Hearing Aids


I have used hearing aids for 20 years, but primarily for understanding voices in movies and TV. I was considering selling my Merlin TSM speakers, but in the meantime, my wife and family were starting to complain about my hi fi levels. I put the aids in, and...WOW....what a difference in clarity and depth! Why the heck didn't I try this sooner? This was one reason why I decided to stick with the Merlins. Well, as luck would have it....I have lost one of my aids. They (Phonak) were going on 10 years old so maybe it’s time to upgrade those. However, my insurance plan will only pay $1200 towards new hearing aids. The Phenol, at least 10 years ago, were quite pricey. Any thoughts from this sage group?

troutbum

Showing 3 responses by lloydc

The problem is that, aside from Widex, the hearing aid  designers pay no attention at all to the sound of music. As others point out, they are designed only for speech recognition (i.e., focused around  the 2-3 khz region).  One of my friends, who is an engineer who helped design the Lyric, the last great analogue aid (still on the market) confirmed this.  Btw, every other ha on the market is digital.  Most of the advances have been in the software and are focused on noise rejection.

Widex claims that they have improved the latency issue enough that their bte aids are good with music.

   I had Oticon, several generations back, and they were not very good for music.  Sure, snare drums sounded about right again, but the rest of the spectrum was worse.

   Unfortunately, the best aids cost $4-6 k per pair.  Costco's are about 2 levels down from the latest and greatest.

None of the top hearing aids are domestic products, so wouldn’t they be subject to the new tariffs?