Hard of Hearing Audiophile.


This is for my hard of hearing audio peers. I lost a lot of hearing from exposure to big guns in the military. Wasn't bad until my fifties then caught up with me and pretty much killed the hobby. With the virus quarantine, I set out to build a little system that would serve me. I was motivated by enjoying Spotify through my JBL 200 Life bluetooth buds. 
I went through four sets of speakers, six integrated amps and a set of headphones in my quest. I have Widex hearing aids and they do have a less than perfect Music setting. Kind of harsh and peaked in the upper midrange but not totally bad for live performances and listening in the car with road noise. 
For my audio system, I quickly realized that I had to listen through these hearing aids to get decent sound so my goal was to find something that was neutral to easy going and not peaky or harsh. 
I went through several sets of speakers. Got a good deal on some PSB XB bookshelf's but they lacked the body and bottom end I wanted. Klipsch M600 were too forward and brash. After reading some reviews, I settled on ELAC Debut 62 speakers. These are great $600 speakers. I later added two eight inch Outlaw M8 subwoofers and they really added to the sound quality and the PSB monitors were very nice with the subs. I kept both the PSB XBs and the Elacs.  I settled on Audience Ohno interconnects. They got a good review in Absolute Sound and are excellent interconnects. I'm using 3130 Mogami OFC speaker cables nicely terminated to look professional. Conductor size came out to about 9AWG. (two 12 gauge on each leg) The sub cables are some Belden 8412 with Canare F10 RCAs Terminated by me. Good sub cable but sucks as an interconnect. I cant speak highly enough of adding the Outlaw M8 subwoofers. It made a huge difference in the system. 
Sitting on a wooden shelf, I slipped an 18"x18" Ceramic tiles under subs. Seemed to tighten up the bass a fraction. 
I had a OPPO 93 DVD player and it is my CD source. 
Amps are where I had trouble. Luckily, I discovered the Yamaha S801 integrated, and it's calm honest influence makes the entire system sound really good to me. One of Steve Guttenberg's favorites along with the PSB XB speakers.
I passed on the Cambridge 100 receiver for being dead sounding. Denon PMA800 was nice but no sub out. Outlaw receiver had a characteristic sound to me and music seemed not to escape the front of the speakers. I ordered an IOTA  integrated from England and couldn't get it to work for me sonically.  The Vincent 500 had a nice midrange but lacking in bass control and fitness in the details. Parasound 200 integrated and great bass and the remote was the absolute best I've ever seen, treble, bass and balance being adjustable from your listening position and you can see the bar easily from, in my case eight feet away. Too harsh and forward for me. 
I found a used set of HiFi Man headphones for $130 on Ebay and they join the mix. 
This setup is in my garage/work shop. I got some foam sound material from Amazon and glued it to the wall behind the system. My speaker stands are a very sturdy work counter. I have limitations. The speakers can be set out from the wall one foot max. 
Thats been my adventure. If you have hearing problems, just experiment and look for the neutral sounding equipment that other may think are not exciting enough. For me it works. I don't know if any other hearing aid has a music setting or not.  I am super happy with my enjoyable system now. I even got a stamp of approval from an audiophile friend with good hearing. 
My thanks to Crutchfield for their generous patience with my returns and ditto for Audio Advisor. I expected to be red tagged as a return abuser but it never happened. 
Remember that my hearing is damaged and your mileage may vary. Objets in the mirror are closer than they appear.

fredcdobbs
Hi Brian, I'm not an expert on subs. I just have a placement situation where I have to ue bookshelf speaker so I got a couple Outlaw 8 in h subs to add fullness to the sound. I cant say I'm impressed with the quality  of the outcome but it is nice to have the bottom filled in. 
Outlaw and Emotiva have 8 in hers at about $300. I heard great thing about the Emotiva sub. You might want to try one. 
I too am a long time audiophile with hearing loss dropping off sharply 30-40db at 3k and above. After some years of fighting it, I got hearing aides from an audiologist and am now on a 2nd pair of the latest gen Widex. They are helpful for conversation and watching TV. I paid top dollar for the model with a Music mode which I agree, as stated at the beginning of the thread, are "less than perfect". For serious HiFi this mode sounds too artificial. The Widex also has a PureSound mode that blends a high amount of direct sound with the Hi frequency boost which I prefer for music..they say this Mode works due to the processing speed of the new chip set. However, much of the time I just take off the hearing aides when listening to my audio system.  
Lately, I have been experimenting with DSP in my Roon Nucleus. I find it actually is quite helpful as long as I activate only a small correction to compensate for the measured hearing loss.  +5db at 3K and above is surprisingly effective in bringing some life to the music. You cannot expect to add full 30db compensation.  
I just contributed to this on indigo, figured it was worth a shot. I won’t wear them 24/7 but hope that they will help when I’m listening to music and watching tv. They’re also, hopefully double as ear buds for streaming music....

https://olive-pro-2-in-1-hearing-aids.kckb.st/mark-lewis

thoughts?

Many thanks for this post and sharing your experience, @fredcdobbs. I'm an audiophile like most other folks here, but currently plagued by a serious right-ear hearing degradation. I have an appointment with an ENT doctor in a couple of weeks and pray to God he can do something about it or give me advice on how to restore normal stereo hearing again. Should it be my fate that this partial hearing loss is more or less permanent (I'm 67.5 y/o), then I'm sure I will come back to this very informative thread again and again. Thanks again for your initiative to explore this topic.

This is a good thread and timely to me too.  I just added components to address my hearing (hi-freq) loss.  Some ask, why not get hearing aids? First, as noted above, the brain adjusts and I thought I had fine hearing. Still do!  Second, if I know what is missing,  why not adjust all of that marvelous gear instead of asking something that's miniature enough to fit in your ear to do it.  Bass?  OK, your system might not be "correct" to others but for many, that's a moot concern.   

I just posted a few days ago here on AG about using EQ to adjust per audiogram results.  As my losses are inequal by ear, I need to have L and R ch.  I opted for quality Schiit EQs and installed one in each channel of my pre-amp's  processor loop.  A customized EQ profile for each side has returned subtleties I suspected were fading but now back.  Waaaay cheaper than chasing speakers when what I have is better than fine.   However we choose to get along on our issues,  enjoy.