There are many ways hearing loss impacts your life, including how you enjoy listening to music. If you love listening to local bands play at The Georgia Theatre, hearing loss can make it challenging to hear very high or very low notes, distinguish between instruments and make out the lyrics.
Fortunately, many of today’s hearing aids have special programming abilities specifically designed to improve the music listening experience.
Amplifying Music Is Complicated
If you’ve worn hearing aids for a long time or wear an older model, you probably know there’s a lot to be desired when it comes to listening to music with outdated hearing aids.
The reason older hearing aids don’t handle music well is because they were designed to amplify speech sounds. Music has a much wider frequency and volume range than speech, so very high and very low sounds were not picked up or amplified correctly in these older models.
Additionally, the environments where you listen to music typically have a lot of background noise, like side conversations and dishes clanking together at restaurants and bars, or feedback and screaming fans at big venues.
In order to hear the music better, many people make the mistake of turning up the volume. However, this rarely helps. Because music has a wide dynamic range, all this does is cause the music to sound distorted and put your ears at risk of further damage.
Hearing Aid Music Programming
Nowadays, manufacturers know that music listening is important to many hearing aid wearers, which is why many of today’s devices can be specifically programmed for you to enjoy music.
With these devices, you can use a remote or smartphone app to change to your live music program on your hearing aid whenever you’re at a restaurant or venue with a band playing.
Next time you see your audiologist, talk to them about selecting a device and creating a program for you to enjoy live music once again.
For more information or to schedule an appointment with a hearing aid expert, call ENT of Athens today.