Hearing Aids and Music

[Coker]

Well, I"ve reached the age where I need hearing aids to adequately understand others" speaking. I bought a pair and have been wearing them for three days with some success. However, I am getting some significant phases distortion when playing or listening to music. Fortunately, I can mute the hearing aids, which takes care of the problem. Has anyone had any success with hearing aids with music?

[mate stubb]

My mom had a set of hearing aids which had blue tooth in them. She could wear a necklace receiver that we could pipe music or books on CD into. I would expect that to sound significantly better than over the air.

[Docbop]

An old high school buddy wear hearing aids and I don't see how he does he they are cranked up all the time. He sits in a car and in other places and I can hear them feeding back. He gigs in a Country/Rock band not crazy loud but not sure how he handles it. I heard there are hearing aids designed for musicians that can be switched to some type of playing mode for gigging. I'd talk to your ear doctor about tuning your hearing aids for music listening and playing.

[wineandkeyz]

I"ve worn Phonak hearing aids for about 7 years. They allow for up to four different frequency curves plus mute. I have 2 music settings, basically the same curve but one has more attenuation for louder environments. They work pretty well for listening to the stereo or in the car, but I can"t wear them onstage or at concerts; there"s just too much distortion. As a result, I don"t wear them at all on gig days because there"s such a huge change when I take them out â it"s like a heavy blanket being thrown over the world.

[The Real MC]

I've been wearing hearing aids since age three - they discovered my hearing impairment likely due to birth defect. Thankfully they have never degraded. Twenty five years ago I switched to digital hearing aids by ReSound and they sound awesome with music. They are designed to emulate the behavior of the natural ear and can be custom tailored to your hearing loss. Ten years ago I started thinking about replacing them so my audiologist had me try out some different brands. One brand had phase artifacts, one had poor compression - none of them were as good as the ReSound. Because I could describe their faults in engineering terms, my audiologist valued my feedback. The ReSound has two customized settings but I only used one for years and I never have to adjust the volume on them.

[Aidan]

Another vote for Resound. I only wear the one (I have single-sided loss due to radiotherapy about 15 years ago) but I find it helpful in some settings, and always switch to the 'music' setting for performing or listening to music. However, I don't wear the aid all the time, as I find wearing it also accentuates my tinnitus 'hiss'. For most concert performances, I wear in ears anyway.

[ksoper]

I'm in a 6 year old pair of Widex aids. I chose these over ReSound, Oticon and Starkey as they reproduce a piano in a very natural way to me. I have no problems with phasing, but when the batteries are a day away from failing I get some odd artifacts. I auditioned a new model of Widex a couple of months ago. Couldn't justify the slight benefits vs the cost.

 

Lukather is hawking Widex these days, for what it's worth.

[Jerry Huber]

Two years ago, at age 65, I decided to get hearing aids while still on my employers health care plan before I retired. I knew a few people, including one musician whom I've worked with for years, were happy with the Oticons. I didn't try any other brands. My problem was understanding voices, particularly female voices, while other people were speaking, It was especially bad in crowded bars on gigs, even worse when there was music playing in the background on breaks. They have helped most of the time. I found that when I wear headphones playing electronic keyboards, there is a unnatural phasing of acoustic piano sounds. It's not terrible, just slightly annoying, but now I take the Oticons out. I have two settings; one for normal situations and another for gigs with noise reduction on and EQ'd to bring out voices. It seems my tinnitus hiss isn't as noticeable when I wear the hearing aids.

[delete]

Just wanted to chime in as this thread is of great interest. Soon to be 65, I'm fortunate to still hold my own in the studio as a retired sound engineer, but recognize the days are likely numbered that I can make a "sound judgment" (sorry, couldn't resist). That said, it dawned on me that many professionals are using in-ear monitoring. That followed by the day of inserting a hearing aid and you have pretty much lived a life with something stuck in your ears....but I digress.

My hope is their are some serious aids out there, albeit expensive, that will allow folks like us to continue to love the music, love the sound, and create while still remaining in tune.

[The Real MC]

The single biggest problem with most hearing aids is segregating background noise from speech of nearby people in large gatherings and noisy places like bars and parties. That was something my ReSound excelled at while it was a struggle with other brands.