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  3. 190107-184792

Hearing aid question

Decades ago I at least thought of myself as a bit of a "Golden Ear"; my Quad ELS/Pyramid supertweeter combo and associated electronics were a source of pride and joy. (All gone over the years, alas.) In recent years I have learned that I have essentially lost the top three octaves of my auditory frequency response, whether through natural aging or some other process I'm not sure; I also have a fair bit of tinnitus at this stage, but that has proved less of an issue in being able to enjoy music. So now I've gone from enjoying the transparent reproduction of great music to struggling to resolve the sibilants in my wife's speech. (In the overall scheme of things, the latter is arguably more important, at least in maintaining peace at home.) I still very much enjoy listening to music, but the high-end losses have somewhat diminished the joy of it.

I am of course starting to think about taking the leap into hearing aids as a genuine quality-of-life enhancement. I was wondering if anyone out there has dealt with similar issues, and perhaps formed opinions about which of the many available solutions has worked best as both a general lifestyle aid and a boost to their enjoyment of live and recorded music. Many thanks in advance.

ericrhenry5488

Showing 2 responses by rikkipuu

rikkipuu's avatar
rikkipuu
284 posts
 

I have mild hearing loss and tried the top of the line Phonak behind the ear receiver in canal hearing aids and did not like the tin can sound when listening to music.  I settled for Resound but still don't listen to music with them.  Streaming Bluetooth, my $100 ear buds are much better for music than the $6800 hearing aids!  I found the open ear plugs to be more natural as they let in sound in addition to what the speaker provides.

It is not surprising to me that these fly weight devices can't come close to producing natural sound as they are primarily designed to improve speech recognition and while they do that fairly well the sound is to me artificial and un-analog, but in a noisy restaurant I am fine with that as I just want to follow the conversation.  How sophisticated can the DAC inside these tiny things be.  They are using a digital amplifier- no class A here. So it is no surprise that music sounds unnatural.  I will agree that there is an emphasis on high frequencies and when I use the hearing aids I hear a lot more high frequency than without, but it is digititis on steroids.

I suppose that as my hearing gets worse I may need to use hearing aids to make up for the loss.  

I would like to hear from anyone that is using the ASI 3DME as to the tone of the sound.

rikkipuu's avatar
rikkipuu
284 posts
 

@signaforce 

Thanks you saved me some time and money.  I did not like the feel or the sound of the IEM's vs open ear RIC's. 

I suspect there will never be a market for audiophile hearing aids and if a market ever develops it will take many years for the market to evolve and produce a decent product like it did with DAC's.

And, as I have a floor-standing ribbon tweeter speaker and a tube front end and a tube DAC it seems wrong to take that glorious sound and convert it to non-discrete solid state and run it thru I 1-2 mm speaker.

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