As someone whos never worn hearing aids, I found that they definitely took some getting used to. Hearing aids extend much deeper into the ear canal than a standard earbud, which makes them difficult to put in, more difficult to take out, and mildly uncomfortable all the time. After a few hours of sustained use, I found that my ears would begin to itch, necessitating a break from wearing them, at least for a time.
With the Signia Active Pro hearing aids in, and this might sound obvious, everything is louder. Thats both a good thing and a bad thing. Yes, the TV is louder. Yes, my wifes voice is louder. But so is my voice. So is the rustling of the bag of chips Im eating, and so is my crunching. The scratch of a pencil on a piece of paper can sound deafening, and every little noise echoes. I eventually started to feel paranoid, like someone was always behind meonly to realize that the sound I was hearing was the echo of my creaking desk chair. There is also always some level of background hiss, sometimes high, sometimes quite low. I presume that if youre super deaf you probably dont really notice it; maybe in a few years Ill be at that point.
After some initial testing, I went back to Signia for a Zoom-session tweak, boosting frequencies that would make TV audio clearer, reduce the volume of my own voice, and mitigate hiss. The changes helped, but I soon got the impression that we were reaching a point of diminishing returns, and that things were just about as good as they were going to get.
Turns out though, thats pretty good. The everything is louder approach worked well enough in the end, provided I wasnt moving around a lot or trying to eat while listening. And the more I wore the units, the more comfortable they got, though I still havent reached the point where I feel like I could wear them all day. Even after weeks of testing, I really only felt like wearing them when I knew in advance I was going to need them.
Your audiologist can tune your hearing aids and set you up with preset modes for different situations.
Photograph: Signia
The Active Pro hearing aids connect to your phone over Bluetooth and can double as streaming audio monitors in a pinch, but I cant recommend them for this purpose. While they turn down the volume of the outside world a bit while youre listening to music or watching a movie, they dont block it out like a pair of noise-canceling earbuds can. What youre left with is a strange combination of the entertainment program youre enjoying and everything else. While wearing the Active Pros at the gym, it was like having an ambient Bon Jovi soundtrack overlaid on top of the Netflix movie I was watching, and it made me long for my usual earbuds. Plus, theres like no bass at all.read more
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