When I've used my hearing aids with phones, I've always had the impression that the audio quality is pretty bad. Telecoils apparently go back to 1947, and so it wouldn't surprise me if they were relatively poor quality either for efficiency or simply because it was the state-of-the-art back then (or the quality was limited by some other system - why have higher quality than a telephone can deliver?).
Yeah, they're great for telephones but there is too much ambient noise around them for them to make listening to music fun for me.
Have you ever used high quality ear buds? I'm curious how they compare to either telecoil or over-the-hearing aid headphones. I have a fairly pricey (~$150) set of etymotics that I use and they sound fantastic to me (moderate/moderate-severe hl). I also suspect they give me better ambient noise isolation than using Telecoil with my HA would.
I have tried (both cheap and high quality) ear buds and they don't really work for me. I can barely hear the music despite turning the volume of the source to full (probably because I have severe hearing loss). I haven't tried custom fit ear moulds yet, but I guess they would be just slightly better. Basically, I need the amplification that my hearing aids provide to listen to music.
Re:Listening to music with hearing aids
by skybrian on Tuesday February 26, 2013 @07:48PM
(#5289741)
A good set of headphones will likely have better bass response than a hearing aid. For low frequencies, perhaps you're actually hearing them through the vent and not the hearing aid at all? If so, no fancy wireless connection will do as well.
I'm actually stone deaf at high frequency (I cannot hear a 'sh' sound, even with hearing aids) but have some amount of hearing at low frequency. It is possible that I'm hearing partially through my ear vent with the headphones but the hearing aids definitely assist.
I am not sure whether it is due to any technological limitations in Telecoil or a $400 Telecoil would work as good as this, but I'll be sticking with my headphones for now. :)
Another alternative is to get top of the line hearing aids and pair them up with an FM transmitter (I have a Nadia and a Smartlink+ http://www.phonak.com/com/b2c/en/products/fm/transmitters.ht...). Once again, average sound quality for music but you can pair the transmitter to your phone using Bluebooth. True handsfree.