I’m sure you can find better articles. It was the first relevant one I found. I see it as a general guide and if I were in the market, I would do much more research. But if the article is correct, BTEs are less expensive and can correct hearing more easily so I made the right choice for my needs.
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I see the article as a general guide. If what it says is accurate, I made the right choice in selecting BTEs. I live near Palm Springs and would never use the Audi authors. I’m very happy with the advice and service I get at my La Quinta Costco. I tried but failed to used the edit mode to avoid multiple repetitive posts.
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I think @Neville is talking about how much speech you understand in everyday life. WRS is about how much you’d understand if everyone shouted right into your ear.
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That’s good news. That’s good clarity when things are audible for you. But that’s when the words are presented at 80 dB HL. Average speech is about 45 dB HL.
Moderate SNR loss would make me expect that even with hearing aids you would struggle in background noise, and in some ways it would probably feel even worse because you’re not used to hearing all that noise. It’s possible that you would have gains there over time with consistent wear, but yeah I’d expect that to be a struggle.
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This lists things that are 80db. No wonder why user 305 can’t hear normal speech.
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dB HL and dB SPL don’t quite track together.
The clinician is usually looking for max wrs when they are presenting. 80 dB HL would be loud enough to provide pretty good audibility across frequencies. So note that the OP is not getting nothing at an average conversational level. He’s likely getting about 34%. Lots of vowel sounds. Not as many consonant sounds, but they are visible on the lips.
Neville, very insightful. I think the audiologist did not really explain the test very well to me. His comment on the 84% at 80dBHL was “I thought you would be in the 60% percent range”. And left it at that. My report also has this comment: “Speech Recognition Thresholds (SRTs) of 40 dB HL and 35 dB
HL were obtained in the left and right ears respectively.” This was not explained to me. And the report ends with this: “QuickSIN Speech-In-Noise testing was conducted today and indicated that the patient experiences moderate difficulty hearing in background noise in the left ear and moderate difficulty hearing in background noise in the right ear.” I remember a comment that everyone has a hard time with this test.
On the BTE ones I tried for a period of time, the other problem was I need reading glasses and during the day I put them on to read or whatever. The glasses rubbing up against the hearing aid and being amplified or trying to position them was painful. Sometimes I would knock them loose. My wife said to get some glasses with bifocals or progressives to wear all the time, but I never did. Switching to in the canal hearing aids solved the wind noise and glasses rubbing.
Is the 34% an Audibility Index score?
It’s a rough estimate of the speech intelligibility index. If you look up a count the dots audiogram you can sort of eyeball it.
Yeah, 80% is good for your loss.
QuickSIN is hard for everyone, but a moderate loss indicates that you need a signal to noise ratio of about ~7-12dB higher than someone without hearing loss in order to understand target speech in noise. The best hearing aids on the market can maybe give you a six dB boost, so there will still be many situations that are just too noisy without something like a remote microphone. CIC hearing aids are good for wind and for comfort, but have no directional microphones so are more limited in noise. They often also don’t have the connectivity to use remote mics or other accessories. You can get those features in a larger in the ear device and still have it away from glasses, but then you do lose some wind noise benefits.
There’s no perfect solution with hearing aids yet, but at least in quiet situations it would be good for your ears to wear them. But do expect considerable adaptation time. It’s like taking your arm out of a cast–the longer you’ve lived with the hearing loss the longer it takes to rehab the brain and the ear.
speaking entirely from my personal experience: my right ear has comparable loss compared to yours. I’ve been fitted with a power receiver in a custom mold: obviously, this a BTE aid. mIne works very well!
Have you tried BTE aids? and if so, do you have reasons for disliking them? I have hipster hair: a bit long, enough to cover over my aids. No one–NO ONE–notices that I use HAs.
As such given that BTE aids can power the sound that I need, and are easier–for me!–to use than ITC aids…they’re a no brainer. For me!
Having more power in my right ear, that could be dialed down, is better than not having enough power when it’[s needed. And I pretty much need it all the time.
User777, he/she is not using RIC or BTE hearing aids. He/she was trialing the CIC hearing aid.
It appears that the CIC type is more expensive then RIC or BTE hearing aids. It looks like they have to use some type of mold impression which probably adds to the cost.
Seems most of your issues with the Rexton’s centered around taking them out during the day. I started with Rextons but returned them for Philips 9030’s and I only take them out when showering, sleeping and drying if I’ve sweat with them in… I even mountain bike with them in. You can turn them down if want more quiet or use a more aggressive noise reduction program which is what I do when mtn biking. But I can imagine taking them out all the time will really screw your brain up trying to adapt to the constant changes back and forth. I guess for you better not to have HA. And I could probalbly get by without mine saying huh more often, etc but now that I’ve had them almost a year I would never want to take them out for very long…life was just too muffled before. Sunglasses, mtn bike glasses and reading glasses are not that bad for me and I have the behind the ear versions with open domes. My Air Pod Pro just don’t compare and way too much occlusal effect…great for streaming but too uncomfortable.
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Thank you. This is all new to me. My Philips 9040 BTEs are my first HAs. They work for me very well at Costco’s lowest price. This thread has helped confirm my choice. Given the lower cost, ease of programming and seemingly better overall performance for speech recognition, I think BTEs are likely HA best sellers. I’m not surprised CICs cost more as they are custom formed and probably sold in lower volumes. Costco probably still sells CICs for much less than others do.
The entire HA is built custom in such cases. They are called “customs” for this reason. For this reason they are much more expensive.
WH
You should get Rextons (BiCores) and you should get the behind the ear ones (perhaps Slims). I have Signias AX (which are the same as Rextons ) and I too disliked them at first.
Audiologists will set them up initially with manufacturer’s defaults/guidelines which are designed to minimise the possibility of rejection, plus some are ignorant and scared of changing anything.
That, and they will underamplify you, because you have to get used to the new soundscape
This generation of Rextons/Sugnias have split processing for environmental sounds. Basically you can setup how amplified are the things further from you versus things near (focusing on voices especially.)
And I found that, by manipulating this you can strike a balance which eventually allowed me to hear comfortably in an outside noise.
With Slims you’ll be able to lower the amplification, or switch to a different program made for you , using app, more comfortably.
You shouldn’t take the HAs out.
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