@Deafas
That’s why you need a fitter who follows best practices and can measure stuff and explain to you how your loss really looks like, what aids can and cannot do, if external mics can or cannot help and so on.
In short, again, tonal audiogram says that you have frequency loss, what type, how severe and might imply if there are dead regions.
WRS, word recognition score, tell us what we can expect from aids.
SNR with quicksin or similar tests tell us what are our needs in speech babble noise.
My working theory is that those from WRS lower than 70/80 are probably screwed up, because they hear too good for CI, but too bad for HA.
No HA in the world can repair your cochlea, and damaged cochlea and especially dead reagions in it is what distorts sound, brain interprets it, and you get your WRS. The more damage there is, the clearer signal you need in order for your brain to have better chances in deciphering that.
If your SNR is high that means that your brain is really struggling in any noise, and ideally you’d do best with full noise cancellation of any noise and disturbance of the sound. That being said, many youtubers have bad sound quality, because they use wrong mics and don’t have acoustically prepared rooms, so mics pick up everything, and that gets into the mix soup for your brain to decipher. Add to that all noises between your speakers and you, and you’re asking your brain to do some heavy lifting.
SNR 2-4 is ‘you struggle but aids should suffice’, ‘5-10’ usually means ‘aids won’t be enough, try with external mic’, higher than that means ‘you’re screwed’. Guess where I stand if mics won’t help me to get clear signal
HAs just bring signal, louder, in front of your eardrum. And tries to clear it up, however, it isn’t perfect. Mics do the same, with an advantage of shortening the distance between sound you want to hear and your ears effectively.
HAs mics indeed are weaker by distance of sound source. I think 4m at 65db could be already tricky, even in quiet (because quiet isn’t sound booth), but I forgot the exact number for distance, I think 6-8m means probably unusable for many people. You might heard that something is said, but not get enough information to comprehend what is being said. That’s why speaking from other room just doesn’t work, no matter if you wear HAs or not, but it seems that many spouses expect that when you wear HA you can magically hear them from another room when they speak in normal voice.
When tests if HAs are fitted properly are done, it’s on 1m distance and 65db source. 65db is normal speech loudness.
That’s property of the sound - it losses power over distance.
That being said, why we wear aids in the first place?
So that we don’t have to suffer through listening situation (so hard).
Why use mics and other stuff? So that we further reduce that suffering.
Normal hearing people don’t have to focus on hearing, they don’t get fatigue because they try to understand what’s being said.
I asked my husband why he likes to listen stuff somewhat louder than I do, and his answer got me thinking. He said that he doesn’t want to think about listening, he just wants to hear it.
That and the fact that my ear is really bad, got me to 2 aids and mics, and struggle to comprehend is real, however, without them, so only one aid - I don’t struggle, I just give up.
So, no, it definitely isn’t necessary to use any aid, if you don’t have issues with your hearing loss.
Nor you need accesories, if aids work great for you.
However, aids have limits, and SNR the top tech provide in ideal environments are I think at most 7?
Your daily environment isn’t ideal environment.
And your brain may or may not cope well with additional help that aids bring, that mic/tv connector bring…
Best thing you can do is - try and compare.
Try aids, if they work great - awesome, you’re done.
If some situations are better but you still struggle, try accessories, if they work great - awesome, you’re done.
If they help a bit, but not completely (mind you, no aids beside CI in the world can repair your cochlea and improve your WRS from 50s into 90s), then you have to decide if they’re worth the money for what you get or not.
Also, if without mics you’re screwed, but with mics you work fine, I’d suggest going with cheaper tier aids and external mics, since mics will do the heavy lifting alone anyway, so why pay for that 5 snr boost from aids if you don’t see benefit and you need 8 which mic provides, for example.
But, my takeaway from this world is that if I can pay, I’ll use any accessory that makes me strain a bit less. Becaue that means that I can be not exhausted at the end of the day, or enjoy longer dinner evenings and be engaged.
Every bit counts.
If you’re lucky and you need ‘just’ HAs, by all means, go for it. It definitely happens.
However, bunch of folks here on forum use accessories, my guess is probably since most of us came here because we were so frustrated with our losses, and had to dig more and more, and help ourselves with informations and so on. So it’ definitely a biased community
That being said, if you realise you enjoy streaming youtube from your phone, just keep in mind that with tv connectors you can get the same for your TV.
I didn’t know that (both) until last year and it was really a gamechanger for me.
And I use my mic for video calls on speakerphone, since that sound is really distorted, even if I’m half a meter away, with HAs alone is just hard (yes 2 aids and 1 normal hearing ear). WIth mic I don’t have to even look at people talking, you know, like normal hearing people can do Not to mention that I can go in the kitchen and still hear them talking loud and clear