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Easily the best and most significant sonic tweak one could ever make!

Well hearing aids of course (if you need them and many don’t realize they do). I was diagnosed with asymmetrical hearing loss in my right ear over a year ago at only age 52. Entirely in the upper frequency. (As hearing loss per my ENT is almost always symmetrical, the protocol for this unusual diagnosis is a MRI brain scan to rule out a tumor; thank God everything was normal there).

Anyway, while expensive (partially covered by Insurance in most plans in the States), the different listening to music is in absolute terms startling. The proverbial veil is wayyyyy lifted particularly on lyrics but really the whole presentation is improved from the midrange thru to the top registers.

Keep this in mind before upgrading your electronics or speakers and perhaps instead upgrade the most critical precision instrument....your ears! I share this and if it helps one member on here, well that would be really great.
aj523
aj523 OP
360 posts
 
@ericsch

Hey dude. Zero feedback or distortion. No echoing or anything like that just great hearing again. The most significant tweak/upgrade to any system if needed to live a healthy and normal life otherwise.

I wear them regularly and have gone to some bars with live music before the pandemic with no issues. For real concerts, I don’t use them although I could, but instead I wear ear plugs which kinda sucks.
zufan's avatar
zufan
557 posts
 
Thanks to @aj523  for sharing their experiences. 10 or more yrs ago I posted on this site something like 'shouldn't we all be getting our hearing tested' which also was a lively thread. I'm not using HAs now but wish I had discovered earplugs way earlier given all the bar bands I've seen back in the day. 
dadork
632 posts
 
@burtlake I know there are probably other Burt Lakes but do you happen to be from northern Michigan? Looking for other audiophiles in the area.
ericsch
751 posts
 
@aj523
Yea, I also wear earplugs at loud concerts  Thanks for the information.
jdane
183 posts
 
Interesting too is the fitting process.  They gradually (over a period of weeks) adjust them to compensate for whatever frequencies you've lost  (If they do it all at once, you can't tolerate it).   But the brain soon gets involved (as it does in all matters related to audiophilia or mis-audio):  it 'compensates for the compensation'.  You'll notice this in many ways, but the most striking feature for me was how much the hearing aids sensitized my brain to sounds I was NOT hearing before.  When I took them out, I could actually hear those frequencies (or some of them) without hearing aids.  God knows how much this affects our hearing of music:  I go to live music to learn what live music sounds like (and I'm sure my brain then translates my audio system's music into that).  I'm also sure my home audio trains me to hear details in live music I might have missed in the massive wall of sound at, say, a symphony.
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