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Recommendations for the best headphones with equalization after severe acoustic injury

I recently experienced an Acute and severe hearing loss between 1-4khz after a bike tire exploded in my face. My wonderful system is now rendered unpleasant (Apogee Divas with DAX refurbished, Velodyne active sub, D'Agostino stereo biamps, ARC SP20 pre, Rossini DAC/player with separate clock, Llyod Walker air bearing turntable...). I need to accept the loss and switch to the best headphones with equalization capability so I can listen without hearing aide distortion. Some have had this horrible experience and I wish to learn from your experience. How did you compensate for the hearing loss, and what are your best recommendations for equipment, and why? Cost is of little concern because music has been my saving grace for 59 years! Thanks to all in advance!

classicalpiano

Showing 2 responses by lloydc

lloydc's avatar
lloydc
734 posts
 

I find headphones to be very isolating, and don’t like them at all.  If you want music listening yo be a social event, hearing aids is the only way to go.  they might help in the car too.

btw, the Lyric is very expensive, but they are still analogue!

 

lloydc's avatar
lloydc
734 posts
 

your hearing loss is in the range where speech differentiation occurs, and mist of the midrange and low treble, so if you don’t have a pair yet, you will.  The best ones cost around $6k per pair, last time I checked. 

My hearing aids have 4 eq curves available.  Some of the problems with hearing aids - which are not designed with any attention paid to audio quality! - derive from the severe compression they all employ.  So I switch to an eq curve with no compression, which helps.
 

it’s still somewhat low-quality digital, but it’s the only way you’d be able to hear your own very fine system, much less your friends’, with something like normal hearing.
 

 

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