Hear The Music

Analog compression before the A/D and digital expansion afterwards: The ducking-under-the-bridge metaphor discussed in part 1 of this blog series is apropos for this blog entry.  For those who may not remember the first blog entry in this series, either go to that blog entry or go here.  I know ReSound uses this approach, and other hearing aid manufacturers may as

The -6 dB/octave microphone for music: This post is the latest in a series about the ways that the hearing aid industry has responded to improve the quality of music for hard-of-hearing people.  And like the other methods, this one has the desirable side effect of improving the quality of the hard-of-hearing person’s own voice. The previous entries in this series

Live Music Plus from Bernafon and the Dream/Unique circuits from Widex: As discussed in part 1 of this blog series, there is a “front end” problem with digital hearing aids that limits their usefulness with the higher sound level inputs that are characteristic of music.  In part 2, some clinical strategies were discussed to improve a hearing aid for music-

Last week, in the first of a seven-part series, the problems associated with listening to and playing music with many modern digital hearing aids were discussed.  This week’s post discusses some clinical strategies that can improve a hearing aid’s usability with music.  It is a common clinical complaint that a person loves their hearing aids for speech (especially in quiet),

This is the first of a seven-part blog series about music and hearing aids.  Part 1 of this series defines the problem.  This is not a new topic and has been covered at least a dozen times over the last several years in this blog.  Part 2 in this series describes some clinical strategies that can be used while the

This may sound like the title of a science fiction novel or a movie with Bruce Willis (or was that the “Fifth Element”?), but this is all about that one last piece of the puzzle to optimize a hearing aid for music.  The last several years have seen a remarkable improvement in a hearing aid’s ability to handle the higher

Most of our training regarding hearing aids for hard-of-hearing people is based on the characteristics of speech.  This makes sense because most of our clients are primarily concerned with hearing speech in quiet, and in noise.  But what about those people who need amplification to help them play music, or clients who just want to be able to listen to music

From time to time, we would like to glean some additional information about a hearing aid or a consumer product such as an earphone for an MP3 player that is not on the specification sheet.  Usually we just call up an engineer-friend in the back office and that’s the end of it.  Or perhaps a special test needs to be

In part 1 and part 2  of this series of blog posts, we described the acoustics that explain why audiometric asymmetries are found in some musicians (and rarely found in industrial workers).  In the last blog, the physics of wavelength phenomena were discussed, and now we turn our attention to the exciting world of reverberation. Reverberation is one of those phenomena

Part 1 in of this series of blog posts gave an overview of why musicians may have different degrees of hearing loss in their right and left ears.  Typically, hearing loss is thought to be equal in both ears, or symmetrical, unless there is a reason for a difference.  Clinically the reasons may be a growth or schwanoma on the VIIIth