Intro
This guide is to help those hard of hearing that are looking for cheap backup hearing aids, television listening assistance, or inexpensive primary hearing aid alternatives.
Just getting started folks...so please be patient. Please join the forum (its quick and easy) and ask questions or share your experiences.
Work in Progress
I have tested many of these and still have most of those Ive tested....and will be giving my thoughts about their relative merits as well as features.
I am basically totally deaf in one ear....and have severe to profound hearing loss in my other ear. I use one hearing aid in that ear. I have been prescribed a Hi Power BTE unit, however I found that I like a more powerful unit at reduced volume, as this helps reduce distortion inherent in amplifiers driven to full power. The Hi Power Phonak that was my first ill informed hearing aid purchase, was kept at full volume but seemed a little low in the volume department.
Note: I recommend that you buy a unit that is more powerful than your hearing loss rating. For several reasons. First you can set the volume lower and this saves battery power, but more importantly, as a general rule, these lose power rather rapidly...much moreso than high quality expensive hearing aids. Rarely lasting more than a day or 2 of continuous use for me at full power. And lastly, I have found that these units are not as powerful as their more expensive brothers as far as their stated specifications go....so its good to give yourself a margin of error.
A Note About Hearing Aids..
Just wanted to give a quick overview of hearing aids. Basically they consist of 3 things, a microphone to pick up the sound, and a small speaker within the unit that pipes the sound into your ear, while isolating the speaker from the microphone to avoid feedback loops, and an amplifier to boost the microphone signal and drive the speaker. This is all done in a minaturized fashion to be portable and relatively unobtrusive. There can also be equalization circuits to taylor the frequency spectrum, which has several potential benefits, including, eliminating feedback whistling, matching your hearing loss curve, helping to understand human voice communications while reducing "backround" noise.
This guide is to help those hard of hearing that are looking for cheap backup hearing aids, television listening assistance, or inexpensive primary hearing aid alternatives.
Just getting started folks...so please be patient. Please join the forum (its quick and easy) and ask questions or share your experiences.
Work in Progress
I have tested many of these and still have most of those Ive tested....and will be giving my thoughts about their relative merits as well as features.
I am basically totally deaf in one ear....and have severe to profound hearing loss in my other ear. I use one hearing aid in that ear. I have been prescribed a Hi Power BTE unit, however I found that I like a more powerful unit at reduced volume, as this helps reduce distortion inherent in amplifiers driven to full power. The Hi Power Phonak that was my first ill informed hearing aid purchase, was kept at full volume but seemed a little low in the volume department.
Note: I recommend that you buy a unit that is more powerful than your hearing loss rating. For several reasons. First you can set the volume lower and this saves battery power, but more importantly, as a general rule, these lose power rather rapidly...much moreso than high quality expensive hearing aids. Rarely lasting more than a day or 2 of continuous use for me at full power. And lastly, I have found that these units are not as powerful as their more expensive brothers as far as their stated specifications go....so its good to give yourself a margin of error.
A Note About Hearing Aids..
Just wanted to give a quick overview of hearing aids. Basically they consist of 3 things, a microphone to pick up the sound, and a small speaker within the unit that pipes the sound into your ear, while isolating the speaker from the microphone to avoid feedback loops, and an amplifier to boost the microphone signal and drive the speaker. This is all done in a minaturized fashion to be portable and relatively unobtrusive. There can also be equalization circuits to taylor the frequency spectrum, which has several potential benefits, including, eliminating feedback whistling, matching your hearing loss curve, helping to understand human voice communications while reducing "backround" noise.
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