I am wondering why in noise, I am sometimes missing d and g sounds at the beginning of words. According to the speech banana, those sounds are not in my area of loss. Are those sounds always located in those spots on the speech banana, or does it vary a lot from one voice to another?
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I think it can vary a little, you could also have a little too much gain in an adjacent frequency which can override the sounds. Sometimes it’s worth a new hearing test & updating your rem/sensogram to ensure everything is as it should be-depending on how much of an issue it is.
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There is variation but I think the key issues is that in noise, all bets are off. Consonants are tough for everybody. There’s not a lot of energy behind them; people speak quickly and without careful enunciation and throw in noise and it’s very challenging. Go ahead and mention to your fitter as there may be appropriate adjustments.
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A significant limitation in the speech banana is that although it is a fairly accurate approximation of frequency and intensity of speech sounds, it does not account for timing. Plosives like /d/ and /g/ are really quick, and people with sensorineural hearing loss have a harder time detecting very short bursts of sound. Unfortunately, this is not something amplification can help with, at least not significantly.
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It’s misleading, then, to be able detect pure tones at softer volumes than typical speech at the same frequency in testing conditions, yet not be able to catch all the speech sounds all the time at that frequency in challenging listening situations.
It makes sense, based on what you are explaining, because those test tones can last long compared to the first phoneme of a word.
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Thank you so much!! I am still trying different models and also in the process of finding a good provider that works with my insurance.
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It’s called hidden hearing loss. Some people with a normal audiogram still struggle to understand speech in background noise. If the experts can understand this mechanism for hearing, I think it will be revolutionize hearing health care.
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Wow, thank you so much for mentioning this. I googled and read a few articles, including this one, and I am pretty sure I have this. I have felt that my audiogram doesn’t document what’s happening in real life. And it’s true, I don’t need hearing help in quiet situations. When the noise is added in, though, I have some limitation, and this year in particular, a hearing aid has not been the game changer that I had hoped it would be.
I think that maybe the right model with the right settings would improve things, though. The Widex Moment line claims that it has the fastest processing speed on the market, with no detectable delays between natural and amplified sounds, and so maybe that would help, with a program for noise suppression that is activated only in busy, noisy conversational settings. I saw they even have a program or a setting called “classroom”. It was in a video review I saw online…I will look for it and post it here.
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It’s here at 9:57. It’s for the programmer to select a name for each program, based on where it will be used.
Take a look at “consonantal speech banana” by keen Hearing (I think that’s right), it gives a speech banana which separates the consonants into word position , showing where they lie ie. Beginning, middle and end of words which does make a difference.
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This is very true but also need to remember that when testing very few know what their hearing was when younger and audiologists seem to forget that 0 dB was an average best of 500 college age students 18-25 (if I remember age range correctly). So you can still have what is deemed as normal hearing and yet have mild loss. And I can vouch for this as I did have -10 dB HL hearing when I went for my degree. It was across the board. But during military I dropped to 15 to 25 dB HL (low to high frequencies) and not only did it make it harder for me in noise but even soft voices. Also had tinnitus start at this time. So I always wonder if it is really hidden or we just don’t have what we need to identify it properly as we don’t know what best hearing was when young. Just more to think about.
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