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Trevor Trevor is offline
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Default [CM] Headphones - Hearing aids

On 20/04/2017 11:49 AM, Dan Espen wrote:
The Real Bev writes:
FWIW, the $2K ones aren't necessarily good either.

Some are even more. Mine were.


You can actually pay well over $5K each. They are better of course, but
a complete bloody rip off! Much of the cost goes to the Audiologists
retirement fund.


My mom had hers adjusted repeatedly, but they never got it right.
she wanted was to be able to understand the women on TV, but the
adjustments to improve higher voices also heightened annoying
higher-frequency sounds. That was in 2005, maybe the tech is better
now. Equalizers have been around for quite a while, though.


Hearing aids don't just pump up the volume on frequencies you can't
hear. I'm not an expert, but I do know it takes time to adjust to
hearing aids, so I assume there is frequency shifting going on. More
than that, the hearing aid "knows" what kind of sound situation you
are in. Mine reports things like:

listening to music
driving
crowded room
TV

So, they are pretty far from an equalizer.


Actually they are just an amplifier, active equaliser and compressor
with various stored custom settings like the ones you mention.
What really ****es me off is that it is so simple now to have Bluetooth
control from your mobile phone over all parameters of a hearing aid.
Sadly there are no aids available that do that simply because the
Audiologists want to keep their huge profits from fitting and adjusting
the aids. And some of the ones that do have control over volume and mode
settings via Bluetooth only work with iPhones because they are too slack
to write the apps for Android.



I don't think the fact that they're made from a mold of the person's
ear canal is important.


If they are in ear types it sure is, Everybody's ear canal is different
and they often won't fit or will be very uncomfortable if they do.


I asked my ENT guy about using hers if I ever
needed them, and he said Fine, just have them adjusted for you. Not
much hope, but it won't cost $2K/ear to try!


One of the harder parts about wearing them is the discomfort after
wearing them for hours. If they sell models with generic shape
give them a try. What do you have to loose?

Hearing aids are much cheaper if you get one with the battery behind
the ear and a little wire and plug.


You can in fact buy *proper* aids from companies like Resound and
Siemens brand new on ebay for less than $200. Not their top of the line
models of course. Sadly the prices seem to increase exponentially for
minor improvements.