Manufacturers, Please Make a Power Analog Hearing Aid!

I just read a long article about the Wydek superpower 40. It’s main caviatt was convincing the patient that this was the way to better hearsound. My reaction is “A-Hem”, who is spending the money to get better hearing? Why can’t we get these researchers to set up analog aids and work at keeping the levels safe and feedback elimated. Who is the hearing aid God that decided that we would hear sound better with a zillion filters, algorithms, compression arrangements and screwing around with frequency input to narrow the range of input. Give me straight sound, as it was meant to sound, and do your darndest to make it work. Right now, I have a couple of very nice Phonak digital Naida 9 aids. But, the audiologists are at a loss how to set them to provide best speech. Meanwhile the stupid aids decide to play notes when they feel overwhelmed. So, while I’m trying to navigate traffic with my guide dog, my hearing aids are playing sweet Chords.
Please give us back pure sound and keep the frills for your fancy research papers!
Thanks for reading.

Lolly – Have you find anything yet that finally satisfied your patients hearing from analog to digital? I am having same problems and its so hard to explain what is the difference in sounds that I do like and dont like. Even different sounds I cant tell like soft, sharp, etc. I discovered that I like the normal sound for talking in digital but like the analog for sounds like sirens where it is low or listening to the radio in the car.

Three of us in my family are profoundly hard of hearing and legally blind. Analogs are the best hearing aids with ‘volume control’. Digitals may look good on a drawing board but not in real life. Please bring back analogs!!

I don’t like the digital aids either! Tried it for 1 week, ugh! what a nightmare! Been wearing analog hearing aids for over 45 years.
I just got me some very good (2) reconditioned analog Omni (Starkey) 675 BTE on ebay.
There are several hearing aid repair shops that are bringing back the analog aids. Some will also buy your old ones for parts.
Also will be checking ebay for another pair to buy, parts for these aids will become obsolete.

just brought a used analog us80 of ebay been with digital for 20 years and analog 20 years before then,my audiology said being profound i am best with digital load of crap i now can re hear over the phone thanks to analog its taken 20 years of embarrassing moments having digital. bring back the old way bte analog please.

Hi my name is Karen Stockton (UK), I am the person that was in the article that Dan Schwartz, Hearing Blog referred to in one of the comments. I have been trying to adjust to Digitals for 17 very very long and stressful years, I have even gone to the private sector to try and get digitals set linear etc etc, done the whole lot of fiddling etc… and I have come to a final conclusion to save…. 1. my sanity and 2. my health which has suffered much from “persisting and persevering” until one morning after another bad night I said to myself that is it! I cannot continue doing this… I am nearly 47 years old, I have put my nerves and my brain through some horrible stuff I cannot keep doing this. I realised that I have to at some point “listen” to my brain (excuse the pun) and accept there is a PHYSICAL problem (not psychological!!!!!!!!!) and for whatever reason no matter how many hours an audiologist will put into setting them up its no good. DIGITAL processors cannot give what my brain needs. I will add though I am still wearing a Digital pair of hearing aids that DOES work the Phonak Aero 211 I knew the moment it was set it was right. For the life of me I cannot understand why this cannot be repeated, to me these are the closest to the analogues (but not better) I have actually had a couple repaired to give me some extra years of listening and I give thanks to the Hearing Aid Repair Service in Kent, Uk linked to Mary Hare School. Thank goodness for people like them who are working to help keep the older hearing aids going for as long as possible. But there will be a day when our hearing aids will either break down or we cant get a new hook and so forth what happens then. I have accepted the fact that I may have to live without hearing aids if nothing is done about this for us. There is a generation of people who has been forgotten. Why are we not being listened to? Just search the internet, read the comments here and attached to the Limping Chicken Article on me, you can see people all over are just struggling. I know many have just “accepted” digital as second best or are just living without them. I know for many its fantastic I accept that, but I am speaking here for those who cannot adapt, we still need a resolution and fast!

It is not about “adjusting” to the new characteristics and features of the power digital aids for those with across-the-board frequency range loss. What you are REALLY doing is settling for the degraded quality of sounds because the HA “engineers” think they know better than you or me what is best for me.

I’ll explain… Imagine that you worked at a venue where the PA system was going great for several years, and then finally, it broke, and it had to be replaced. Now, imagine that with the old system, you were able to hear everything, very clearly. What the music sounded like live or a person speaking/singing live in front of you would match what came over the old system. Now, you have a new PA system, and you’re trying it out, the latest stuff. It doesn’t sound right… The music doesn’t sound natural and warm (like in the days when we went from vacuum tubes to solid state electronics), and the voice is difficult to understand. The nuances in the vowel shifts (diphthongs), or even the distinction between the vowels a, e, i, o, u, etc. are gone. The person is difficult to understand, even when the speaker makes the effort to enunciate clearly. It doesn’t sound right. Suspecting something, you realize that the drumstick on the cowbell, the plastic striker on the wood block, hand clapping, and the wood beater on a piece of a metal sheet has exactly the same attack sound.

That is exactly what has happened with digital hearing aids. This is a fraud made up to make more money per hearing aid, and it destroys our ability to function as well as we could with analog equipment. It is common sense… I know how things are supposed to sound to me across the air, because I have stood in front of amp stacks or even music trucks in India capable of forcing me back beyond 15 feet because it’s SO LOUD (I have a loss exceeding the hearing test equipment limits in a significant portion of the frequency range), so I know that what I hear across the air is not faithfully replicated in the digital hearing aids, even with the speech enhancement and noise reduction turned off, whereas it was faithfully reproduced in the analog aids. The voice in a conversation no longer has the vowel clarity, so I have to lip-read 80% of the information coming to me.

It was NOT necessary to stop making analog hearing aids. They could have kept the analog models open for those of us with broad-spectrum profound loss and give the engineered fake sound to the hard-of-hearing who have enough hearing to make sense of the heavily-process digital signal.

I have commented here earlier on and now see that there are more comments here from people everywhere that are in the same boat as me trying to get used to Digital hearing aids is just not happening to me. I am trialling that now with very little success and seems that no one knows how to set the aids to what I am trying to tell them. I am from Australia and am wondering if any of these manufacturers are listening and reading this and whether they are going to do something about making the faithful old Analog hearing aids for all those out there that simply can’t stand the digital technology. I find this all very very very stressful. My Audiologist says she will try and see if she can find some Analog aids for me but I am definitely not convinced that she will have any luck at all.

PLEASE MANAFACTURE ANALOG AIDS FOR US COMPANIES – PHONAK

MD Hearing aid PRO

I have been without a hearing aid for nearly a year and a half. My family constantly berates me because I don’t have a hearing aid. I’ve tried digital twice…both time it was disastrous. I would get a migraine within seconds of turning on the hearing aid. The room would start spinning and I would have to reach for a waste basket for fear that I would see my lunch again.

The second try, the audiologist attempted to get the digital to “mimic” an analog but wasn’t successful. When he got it to the point where I could tolerate having it in my ear, I couldn’t hear anything worthwhile. If anyone talked, the hearing aid would click…thus rendering the entire conversation pointless because it was like someone was hitting the mute button every with every word that was being said. It lacks the constant stream of sound the analog provides. It didn’t matter if it was someone else or if it was me that was talking, this is how the conversation was from my hearing perspective with a digital hearing aid in my ear…CLICK “Hi” CLICK “you” CLICK “How” CLICK “the” CLICK “aid” CLICK “for” CLICK “now” CLICK

The most frustrating thing is that…for me and my experience at least…hearing aids are NOT covered under health insurance. I’ve had my hearing loss since birth…thus by definition, it is classified as a preexisting condition. We were told with the ACA that preexisting conditions are covered. I, and many others who were born this way, are living proof. If they can cover prosthetics for people who have had limbs removed, then they should cover hearing aids since they are, in my opinion, a prosthetic ear.

I purchased a digital hearing aid a year ago. I absolutely hated it. I suffered from severe headaches and vertigo. Sounds that I knew were completely changed or nonexistent. It was very upsetting. I took the damn thing back. Got my money. It was pointless for me to have it. I was never going to wear it. When my analog bites the dust. I’m just gonna go without. Screw it.
Anyhow, I’ve done a bit of searching, maybe I’ll purchase an analog from eBay. Or find an audiologist who uses Prairie Labs. This is the a manufacturing company that I’ve found that makes analog and digital hearing aides.

Finally, plain speaking, knowledgeable ha users who question/hate digital. I am relatively happy with the almost analog programming, feels like I have been released from a bubble and have rejoined the world. I have lost about 10 years of better hearing and I am mad. Will visit some more.