********DISCLAIMER********
I AM NOT A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL. I HAVE NO TRAINING IN HEARING LOSS OR ANY OTHER MEDICAL FIELD. PLEASE CONSULT A DOCTOR TO SEE IF THIS APPROACH WOULD BE ACCEPTABLE TO TRY PRIOR TO ATTEMPTING THIS, AS IT MAY CAUSE ADDITIONAL DAMAGE TO YOURSELF OR YOUR PROPERTY AND IN DOING SO, VOID ANY WARRANTY OR RETURN POLICY ON ANY EQUIPMENT. THIS MAY NOT WORK AND MAY CAUSE MORE DAMAGE. THIS IS ONLY A NON-PROFESSIONAL, AMATEUR EXPERIMENT AMONG CONSENTING ADULTS. THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO DIAGNOSE, TREAT, OR CURE ANY KNOWN DISEASES AND IS NOT AN FDA APPROVED MEDICAL TEST NOR IS THIS A LICENSED CLINICAL TRIAL FROM ANY MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT. AGAIN, PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS WITHOUT CONSULTING A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL.
NO COMPANIES REFERENCED IN THIS POST HAVE ENDORSED OR SANCTIONED OR OTHERWISE GIVEN ANY FORM OF APPROVAL FOR THIS EXPERIMENT.
I AM NOT A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL. I HAVE NO TRAINING IN HEARING LOSS OR ANY OTHER MEDICAL FIELD. PLEASE CONSULT A DOCTOR TO SEE IF THIS APPROACH WOULD BE ACCEPTABLE TO TRY PRIOR TO ATTEMPTING THIS, AS IT MAY CAUSE ADDITIONAL DAMAGE TO YOURSELF OR YOUR PROPERTY AND IN DOING SO, VOID ANY WARRANTY OR RETURN POLICY ON ANY EQUIPMENT. THIS MAY NOT WORK AND MAY CAUSE MORE DAMAGE. THIS IS ONLY A NON-PROFESSIONAL, AMATEUR EXPERIMENT AMONG CONSENTING ADULTS. THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO DIAGNOSE, TREAT, OR CURE ANY KNOWN DISEASES AND IS NOT AN FDA APPROVED MEDICAL TEST NOR IS THIS A LICENSED CLINICAL TRIAL FROM ANY MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT. AGAIN, PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS WITHOUT CONSULTING A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL.
NO COMPANIES REFERENCED IN THIS POST HAVE ENDORSED OR SANCTIONED OR OTHERWISE GIVEN ANY FORM OF APPROVAL FOR THIS EXPERIMENT.
So, I am doing this in an effort to support my mother-in-law. She has a two-fold problem. She not only suffers from tinnitus, but she is also losing her hearing. She is 71 years old and is losing her ability to enjoy television and conversations with family and friends. She is currently using Sonic Radiant miniRITE 60 T R hearing aids. They seem to not be working properly. We have had her go to a local hearing specialist at a branch of Hearing Life and additionally, she has gone to an ENT and they can't seem to be able to pinpoint the issue.
The issues seems to be that she can hear the sounds that people are making with their voices, however she can't make out the words that they are saying. She is able to hear ME, to a certain degree, as I can sit about 10-12 feet away from her. I have a deep voice and can speak clear and concise and enunciate my words clearly. This happens to be an unfortunate situation for her daughter (my wife) as she was born non-hearing and had to have surgery to correct it. That caused her to talk with a lisp, which makes her mother more irate, as not only can she not hear most of what my wife says, she can't even comprehend the words. My wife has to stand face to face with her mother and scream at her to make herself understood.
When my mother-in-law first went in to get her hearing aids, unfortunately, I did not go with her and I now wish I would have. He hearing "professional" pushed $2,500 hearing aids on her and when she went back over and over again to tell them they weren't working for her, they just kept raising the volume until they finally maxed them out. All this did was made things so much worse for her. NOW, she can barely hear anything, WITH or WITHOUT the hearing aids. She is less than 20 feet from an LG SKM2Y soundbar/subwoofer combo, which pushes enough sound to make our living room shake decently and she can't understand the words that the characters are speaking in the movies. It has gotten so bad now, she thinks she is doomed to a life of deafness and books. I used my Vizio SBN2021N-H6-BR-B, connected via digital optical S/PDIF audio cable to a MEE Audio Bluetooth 5.0 transmitter. (This was done in an effort to use Bluetooth headphones so that she could have her own personal headset for volume control, so that myself and my wife could watch TV with without being drowned out by the uncomfortable loudness of the sound levels that my mother-in-law needed to be able to hear.
Now, herein lies my issue, that I THINK I have a solution for:
So, my mother-in-law wants to be able to hear TV and conversations clear and concise, without spending $4,500 on a new pair of hearing aids.
I am going to approach this from a different perspective. I am going to use the FREE software that is available from the Sonici company's website and see if I can fine tune the variable frequency range of her hearing aids and simultaneously use the Dolby Access ($19.99) app on my Windows 11 laptop to tune a pair of Skullcandy Cassette over-ear headphones ($40 via Amazon or Walmart) to see if I can find a balance harmonic balance between the headphones and the hearing aids, so that she is able to re-adjust to the sounds of human voices using just the hearing aids.
