What REALLY are hearing aids?

ive and very small and very expensive.

fier. Think of it as an amplifier with an equalizer. In general as we age (or in my case spend some time in a 5" gun magazine) out hearing deteriora tes. I was diagnosed with a very sharp notch at 4kHz. It wasn't possible at the time to correct for that with a hearing aid I was told. I was able t o push up the complete band from 2kHz to 6kHz with an equalizer and it help ed very much. While the notch was about 40dB down I pushed the complete ba nd up about 10-15 dB. Now my hearing drops off at 1.5kHz. Down 20db at 4kH z and another 20dB at 8kHz.

tion inside your ear. I think for many people, who want to hear at a fair price, a unit that fits in a shirt pocket would be fine. The usual design takes input from your hearing test and programs the amplifier response base d on that prescription. Nothing that the user coulldn't do themselves with a couple of pots.

guess $20-$50 might do it.

e

Hmmm... a unit in the pocket with a standard blue tooth ear piece would be very easy and cheap... but not really needed. The bluetooth pieces are not so invisible as most hearing aids and the type that fit behind the ear are very easy to hold all the circuitry you need. The whole hearing aid funct ionality fits in one chip including the ADC and DAC. So for $5 you get all the hearing aid specific electronics including the voltage regulator. Add the bluetooth transceiver and you are in business.

Rick C.

It is a *lot* more than that.

You are lucky that is all.

My father had one of those for decades, because BTE aids were insufficient.

Simply having one in your pocket isn't as simple as you imagine. For a start there will be an awful lot of very loud rustling noises.

False, pure and simple.

Your ignorant opinions could result in people being injured.

See my other posts for a few pointers to the necessary and inescapable complexities of this subject.

Thanks for your input Tom. I'll look over your posts. I'll let you know how my 'sound amplification device' works out.

Here's why the costs aren't "unbelievable", and why they are just a little more than you think...

I haven't had a hearing assessment for >3 years and my aids are >3 years old, so the NHS has offered me more.

Taking moulds for both ears required 0.5 hours in a dedicated room with specialised equipment. It included a preliminary hearing assessment to ensure the moulds would be appropriate and that the appropriate type of aid would be available.

When the moulds have been made, the next appointment will take 1.5 hours. It will include - a detailed hearing test, - setting up the aids with several profiles so that I can use them in different circumstances, e.g. in a room, with winds, music, noise reduction - calibrating the operation of the aid in my specific ear. That's effectively adding a filter to cancel out my canal's time domain response

I will probably want to tweak the settings after I've tried them for a bit; that would be another

0.5 hours.

The costs of 2-3 hours consultations add up and are, of course, on top of the cost of the aid itself.

My teen daughter used to complain about one of our TVs making the high pitched noise. I just put on my headphones and connected them to my HP 651B. I was surprised that with the max 3v RMS out, I could only hear to

4kHz with one ear and 4.3kHz with the other. Years ago I had a hearing graph made at Sams, I haven't found it to compare, but It's time to have it rechecked.

I went to watch Greg Gutfeld on stage in Tampa a week ago. The fellow next to me got out his smart phone and made some adjustments to his hearing aids. Not sure what adjustment was made, but I thought it was pretty cool. I'm happy to say even with my high freq loss, I could hear him just fine. The acoustics were right in the auditorium.

As long as we are talking about sound, this just popped up. "Some sounds might possess a tiny but measurable amount of negative gravitational mass" Seem to be a lot of might's in the article, but Phonons if measured, would fall up.

When I was in college, one of my coworkers said that the Navy had measured his hearing out to 30kHz. I didn't believe him, so as we were working in the lab (we were repair/calibration techs) I played around with a speaker and an HP 200CD, sweeping it from 25-35kHz. When he figured out what I was doing he just about killed me. At one time, I could walk down the street and tell you which houses had their TVs turned on (houses 50' away).

In an unscientific test over the weekend via a test sweep generated with Audacity thru a pair of good-quality 'phones she claims to be able to hear 15.5, almost to 16kHz. Wow! I wonder if she can hear bats.

She's a country gal lived out in the boonies most of her life wonder if that helped. I've surely had more potentially damaging noise exposure over the years going to rock concerts and living in the city than she has

Or it could simply be due to the genetics of presbycusis affecting different people at different rates.

I can relate to that. My doctor told me I need to use a nebulizer and wrote the prescription. The pharmacy said it would be around $200, or I could rent one for around $40 per month and if I still needed it after 6 months, the rental price would have paid for it, and I get to keep it. They suggested asking my doctor if I need it long term, or just briefly. Fortunately before I even asked my doctor, a friend told me he got one on ebay really cheap. He was right.

I bought a NEW one on ebay for about $48 (shipped). Same brand the pharmacy had. There were even cheaper ones on ebay, but they were generic brands with poor ratings.

All they are, are small air compressors, if you are not familiar with them. The mouthpieces need to be replaced yearly, but they are only $7. My doctor said I got a good deal.....

I wonder if those early "brick" ones had tubes in them???? Until the mid 1950's transistors were not available for consumer electronics. If they were tubes, i'd hate to pay for the batteries...

OK, what is DSP?

Early electronic hearing aids used miniature tubes with wire bases soldered right in.

NT

I believe the very early ones did have valves, but they were one of the early "consumer" uses of transistors.

It is complex, but this

will help you start to understand it.

yes in the 50s, for obvious reasons. Transistors were very pricey and hearing aids were a prime app for them. Why people didn't want to drag around a pair of lead acid accumulators behind them I can't imagine.

NT

They were actually subminiature tubes, with no bases and direct wires to solder into the circuit. A good example is the DL 67, google for it.

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-TV

Aside from the heater current, tubes in general are much more about voltage, so the circuits using them *can* be made surprisingly economic in terms of battery drain.

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