Word Recognition Score (WRS)

Hearing Loss
#56

While waiting for a pair of hearing aids to be fitted for the first time since birth, this past month of trying out hearing amplifiers has brought sounds i have not heard for over 46 years.

Driving car - ticking sound when i put indicator on. Also gravel type sound from the road (maybe car tyres rolling on the road makes a noise, very strange when the road is smooth! Possibly wind noise even though the windows are up. I tried closing all the electric buttons from the windows and roof top opener although they were already fully up. I wind the window down
while driving along the beach coast. I hear voices as i drive past surfies and cafes, no way! They are 5 metres away but i swear i did hear them.

Tap - running water for first time, amazing! I swapped the plug amplifiers to a pair of Resound amplifiers and turned them to full volume. To my disbelief i could hear water gurgle down the drain and the neighbours tv.

There is a tuner inside the Resound amplifiers which i had to turn down with a screwdriver as sounds like cutlery was very loud and sharp and i had to run when flushing the toilet as it was very sharp. The sounds are now deeper and warm with the lower frequency. Toilet flushes sound deep and dull. But words still make no sense with hearing amplifiers on at full volume. The tv sounds very loud at 30 knots volume but i cannot understand a word. I switch channels to see if it is better but no luck here either.

I went shopping and got confused with the new sounds. A guy is talking loud as i am approaching a cafe. Just his loud voice but i don’t know where he is?
The self checkout machine made a beeping noise when i swiped the groceries. Outside i hear a sharp squeek. Ah, so that’s what a small BIRD sounds like!! Magpies and crows i could always kind of hear so nothing new here.

At home i hear the fridge running and the airconditioner is way too loud. I turned the tv on and the aircon had to be turned off. First thought…How does anyone watch tv with the aircon on in the background is beyond belief! Microwave makes a sharp beeping sound! I quickly turn it off as it makes too many beeps when its finished.

It has started raining. I can hear the rain hitting the roof! Wow! I open the slider door and it is loud rain. What a joy to hear rain for the first time.

I hear footsteps. I quickly turn around to see what this is all about. My own footsteps, lol

Lying down feeling exhausted from all these new sounds i can actually hear my own breathing. No way that is impossible you may say but it is true folks!

Some people in the past told me they can hear leaves rattling in the wind? Some say they can hear rain hit the paving. This i have not yet experienced. Some say they can hear a cat meow. This i can only laugh!

I am sure i will hear very differently with hearing aids which i cannot wait to try.

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#57

Not just when you have speech impediment but for general training of the brain. I think Neville and I discussed that in my topic about LACE training therapy, try to dig that up :slight_smile:

When I did my therapy in person, repeating what I’ve heard was easy way for therapist to confirm the correctness. Although, his English was worse than mine and sometimes he concluded that I didn’t heard something right because I pronounce things differently :rofl: Therapy was in Croatian, but he was reading me books/reports about hiking which had foreign names of places and people :smiley:
But, when you have to repeat, your brain focuses more, gives that ‘more juice’ as opposed to passive listening or focused listening. Since it concludes that it obviously matters more to you, so it better be doing better job.

Like, if you just listen something, like a list of items, and then have to repeat it 2 minutes later, you’d suck.
If you do visualisations while listening, and then repeating 2 minutes later, you’ll be much much better.
If you think about what you’ve listening, take it down, close your notes and then repeat, you’d be even better.
When we intentionally listen and utilise other means (writing, repeating), our brain makes better pathways, which as a consequence has that your brain gets better at deciphering certain sound sequences.

For those headphones I assume he adjusted volume on his own. Also, increasing the volume might be a consequence of loss that already happened, but also, could cause the further loss.
Good thing about aids is that they’re SAFE when fitted by proper fitter.
So, they increase volume only for frequencies you need (unlike headphones which can only increase everything, and consequently if you have high frequency loss, you might damage low frequency cells with too much volume over time).
Also, there are bulit in protections from sudden loud sounds, in short, if you wear closed domes/molds with good seal, nothing louder than I think 85db can even enter your head :smiley:

HAs are amplifiers, but are not headphones :slight_smile:
And direct streaming just means that you transfer sound between two devices without loss through the air, like distance between speakers and mics on aids or external mics.
Whenever sound travels through the air, there’s loss in sound quality. If you can avoid that, or reduce the distance - do it.

I’m don’t know how starkey enables listening TV, and how this microphone clip works. I mean, when you say external mic and bluetooth I’m a bit confused, because I’m not sure what you mean.
Like, external mic can be seated in front of some speakers, and then mic transfers via BT to your aids. However, if you can avoid this, do. Since you have ‘sound over air’ situation.
If you have a way that sound is only transfered via wires and BT/other wireless connections, use that. Like, for phonak and TV there’s device called TV connector, you plug it on your optical output on tv, and it utilises some wifi protocol to transfer sound, and you get it directly in your aids. Pure awesomeness :smiley:

That too will get better with practice. I never did typing classes and started with hunt and peck when I got my first computer, that’s around 23 years now (end of primary school). A lot of forum hours later, I think I’ve started typing without looking at the keyboard in like 3-4 years (end of high school)?
Few years later I’ve switched to US keyboard layout, because [] and {} are faster to type on it, and I went to get CS degree :rofl:
Now I swap between DE and US layout depending on what I type.
But yeah, literal years of typing are invested there :rofl:

I can vouch for that, they indeed meow, I have two :cat:
For me, fun part of rediscovering new aids was using external microphone (roger pen/select) and put it under my cat’s nose to hear them breathing and purring. So loud :rofl:
Mind you, I have low frequency loss.
Oh and I decided that I don’t want to hear all those sounds after I’ve heard some of them, like, fridge brumming and such, so I had that readjusted. I prefer quietness :rofl:

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#58

I will be fitted with new hearing aids soon and wondering why people still need accessories for picking up clarity of speech at distances of > 2 metres such as tv or voices?

So the sound is perceived as being loud when wearing hearing aids and watching tv but there is still no clarity or word understanding? Is this common for most HOH folks?

Does the majority of hearing aid wearers need accessories to work with their hearing aids?

I have cheap hearing amplifier plugs that cost $100 and i can understand voices up to 1 metre in my good ear although i am obtaining hearing aids in order to get much better clarity with tv and voices at longer distances.

Does this mean that the latest hearing aids can only get word recognition from voices or TV up to 1 to 2 metres distance? It seems to me that hearing aids will amplify sound but is causing problems with clarity that normal hearing persons do not have trouble with.

I can understand these accessories may be of great assist for profound hearing loss although i don’t understand why they would be needed for moderate or severe hearing loss? This tells me that hearing aids still do not work over 2-3 metres distances? Please correct me if i am wrong?

Are modern hearing aids still not effective for listening to TV at normal distance say 3-4 metres? Or talking at a distance of 3-4 metres?

I was hoping i could rely on my hearing aids alone when talking at a distance or watching tv!

If the hearing aids don’t correct my hearing then i would be needing the Starkey mini remote or full size remote microphone i guess i am wanting to take this with me everywhere. To clip on a friend when i go fishing so i can hear what this friend is saying in the distance. Also, when i visit my parents house or other friends house and we sometimes watch a bit of tv. i can place the mini microphone next to the tv. This is bluetooth to the hearing aids and will be sound over air is what you call it.

I gather the wifi method with a tv connector connected with cables to the tv would be better for sound quality as it pipes sound directly from the tv to the hearing aids over wifi. Starkey does have a TV streamer which would be the same as a TV connector.

I like the idea of the mini microphone being mobile so it can be used in the car as well as sometimes when someone is sitting in the backseat and i can clip this on the person.

Also it can be good at a cafe or at say a university and clip on the lecturers shirt. But at home i would be better with a wifi tv streamer that plugs into the tv as it will have better clarity than sound over the air. I can understand now.

I don’t know if anybody here has experience with the starkey remote microphone clips for tv use or left on a table at a cafe or perhaps clipped to a friends shirt in the car?

It has been more than 46 years since i have seen a hearing aid besides a cic and coming here now in 2021 i am very surprised that accessories are needed.

microphone
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This TV streamer would need cables to be plugged into the back of the TV.

tvstreamer

#59

SNR Signal to Noise Ratio.
Check it out.

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#60

I think you need to try your HAs before getting too concerned about accessories… every one is different.
I had to use subtitles/closed captions until I got my first HAs 10 days ago. Now I can hear the tv - several meters away- and understand it without captions. It is now at a “normal volume” according to my wife :slight_smile:
No accessories required. That’s me - maybe not you. Wait and see how you go?

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#61

Yes i understand about background noise and i should have asked why accessories are still needed in a quite background? I guess many HOH are watching tv with background noise such as aircon and perhaps other people talking nearby.

#62

Yes i will be trialling hearing aids very soon. Your low frequencies are mild and wonder if that is the reason you don’t need accessories for watching tv? The high frequencies i can understand you probably would need accessories. I guess everyone if different but i am pleased to know from your experience that you can watch tv without captions/subtitles from a few metres away! That’s awesome and hoping to get a similar result.

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#63

@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 :rofl:

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 :slight_smile:

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 :rofl: Not to mention that I can go in the kitchen and still hear them talking loud and clear :rofl:

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#64

With your hearing loss, you’re only getting about 6% of speech cues at a soft conversational level. Yes, you are probably a fantastic lip reader.

What a lovely list of new sounds you’ve described. It made me sit and listen to the soft sounds in my enviroment. I can hear the radio on in the kitchen, the chirp of birds outside of my window, the sound of traffic going by on the street outside. The world really isn’t very quiet.

You’re not wrong. Others are correct about hearing aids only being able to boost signal to noise ratio so much, but also sound degrades very quickly over distance. Within 2 meters is the optimal listening distance for hearing aids. This doesn’t mean you won’t be able to hear things that are further away, but if you can stream it directly into the hearing aids and eliminate the distance problem it will be a much clearer sound. Knowing this beforehand is valuable. Planning to make good use of remote microphone technology is valuable. Clipping it to your friend when you are fishing is a great idea.

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#65

While the average upper range of human hearing is about ~20kHz, the upper range for cats is 80 kHz (even though they hear the low frequencies almost as well as we do). I wonder what they are listening to all the time. Ghosts and bugs and fluorescent lights maybe.

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#66

If I ever manage to speak their language properly, I’ll surely ask them and forward the answer :slight_smile:

Plus, you probably wanted to say ‘upper range of teen hearing’ :rofl:

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#67

Thanks for the replies everyone which is much appreciated. I will read everyones comments and sometimes twice and three times again as it’s a lot of valuable information to absorb. Since i am a new member i feel like i have been swimming in a sea of information in the past few weeks.

Can hearing really be that complicated i asked myself while driving my car along the coast today? Why is is that an audiologist will spend 6 years training as much as a medical doctor and may not always have good fitting skills? Is it better to have an Audiometrist who has years of fitting experience and little medical knowledge? Why did a childhood friend think i am deliberately ignoring what he tells me? He says i have hearing amplifiers so what’s the problem?

Then i thought to myself why scientists haven’t figured out a way to do cochlear transplants like they do for liver, heart etc.

Nearly half a century has passed since i have worn a BTE hearing aid from 6 yrs old to 52 yrs old and not much progress has happened in that time in regards to bringing hearing loss back to normality although can understand hearing aids have progressed since analog was around.
I guess the same complexities would apply to the blind as the human eye is just as complicated as hearing loss.

Today i was on my iphone 7 to Australia Post staff without my hearing amplifiers and it was loud enough to hear on the speaker in my right ear at full volume (left ear i hear only distortion the speaker) and i got around 60% word recognition although it sounded distorted. I tried briefly with the speaker off and it sounded much clearer although the full volume was not loud enough.

Next week i will go for a half hour impression appointment for moulds to be made for the Starkey livio ITC or ITE if not powerful enough.

I will stay here and read more than i contribute…as the saying goes listen twice as much as you speak, lol

Best wishes to everyone during the pandemic. Please make see through masks mandatory so those of us HOH can read lips.

#68

@Raudrive I met a fellow at the shops that i talk with and he has a nucleus 7 cochlear implant in one ear and Resound H/A in the other ear. As i am a regular customer i noticed he seems to be able to hear and respond to staff that speak to him from a distance of 5-6 metres. There is a fair bit of background noise but not a lot. If you stand near the checkout area of a supermarket it is not as noisy as the fridge/freezer areas and where they stack crates/pallets of food. Do you get speech understanding from long distances assuming low background noise? How about long distance conversations in background noise? I find Cochlear devices interesting and seeking to know their limitations. Thanks

#69

Pretty good speech understanding at distances. A hundred feet away is not a problem if there is not a lot of background noise.

This is much more difficult. It depends on what the background noise is. We live out in the country. Certain times of the year locusts, cicada and even birds can drown out speech when trying to listen to someone. Road noise can also hinder understanding. Otherwise the CI’s are amazing but remember that when the processors come off, you are deaf.

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#70

Thanks for your reply. I am very impressed that you can understand voices as 100 feet or at least obtain some understanding! Because from what i understand is that hearing aids is only suitable around 7 feet especially for severe/profound loss.

Yes i can understand what you mean that with background noise it can be challenging. Is this because you are still adjusting to the new sounds or perhaps need more adjustments?

The fellow i spoke with has had his Nucleus 7 for 1 year and says he seems to hear well now in background noise although i cannot be sure if i heard him right when i ask although he mentioned he has a lot of adjustments ongoing. He works in a noisy supermarket and my observation was he could understand the staff from a distance. I was impressed as i could not hear a word that a staff member said and i was standing next to him.

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#71

@Deafas: I think - without being facetious - the answer is “yes”. Your admitted trust and control issues are going to further complicate matters, because you’ll be constantly tempted to second-guess and double check your audiologist.

No use saying “don’t do that”: from having read each of your posts, you’re a hard shelled, self-reliant individual that wants to understand it all.

I’m like that, too (not making comparisons - just an admission), and it has complicated and to a certain extent diminished my life for most of my 72 years. I’m old enough now, and technology has advanced enough, that I’m finally resigned to the fact that “knowing it all, 'tis beyond my ken”.

But, this winter, I crossed paths with a bright spark of a young audiologist who convinced me that he genuinely sympathized with my hearing predicament, and was able and willing to help.

He sold me, he did, so, I said to myself “what will it hurt to trust this guy just for a short while - just long enough to judge whether he passes muster”?

Well, he did, and he earned my trust, and my life has become simpler and richer as a result.

"Go, thee, and do likewise!":joy::rofl::joy:

[PS: I’m not suggesting that you truncate your research. I’m just thinking that - on this fishing expedition, at least - you need to hire yourself a good guide.]

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#72

Fingers crossed. I am lucky to have found an audiologist who follows best practices including REM. I’m learning to trust better these days with great members contributions including yourself on this forum, Dr Cliff and customer reviews. It makes life much easier. Before Google existed it was just logic and gut intuition for everything for life and business decisions. Apparently our gut has a mind of it’s own if there is such a thing!

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#73

I understand. Good on you for forcing some trust and open mindedness…

I wish you nothing less than life changing good results from your quest.

:chair::chair::chair::chair:
[… as @kevels55 would say!]

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#74

Much appreciated Jim.
I always found these lyrics by little river band amusing :musical_note: And I never will go to Singapore
The people there will cut your hair
In Singapore :musical_note:
And i have trust issues :rofl:

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#75

Me, too - and my distrustfulness has saved my skin more than once - but it’s out of place in North American civilian life.

I’m getting better at conditional trust and instant withdrawal, if warranted. YMMV, but this approach has worked pretty well for me.

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