Why my new hearing aids make me cry

This ‘state of the ark’ hearing aid from 100 years ago weighed in at over 3 pounds

There’s an interesting TED driven debate here examining the emotional effect of music. It’s powerful stuff but unfortunately when you have lost more than half your natural hearing it’s quite difficult to relate to some of the comment and sentiment.

As my hearing has continued to decline in recent years I have lost more and more music. Pieces of classical music that I enjoyed 5, 10, even 15 years ago have increasingly lost their attraction. They become unrecognisable as more and more layers of the music drop away and don’t sound anything like you remember them.

There reaches a point where pumping the sound into your ears at higher and higher volume removes all the subtleness of the music and the type of basic digital hearing aid provided by the NHS does not provide the quality of sound to compensate, making even the heaviest music sound harsh and uncomfortable.

For me, the net result is my musical tastes have retreated to mainly punk and heavy rock that I enjoyed in my youth where quality and subtlety of sound makes very little difference to the end result.

This week I took delivery of a set of new hearing technology the price of which equates to a sparkling new 500cc motorbike – hmmm…. The aids themselves are so small and light they hardly tip the scales at a miniscule 2 grammes each. This is at least 4 times lighter than my old aids and when you wear these things 16 hours a day, every gramme makes a difference. In terms of quality difference I’d say the sound produced by these high-tech little units is at least a factor of 10 better than standard NHS issue.

What then, set the tears rolling down my cheeks? Thinking how much 4 grammes of equipment can cost? Thinking how else that money could be spent?

Err no … It was the very first piece of music I listened to through them – Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3.

This is the piece of music made more famous through featuring centrally in the movie Shine about the life of Australian pianist David Helfgott and his battle with mental illness.

My wife and I loved the soundtrack to the movie and played it endlessly when she was pregnant with our eldest daughter back in the mid 90s.

As my hearing has declined since then, the ‘Rach 3’ has become a difficult piece of music for me to listen to as large chunks of the layered high register sound have become scratchy and then disappeared altogether to the extent that it sounded more and more like the sort of off-key plonking sound comedian Les Dawson was famous for making in his shows. Also, with the natural variation in depth and strength of sound throughout the piece it is one that is spoilt further by turning the volume up.

So, the first evening home after receiving the aids I settled down with a glass of red wine, found the Helfgott recording of the ‘Rach 3’ I have on my phone, connected via Bluetooth and settled back on the sofa to listen. Within minutes I had tears streaming down my face as I rediscovered a piece of music I thought I’d lost forever.

These little beauties weigh just 2 grammes but are packed full of cutting edge tech.

This is the first time I’ve ever been able to listen to music through hearing aids and enjoy the experience, which says a hell of a lot for the sound processing technology in these tiny things. The aids help recapture a purity of sound I never thought I’d hear again and this in turn brings the music and all it subtle layers back to life.

Needless to say I am taking any opportunity I can right now to refresh my memory of beautiful music. Hopefully the technology will keep pace with the continuing loss of hearing function that is pretty much a given with this hereditary disorder but I’m afraid that as I get older, the loss is accelerating and the aids are already at the limit of their capability.

However things progress, I feel extremely lucky to be facing this challenge in the 21st century and not 100 years ago. My genealogy research has shown many of my ancestors faced the same issue going back at least 200 years and when I look at the hearing technology that was available during my Grandfather’s life – and indeed for much of my Father’s life – the advances that have been made over the last 10 years are particularly astonishing.

It’s at times like this I remember how tough things must have been for people like my Grandfather. After spending his young adult life from the age of 18 to 25 in the army and fighting throughout the First World War, he came back to the UK already experiencing hearing loss – which he mistakenly attributed to catching malaria. It’s clear that those many years fighting in the trenches and on other frontlines across Europe took a great toll on him mentally and there was no such thing as Post Traumatic Stress counselling in those days. Those who survived the horrors of war returned to a country heading for the Great Depression where work became increasingly difficult to come by and I’m sure even harder for those with disabilities. I also remember tales of how my Grandfather would throw his big box hearing aid across the room in sheer frustration and have to push his ear right to the speakers of old radio sets in order to get any sound when important announcements were made during the Second World War and he needed to know how to protect his family from German bombing campaigns in and around Southampton.

My parents were devastated when they first heard I was losing my hearing and I’m sure I will be too should it happen to my kids. However, when my eldest daughter realised that I was streaming music straight from phone into devices that are barely visible in my ears I’m sure I detected a look that said ‘cool’ 😉 With the rate the technology is changing I’m pretty confident that even if my kids do experience ‘the deafness’ it will have nowhere near the impact it has had on previous generations.

10 thoughts on “Why my new hearing aids make me cry”

iheartsubtitles says:

March 14, 2013 at 1:19 pm

Loved reading this 🙂 You don’t appreciate it until it is gone (although in my case I never had it in the first place but it doesn’t mean I am not a music lover, far from it. I just have a different experience to others. As you may guess from my user name I am passionate about providing access to music via subtitles when it comes to lyrics.

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Dan Schwartz, Editor, The Hearing Blog says:

March 22, 2013 at 2:42 pm

Are those Widex Clear or Dream hearing aids?

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JamesH says:

March 22, 2013 at 3:43 pm

Thanks for your comment iheartsubtitles – Subtitles on music and video have been invaluable to me over the years and while these new aids are making it possible to hear the TV and also lyrics clearly for the first time in a decade I remain an avid supporter of subtitling across all media.

Thank you for your question Dan. The aids I’m describing are Widex Clear ones. They were the ones deemed most suitable to my hearing loss by the consultant. I’m hoping the further advances that seem to be offered by the Dream range will benefit me in a few years if and where needed.

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Dan Schwartz, Editor, The Hearing Blog says:

March 22, 2013 at 4:08 pm

Yes, I have a pair of Widex Clear 440 Fusion HA’s as well; but I loathe the M-Dex streamer. Among other things, when you have it stream stereo A2DP audio, it doesn’t even bother to mix it into mono: It just transmits the left channel!

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Dan Schwartz, Editor, The Hearing Blog says:

March 22, 2013 at 4:43 pm

From Clear C4FSBR – the good and the bad:

M-DEX
After the glowing review of my hearing aids and my audiologist, it is unfortunate that I have to be so negative about the other component in question. The M-DEX is a piece of shit — I am a software engineer and architect, and I have never seen such poor interface quality or assumptions about the listener.

First, let’s start with the good things:

FreeFocus — being able to tell the hearing aids in what direction to focus on. This is very useful.
Bluetooth pairing with iPad — when I pair it with my iPad to watch a film, the quality is remarkable as I have noted earlier.
Direct audio input – if I run a cord from my device to the M-DEX, it works well.
Changing programs — this is moderately useful, though I am able to change it directly on my hearing aids.

However, these are the only positive things I can say about the M-DEX.

When a Bluetooth device drops a connection, such as my iPhone or iPad doing so when not actively playing sounds, it switches to the Master program, and loudly announces it. So the cycle happens like this: The program on the iPhone or iPad plays, the bluetooth connection is brought up, a beep emanates from my hearing aids. When it stops, it changes back to the Master program. Every time this happens, this announcement is made. Repeatedly.
Further compounding this issue is that the ‘room off’ which mutes my hearing aids microphones turns off, and unmutes every time the bluetooth connection drops. If I am listening to a movie, and I exit out of the film to check on something, I get the loud announcement, ‘Master program’, and a blast of environmental noise. I then have to re-mute.
Further compounding the unacceptable state of affairs, it does not work well as a headset or headphones. The Widex engineers obviously did no testing or quality assurance outside of mobile phones. It does not work at all with my Mac laptop or my Mac desktop — when I attempt to play sounds through it, the M-DEX believes it to be a phone call for the duration of the sound effect and then disconnect. This causes the computer to no longer play sound effects through the Bluetooth connection, as it is disconnected. Most of the time, it does not even work — the computer tells me that there was a Bluetooth error.
The M-DEX barely works with the iPad and iPhone outside the context of a phone call — as I have mentioned before, it works as a hands-free profile, and a headphone profile. But it does not work as a headset with a microphone. Skype on my iPad and iPhone is a no-go due to this — I briefly get a connection and then it drops.
The microphone quality on the M-DEX is poor — I would have imagined that Widex with its state of the art research into microphone and signal quality, would be able to put some of this technology into the M-DEX. This is a $350 device that is surpassed by a $10 piece of electronics.
Effectively, the only way I can do phone calls with the M-DEX is as a handsfree headset for phone calls. Which is unfortunate, as my mobile phone quality is far inferior to what I can get over VoIP which is important to me as a Deaf person. I need every bit of call quality I can get, and this device cripples me.
The user-interface is extremely poor. I am a software engineer, and I get a little confused as to how to get to certain functionality. How is a normal non-geek supposed to use this device?
Also rage-inducing is the fact that this device only pairs with one bluetooth device at a time. If I have it paired with my iPad and want to use it with my iPhone, I have to go through the whole pairing process. Logitech with its cheap headsets is able to support multiple bluetooth pairings!

It is obvious that the people who worked on the M-DEX have no understanding of people with hearing loss and their actual needs. This is perhaps due to being an entirely different product and project than the hearing aids themselves which are wonderful.

The following naive assumptions were made:

That other devices would maintain a Bluetooth connection throughout the life of the session. This is only true for mobile calls. In every other context, Bluetooth connections are dropped, to conserve battery.
That the user would want the program to actively change when the Bluetooth connection drops. Again, this is only true for mobile calls. If an user is using this device for other purposes, the user does not want to hear the loud announcement that the program has changed.
That the user would only want to use Bluetooth for phones. This shows a shocking lack of creativity, vision and initiative. Bluetooth is much more versatile than that, and they should have expected that an user would want to use this device with their computer or to watch films on a mobile device with.
That the user would not care about his own voice quality with the shoddy microphone — sometimes, those of us that have hearing loss need every bit of clarity that can be transmitted to the other party, due to accents or inflections. Did they actually test the microphone as a deaf person?
That they do not need to put thought or effort into the user interface of the device — the paths to some of the functionality are simplified to the point of being un-simple to use. Any good human interface person would have spotted these issues.

It is extremely unfortunate that with all the careful engineering and thought that Widex put into the hearing aid instruments, to see them fumble so severely with the M-DEX. The whole experience is basically like getting a flawless one-hundred yard pass for the touchdown, and then suddenly fumbling and going back thirty yards.

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JamesH says:

March 22, 2013 at 4:45 pm

The Bluetooth connectivity certainly has room for improvement but it’s all a big step up from what I have been use to.

The way I understand it, Widex has invested in its own streaming technology for things like the TV-Dex and I certainly can’t fault that at all.

I’m assuming the M-Dex is using older Bluetooth technology than version 4.0 and it will be interesting to see if this makes a difference to future connectivity and audio quality.

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JamesH says:

March 22, 2013 at 5:01 pm

Wow – Great blog Dan 🙂

Such a wealth of technical insight into this stuff.

I shall have a good read over the weekend and make sure I’m fully up to speed for my next chat with the hearing aid consultant.

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Michael Gronner says:

May 16, 2013 at 8:10 am

James – I’m so pleased you have managed to regain so much of your hearing and can, once again, enjoy the mental transportation that only music can bring 🙂

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JamesH says:

May 19, 2013 at 1:23 pm

Hey Michael – haven’t heard from you in years (excuse the pun) but many thanks for your good wishes 🙂 I was with my 80 year old dad yesterday who has recently had a cochlear implant and we were both enjoying classical tracks on Spotify! Digital technology is really starting to deliver for deaf people now after years of falling way below expectations.

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