Audio Help for Hearing Impaired Part II

There are two feasibility questions that I was hoping some of you folks might help me out with regarding listening pleasure for the hearing impaired. The first involves convenience at the expense of fidelity, while the second is just the opposite.

At first I thought of placing these queries in the tech forum, but because of the high level of expertise that I’ve read here and because ideas in early planning often spring from real world experience, I thought I’d post them here before visiting the land of Ohm.

Because each question is a bit lengthy and involved I’ve broken it down into two parts.

This is Part II

My second question also revolves around a DIY project that I’ve been imagining for a long time. While I love my digital hearing aids, I realize that the driving force behind hearing aid design has long been miniaturization for sake of convenience and cosmetics with its attendant loss to fidelity. I truly miss analog. I’ve read about an AudioGoner who was working on the dc powering of tubes. What I’m envisioning (and I’m quite serious) are vacuum tube powered hearing aids. I see it with four main components (3 dual pairings and a belt pack) with interconnects. The headset, depending on feedback constraints, would consist of mini-omni microphones, quality earphones, two signal tubes and amplification circuitry with adjustable, but lockable eq sliders. The belt pack would hold the battery.

Realizing that appearing as the ultimate “tube head” might well look silly, it is a sacrifice I’d certainly take aboard for the ultimate in corrective hearing. Besides, as a fashion statement, somebody has got to go up against the “Blue-Tooth Borg”.

Thanks for your thoughts in helping out this AudioGoner (pun intended).

Mario