I have worn hearing aids since childhood in the '90s. Moderate sloping to profound loss. Been through all the tech since the equalized analog era.
For a while now, like the last 15 to 20 years, since hearing aids went DSP, I had not been much impressed by each new generation. At the risk of sounding like a bit of an advertisement, that changed this year.
I have the new Oticon Intent. RIC style aid. They have some of the best spatial awareness I've experienced. They're capable of quite a lot of directionality - accelerometer and three microphones in each. I had to have the intensity of the directionality turned down a bit. It was startling me when I turned my head and I wasn't hearing things behind me enough. But that's at the expense of less signal due to more environmental noise.
The machine-learning based noise reduction is an improvement over the previous generations, too.
They have a music mode. It drops all the speech remapping and noise reduction and just makes it feel loud. It's some sort of perceptual algorithm: in my case as I turn up the volume it gets more and more treble, because only at the loudest volumes would I hear those high frequencies. All while being power limited at 95 dB SPL so I know I'm not blowing my ears. I used to wear over-the-ear headphones for that but I now prefer the hearing aids. It's nice to not worry about if it's too loud.
For a while now, like the last 15 to 20 years, since hearing aids went DSP, I had not been much impressed by each new generation. At the risk of sounding like a bit of an advertisement, that changed this year.
I have the new Oticon Intent. RIC style aid. They have some of the best spatial awareness I've experienced. They're capable of quite a lot of directionality - accelerometer and three microphones in each. I had to have the intensity of the directionality turned down a bit. It was startling me when I turned my head and I wasn't hearing things behind me enough. But that's at the expense of less signal due to more environmental noise.
The machine-learning based noise reduction is an improvement over the previous generations, too.
They have a music mode. It drops all the speech remapping and noise reduction and just makes it feel loud. It's some sort of perceptual algorithm: in my case as I turn up the volume it gets more and more treble, because only at the loudest volumes would I hear those high frequencies. All while being power limited at 95 dB SPL so I know I'm not blowing my ears. I used to wear over-the-ear headphones for that but I now prefer the hearing aids. It's nice to not worry about if it's too loud.