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Can't you just turn up the volume?
111–120 of 158 posts
Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?
#112Hi folks,
In order to summarize what I've read so far: This promotion article about SoundFocus is clearly not written with help of a professional from within the hearing aid industry nor from someone with clinical experience. The author shows to be good with language, probably an engineer who makes links with technical terms as if he knows what he is talking about.
I find this article very misleading and not a help for the hearing disabled or their relatives. It reminds me of a very useful course I once followed:'physiology of the ear for physicists'. It would be good if the author or developers find something similar.
I realize that my post breaths some arrogance and of course it is easy to burn something down. But yes, I know better. And yes, I could have written this article that would market SoundFocus properly (in a similar style if you like) with only useful and correct information.
Maybe I should... ?
Cheers -a professional-
Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?
#113Hi folks, In order to summarize what I've read so far: This promotion article about SoundFocus is clearly not written with help of a professional from within the hearing aid industry nor from someone with clinical experience. The author shows to be good with language, probably an engineer who makes links with technical terms as if he knows what he is talking about. I find this article very misleading and not a help f…
My bro points out I did not mention a single flaw/example. (I am busy enough as it is)
Besides things already mentioned by others, talking about dead regions, upwards spread of masking perhaps temporal scatter and tuning curves would have made it a lot more juicy.
One flaw: time and volume are NOT self explanatory. Think about recruitment and such. Another flaw: multi-band compression is not doing what is suggested by the picture of the bear where the bicycle is missing. This visual example fits much better to a person with a dead region for whom frequency compression is applied. And this is not a one-size-fits-all method. Different techniques are available for this particular phenomenon (as there is frequency shifting as well).
Anyway... let's mention a positive side. I appreciate the attempt of communicating on the topic and it was a good try to make things clearer for some. Better luck next time.
Happy bro?
Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?
#114My wife is an audiologist, and she and her colleagues found this excellent. One suggestion if I may (actually that my wife made), is that where you have the soundcloud files demonstrating MBC, you add one demonstrating what a person with hearing loss would hear, before the one with the MBC.
That way a person can judge the improvement that MBC gives to a person with hearing loss, instead of just judging the reduction of quality to that of a person with perfect hearing.
But again, excellent article!
Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?
#115This is nifty. My father has hearing loss and it's bad enough that not only does he use hearing aids, he is constantly turning them up until they feedback and start ringing. He doesn't hear the ringing, but I do, and I have some hearing damage of my own. And he wonders why his hearing aids go through batteries so fast. Their description of how hearing loss works gives me some ideas on how I can help my father manage…
"My father has hearing loss and it's bad enough that not only does he use hearing aids, he is constantly turning them up until they feedback and start ringing." This may also be a sign that the hearing aid wasn't fitted properly — or the shape of your father's ear has changed a bit since it was fitted. Poor fit makes it much more likely for this to happen (coz speaker and mike have a more open channel between 'em, an…
For a while, I had the problem that I got feedback depending on the temperature: Going out into the winter cold was enough to change the shape of the hearing aid versus my ear so that the fit was not tight enough anymore.
What I mean to say is that hearing aids are a piece of technology that it tuned (pimped?) so much that there is very little buffer.
Today, my new hearing aids detect feedback and compensate, but of course that will eliminate sounds I need to hear, as well.
Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
A bigger issue with separating the microphone and amplifier is cosmetic: hearing aids sadly have a stigma attached to them and people are more likely to wear them if they are invisible. There is a reason why hearing aids are produced in hair colors. Also, I found that the best way to get rid of feedback was to get an ear mold rather than using an "open-fit" mold. This is a clear separation between the speaker and the…
"I don't see the elderly changing but our generation just might." I'm youngish (mid 30's) and recently had my hearing aids replaced and realized I had a strong preference to stick with fairly visible behind-the-ear units rather than something more "discrete". I want them to be visible so that people I'm interacting with will be more sympathetic about repeating themselves and may make an (possibly unconscious) effort…
That's very good reasoning. If a person with visual impairment walks around with a white stick, it's obvious and people normally cater for their needs. It shouldn't be any different with hearing.
What a good point.
I have an elderly friend who has suffered complete hearing loss in one ear after an infection and the other ear can only detect very very low frequencies, and he's constantly saying "PARDON?". It must be very difficult to hear ANYTHING going on, other than the rumble of lorries and buses. I wonder if they could put a pitch-shifting circuit in his hearing aid to shift sounds up/down so that they fall within his hearing range, whilst not shifting frequencies already in that range. That would help significantly, surely?
Just thinking out loud.
Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
> hearing aids sadly have a stigma attached to them It's probably worth distinguishing between two kinds of phenomena that might be described as carrying a stigma: - Something might lead other people to mock or otherwise denigrate you for exhibiting it. Being fat is a good example here; fat people get a lot of messaging from society that they're worse people for being fat. - Something might carry no real significance…
"I suspect that hearing aids are firmly within the second category, which means getting people to wear them "openly" should be doable." You suspect wrongly. Having seen the attitudes to my father change when he wore one. Ranging from outright verbal abuse, to assumptions of stupidity & senility.
Really? Who from? That's terrible.
Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> hearing aids sadly have a stigma attached to them It's probably worth distinguishing between two kinds of phenomena that might be described as carrying a stigma: - Something might lead other people to mock or otherwise denigrate you for exhibiting it. Being fat is a good example here; fat people get a lot of messaging from society that they're worse people for being fat. - Something might carry no real significance…
"I suspect that hearing aids are firmly within the second category, which means getting people to wear them "openly" should be doable." You suspect wrongly. Having seen the attitudes to my father change when he wore one. Ranging from outright verbal abuse, to assumptions of stupidity & senility.
Maybe it's related to age? I've been wearing "behind the ears" aids since I was 7 and I never sensed any perception like that.
(I have no idea what is the correct term for "behind the ears", I hope it's understandable.)
Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?
#119I once went to a 3h long blackboard talk given by James Hudspeth [1] on the physics of hearing. It was one of the most fascinating things I've ever heard: it turns out that not only the cochlea performs a Fourier transform of the sounds we're hearing, but it can also selectively amplify some frequencies, by vibrating the very same hair that detect the sounds. Sometimes the mechanism that amplifies some sounds goes wr…
I have always wondered if that high pitched sound was real! No one else heard it, and it makes so little sense I always figured it was my hearing.
Do you hear that high-pitched sound all the time? That's tinnitus.
Or do you only hear it from dogs?
Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?
#120Interesting article. Thanks for posting, varunsrin! I've been following development of SoundFocus for awhile. I'm profoundly deaf. This is a technical term classifying the degree of hearing loss; to give you a sense of where this fits, the typical classification range is mild, moderate, severe, profound, total. Between a combination of hearing aids and lip-reading, I've done a reasonable job of integrating into a hea…
I don't think you have issues. I wonder if they sound dumb because of the difference to "normal" speech, where we typically say words in a daft manner to young children or those learning to speak? We associate them with reduced capabilities (in a sense) because they are children and are still learning. That isn't meant offensively, more that we know the child needs to learn?
But if it helps you hear, I think it's great!
That article you linked to was interesting. Thanks.