Question:
"As reported in the report, as a musician there are certain ambivalences with the hearing aid and the sound of the instrument. As a guitar player and builder, the unadulterated sound is important to me. What tricks are there to achieve this by adjusting the hearing aid."
Response:
Sound and perception of music is about Hearing aids very individual and varies from hearing loss to hearing loss. It can be said that the greater the hearing loss (e.g. loss of high frequencies), the less likely it is that music will sound well. On the one hand, this is due to the limited residual dynamic range, which changes the scaling of loudness. On the other hand, overtones can simply no longer be perceived after a certain hearing loss, which leads to an impure or meager sound.
The primary task of a hearing aid is to reproduce the dynamics of a normal hearing person in the limited residual dynamics of the hearing impaired person by means of compression. The main focus is on speech understanding, which is what the hearing aids are designed for with their features. Ultimately, these are mechanisms that make speech more intelligible, but have a rather negative effect on the sound quality of music.
Experience shows that it is recommended to set up one (or more) additional program for music that has the following features:
- Little to hardly any compression
- Speech-based parameters such as noise suppression or speech highlighting from
- Microphone settings to omnidirectional
- Tends to have a bit more bass and less treble for a warmer sound image
The outcomes are indeed very different from user to user. Unfortunately, it is indeed the case that for a not inconsiderable proportion of hearing aid users who play music, it remains a thoroughly unsatisfactory experience. Have a look at the HZ, maybe something could be done about it...