Fred Jensen wrote: >I appreciate this thread. I too am both nearly deaf, and even with >level and frequency correction, I can't understand someone speaking >behind me. My loss occurred all at once from an RPG explosion one >night, and I've been told "the rocks on your hair cells are gone" so it >affects my sense of balance as well. > >The latest hearing aids the VA gave me are Phonak multi-program DSP >gizmos, and are many light years ahead of anything else I've had. They >run at "afterburner roar" and do not work under the Heil Proset I got >from Elecraft. However I do get to walk around with $6K of fairly >effective micro-electronics stuffed into my ears thanks to very >generous American taxpayers. Thank you all, I hope I deserve it.
Chalk up another Phonak user here, again a behind-the-ear design with a remarkable adaptive DSP and user-selectable programs for special functions. My natural hearing is almost exactly 'SSB quality', good up to about 2.5kHz but then rolling off rapidly, so the hearing aids are programmed to restore the higher frequencies that I haven't been hearing lately. Unlike the usual solid ear mold, mine have open earpieces within the ear canal which allow the lower frequencies to enter and be heard naturally. The hearing aids are only adding (or emphasizing) what's missing. The one application where I don't need the hearing aids at present is when listening to SSB or CW... but that may change as my frequency rolloff is likely to continue its downward march, so this whole discussion remains very relevant to me. The problem with using on-the-ear headphones (such as computer headsets) is that behind-the-ear hearing aids cannot pick up the full headphone sound that they need to process. But over-the ear headphones that completely enclose the hearing aids are not workable either, because the headphone sound creates a constantly changing feedback environment which can upset the DSP echo cancellation and sounds terrible. The only solution then is to operate without the hearing aids, and rely on either the radio or some external EQ to apply the necessary corrections. The K3's receive EQ can do this for us, but some users will find it essential to have independently adjustable EQ for each ear. A preset L-R balance would also be useful, so that the concentric AF gain controls can be reserved for their normal use. We're all getting older, but most of us are intending to keep our K3s for a long, long time, so the numbers of people who could benefit seem likely to increase. -- 73 from Ian GM3SEK http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
