country, I make sure I use a Garmin Varia radar, which gives me a graphical representation of approaching traffic coming from behind on my bike computer.
It is interesting what you say about speech and processing of frequencies. I remember many years ago, I can’t remember the guy exactly, I think it was Dan, who complained really heavily that digitial hearing aids were terrible when he was playing music - he was a guitarist. The dynamic range was poor and the devices kept tripping. I think they were Phonaks. He was really upset and angry and like you he wanted an analogue device, which as you know, are just not available now. The interesting thing was that by chance he found a Unitron device that worked for him, claiming it was analogue. It turned out it wasn’t analogue but digital, but it was just something the audiologist had programmed in a linear fashion and he managed to remove all of the programming artefacts. The guy was delirious. I am not saying that solves your problem or in my case the bike problem, as the issue then is finding a competent fitter who knows how to make the devices sing.
With respect to your complaints about the RIC mic orientation, have you tried wearing BTEs.? Do they not help? Also, custom aids, where the mic sits in the concha area?
Yeah it’s a funny thing. when I started really losing my hearing about 5y ago to the point that I thought I need hearing aids, I was kind of shocked to realise hearing aids just aren’t made for blind people which is to say, they don’t work very well for blind people. They’re made for people who can see and point their head like a gun at the things they want to hear. You really wo’nt realise this until you try and use just your hearing aids and no sight. Yes you can understand speech in background noise with them, but trying to navigate like that is really hard because they’ve turned off so much of the environment to give you that clarity of speech. It’s a 2 edged sword all this technology
I empathise deeply @Xonic83… I once had the pleasure of working with 2 Deaf/Blind clients for a couple of years, I say pleasure, simply because that was what it was, both where larger than life characters, full of life, and full of fun… I was their Communicator/Guide. Both were profoundly Deaf, both were completely blind, but both had speech… There is 2 other senses, smell & touch, both these clients utilised those senses, I signed on their hands, using Deaf/Blind manual, I have a tendency to use the same aftershave, immediately when I walked in a room on a visit, they would say, Hello Kevin, they could be 10 or 15 feet away, but such was their heightened sense of smell, they knew it was me! Nowadays, I look back in sheer admiration, and when I am really at a low ebb, I remind myself my problems pale into insignificance, compared to the problems these 2 guys had…We all adapt to whatever life throws in our direction, you will find a way @Xonic83 it won’t be easy, but you will find it!!! My heart goes out to your plight, I sincerely hope your hearing stabilises… Cheers Kev
The fact that the apps aren’t accessible sucks and should definitely be pushed up the chain. Thanks for reminding me to talk about it with the manufacturer reps when I see them. If you haven’t already–a build-up of customer requests does carry weight over time so sending them an email isn’t exactly yelling into the void.
Have you tried the M&RIE receiver resound option yet? If you’re looking for a way to get bluetooth connectivity but maintain localization cues, that might support you. And then you can just turn off all of the noise management features or stuff them into a different program. I think resound still lets you just turn off fast compression. The in-the-canal receiver will help support localization in the highs and allow you to close the canal off more to get more lows. If you have them set up separately you can connect one to your phone and the other to a multimic and jack that into the computer so that you can have calls in one ear and the screen reader in the other simultaneously.
I’ve not yet tried any rResound stuff actually it’s been raised a couple of times on this forum. What is the M&RIE receiver please? is it like a regular HA, can it boost certain freqs etc? and what is the form factor? happy for you to message me if easier, just curious about it and you seem to know quite a bit about it
The M&RIE receiver goes on a resound RIC-style hearing aid, but the receiver has a microphone in it so that in calm situations sound is picked up there to maintain the pinna filtering for localization cues. Noisy situations will switch to the directional mics behind the ears, but that could be turned off. Because it is a RIC you’d get bluetooth and rechargeability, compared to a CIC, and it would possibly be less occluding if that’s an issue for you (I don’t know how severe your low frequency loss is). However, I understand you may be in an open fit to try to maintain hearing normally at the highs in order to maintain thos localization cues, the M&RIE mic is placed in a way to maintain those, so being able to close things up instead may give you better low frequency gain than you have now.
My friend has no eye sight and got cochlear implants last year. She chose Cochlear and she can’t use the App either as the system she uses to read her iPhone to her, doesn’t work with the App.
She’s very frustrated but she’s currently waiting on getting a remote control, she’s just asked about it.
Might be useful for you to get a remote control? I realise you shouldn’t have to get a remote but it does give you more options.
My frustration lies with hoping that the rate of advances in technology outpace the rate of my decine in my hearing.
Is it the nucleus mart that you are using?
I just tried the demo mode with VoiceOver, and it worked without any issues. However, the need to swipe up and down for volume adjustment and selecting items to be read aloud might be a bit unclear, which could be the source of the problem.
Apologies if this sounds awkward, as I’m not a native English speaker.
Yes it is. She hasn’t used it in over a year. I’ll have to tell her to try it again. Thank you.
Why can we not be happy with…
Because if we were, we would still be living in caves and dying of preventable diseases.
I don’t want to go back to waiting for 30mins for that game to load off a cassette tape.
Don’t go quietly into the darkness (or silence).
Strive for a better world.