Loss

Recently while driving there was music playing. I wasn't wearing my hearing aids so I was struggling to identify the song. After a few moments of indistinct bass playing, I had to ask "what song is this?" My partner simply replied "....woooooow", meaning her shock at my inability to name the tune I already knew. My immediate response to that was "I'm deaf, LOL" 

At my hearing test earlier this year, the Doctor informed me that I had "lost" about 20 dB, which is a curious way to phrase that, as if I had a choice? Anyway I now know what that SOUNDS like, if that makes sense. While wearing the new units corrects the loss for now, I'm trying to not take it for granted. 

Learn ASL

I am not willing to teach just anyone, but I would be willing to teach someone who is willing to pay attention, and learn. Usually, my answer is "No."

Most hearing folks I feel like I'm wasting my time. "Oh, I love sign. I've always wanted to learn! I'll finger spell my name!" And, that's the extent of it.

So forgive me if I'm a little jaded. Things haven't changed much in the 50+ years I've been alive. 

Buds

I've been holding off on purchasing earbuds for the last few years simply because I don't believe they're powerful enough for MY hearing loss - I don't know how much detail I would lose wearing those. I would get the Pixel Buds A series to try them out before splurging on a Pro version, for example. 

I'd like to listen to music when doing cardio, occasionally.

Humidity

At 11:30 I have a appointment to go over my new hearing aid settings, etc. I'm going to give feedback (again) on how condensation keeps happening in the tubing.

I own a drier unit with a USB plug, but perhaps there's something else I should be doing to protect them from humidity. There's nothing I can do about the weather, as I'm trying to mitigate damage.

Phonak

Let's talk about my new hearing aids. They're another set of Phonak (I've had good results with the brand) and just a rung underneath their top dollar model.

I was curious as to how well the software has evolved on the units. So far, my impression of the sound stage is this:

1) The bass is different. It took me a moment to notice it, but it is perceptible. There seems to be more room / ambience in the bass frequencies now. The mids and highs are optimized as well.

2) The start-up sequence has changed. Now after the tones, the live mics are immediately present.

3) Haven't attempted a phone call with these yet, but I'm sure they're fine. I am hoping that compared to the last units, BT will be more stable and I'll have less disconnects during phone calls. Holy fuck, that's annoying.

4) For all the talk I was hearing about "Rechargeable!", I'm still on zinc air cells, LMAO. Turns out enclosed battery models STILL are not powerful enough for MY hearing loss. The battery would drain within a few hours. 

This is why I insist these things are more powerful than consumer "ear buds". The Apple Air Pods are step in the right direction, but they're not as powerful, plain and simple.

Captions

There is a disturbing trend I've noticed, especially with YouTube videos, and their declining caption quality. For the last several years it has been getting worse. It has to be auto-generated, because lately the same 'error' keeps popping up, seemingly at the start of a sound stream.

I will see the words "heat" repeated three times [heat heat heat], then the software will suddenly pick up mid-sentence (usually) what was actually being said. It has made the experience worse, especially while dealing with homonyms. Experienced readers will be able to pick out and disregard these errors, however live broadcasts have their own issues, such as garbage characters and missing entire sentences. 

Right now, it's an awful experience. It's a wonder anybody can spell English, because you can't learn it from watching television captions.

Subtitles are a different thing in case you were wondering, that's not what I'm talking about here. Bring back the classic caption interface - humans. 

Batteries

You guys know about this trick about replaceable hearing aid batteries, right? If you don't have a device for testing, you can just bounce the battery on a table-top. If it bounces, the battery is depleted. If it lands "flat", it's still good. 

Blueman

Last night I made the wonderful discovery that Linux handles Bluetooth streaming to HAs, way better than Microsoft ever did.

 The setup I have is quite modest by modern standards, which is why I suppose Microsoft decided not to support it with an upgrade to Windows 11 from 10. Just fine by me — 11 is garbage in my opinion. Mint likes it, however. Mint has handled everything I've thrown at it, hardware wise. The hilarious part about all of this - the entire Bluetooth stack is enabled by a USB key. That's it — the motherboard has no built-in support.

 When I attempted to stream audio to my hearing aids under Windows 10 a couple of years back, it would sputter, staccato audio. Unlistenable & unusable. I'm here to inform you, early in the A.M. I tried connecting the HAs to the PC again using the Blueman-manager widget provided by the Mint developers. Activated the hardware handshake and the name of the product popped up in the list of available devices. Right click, connect and PAH! It WORKS. I now have access to higher fidelity audio on my PC than I did previously. 

 Thanks again, Linux.