Do you wear hearing aids?

[Hugh-AR]

Just wondering if any of you wear Hearing Aids, and what your experience is with them.

I have been wearing hearing aids for a number of years now, and have had two types. The first were completely 'in the ear' and I didn't get on with those at all. The later ones I have had have a microphone that fits 'over the ear', and a tube that goes round the ear with a grommet on the end which sits in the ear. This grommet has holes all round it which allows sound to enter the ear normally. So when I had my hearing test they programmed the hearing aids to just amplify those higher frequencies I was not hearing properly. Which are the higher frequencies. The lower ones are not amplified as I hear those perfectly well.

Now my question is, should I wear my hearing aids when playing my organ or keyboard? The answer surely has to be, "Yes". If I don't wear them, I would increase the upper frequencies of the 'voices' I am using to compensate for the fact that I am not hearing them properly. That would be fine for me, but what about another person listening who has normal hearing? They would get 'double treble'! Not a pleasant experience to listen to that! Hopefully, with my aids in and functioning I would have more or less 'normal hearing', so any adjustments I make to the sounds from the keyboard would be acceptable to others.

Then what about listening with headphones? The microphones are 'over the top of the ear', so I would have to have a headset that was large enough to include those? I'll have a think about this and come back to you.

Anybody got any comments about all this?

Hugh