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Comment by dschuetz | Hacker News Reader

It's very interesting to read that you actually need to wear your hearing aids all the time. Because, I have the exact same condition with almost exactly the same loss curve (except at 8kHz where it's ~10dB above yours), but I only need to wear my aids in conferences or lectures (school was particularly hard). I refused to wear them and still do, because they wear me out in 1-2 hours.

Now, I have more severe problems, because of all this teleconferencing going on. Not a single smartphone I know supports what you are doing on the PC. Are there any?

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I was told that the more you wear them the more your brain adjusts, normally. Eventually you might be more tired without them.

My experience is quite different: if I don't wear them I am in control when I get tired. I get tired when I need to focus too much on lipreading and actually following the conversation. If there is nothing worth listening to I don't get tired.

I'm used/adapted to go without them, so basically forcing myself to "re-adjust" my brain by wearing them all the time would make my hearing actually far worse than it feels. It's really weird, each doctor who examined my hearing was amazed how well I actually hear without any aids with my condition. So, I was good with wearing aids only when I really needed them, but with teleconferencing it doesn't work anymore and would be worse if I was used to wearing aids.

> It's really weird, each doctor who examined my hearing was amazed how well I actually hear without any aids with my condition.

The brain is amazing - I realized how much I rely on visual cues for hearing when I very faintly "heard" a GIF of someone mouthing the words f* you!

Another thing is the ambiguity that comes with not really hearing high pitched sounds - many words with consonants become very hard to distinguish. "Cat - hat - sat" are similar visually and if you only hear "at - at - at", your brain is still able to tell which one is the correct by context. This is terrible when learning a new language though.

I still managed to learn another two languages, it's possible.

Not sure if this is a solution for you, since you describe neural processing fatigue. The Apple AirPods Pro have the ability to modify sound output based on an audiogram. The audiogram can be generated by other certified apps, that have been calibrated, on the regular AirPods for example. It is then stored in the Apple Health app. It is pretty amazing, wearing the AirPods in this mode is almost as good as hearing aids. But I am not sure if it can address your neural fatigue, for which you might want to get a second opinion.

Have you got a link for one of the 'certified apps'? I couldn't find anything online but I think my grandad could use something like this

These apps are found in the 'Health App' under 'Audiogram'. The app I used is called Mimi Hearing Test. Free, and calibrated for regular Airpods. There are two more apps listed for audiograms, Streaks and SonicCloud Personalized Sound.

Once there's an audiogram captured into the Health app, go to Settings > Accessibility > Audio/Visual > Headphone Accomodations > Transparency Mode.

Some of these are not immediately obvious as links. He can then modify the amplification and 'brightness' of the sound.

I'd urge you have him get real hearing aids though. They are pricey, but so much better long term. There are newer ones that can connect to IOS devices and stream sound.

I have almost the same audiogram as well (hearing loss since birth, 32 years ago). I got hearing aids two months ago. Best decision I've made in my life! Now I can hear birds and I don't get tired when speaking with people.

Maybe you need to lower the gain? That will make it easier to wear them full-time. Now my brain have adjusted to the new sound and tbh I don't think I can live without hearing aids now.

I have Oticon Ruby with open domes.

I've got my first good pair with open domes when I was preparing for university. They are still good, and I let my hearing aids be programmed so that the lowest gain setting was the most comfortable, with two directional microphone configurations for different circumstances. But still, the extra noise coming with the additional gain is wearing me out. Perhaps it's some another condition I'm not aware of. I am quite sensitive to noise despite being half deaf with ~50% loss.

Because of our hearing loss we haven't trained our brains to filter out noise the same way people with normal hearing have since birth. So it might be possible to train the brain, but the only way to do that is to feed more sound to the brain.

I'm in a similar situation left ear is better than normal for my age (46M), but my right ear has profound loss (ie: nothing, falls to 80 dB) above 2kHz. Since it's profound amplifying hearing aids won't do a damn thing (apart from possibly damaging the hearing for the good part).

I've thought about looking at if there are frequency shifting hearing aids or even just earpieces to shift some of those higher frequencies into my hearing range of the right ear.

I haven't spent too much digging deeper into it - since I'm completely functional at normal levels, however whispering by anyone and low volume female voices on my right side are completely lost. I typically do that "speak to my good ear" contortion. Or just sit in the corner of the table or sit to the right in other conversations.

You might have similar sound sensitivities in your ears, but your brain also needs to process the information coming in, maybe you differ in this regard, and an amplification may help some people.

My ears are fine, and I still sometimes dont understand what people are talking about in some situations.

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