Radka73, yes in the US we can get implanted at 70db loss if your speech perception score is less than 40 (not sure), mine was less than 30!!
My normal hearing was very balanced as it was both sides, with implant I only use the implant, no hearing aid in my other ear per my audi recommendation to accelerate the results, at first when I got activated I would feel that my brain have been cut in half since I was only hearing from one side, slowly my brain got used to it, but still the hearing is not balanced.
Now for the hearing part:
Human voices were not same at the beginning it took a while for me to get used to them, they are better in quality now but they are not like how I remember them when I was normal hearing, kind of more robotic, it does not matter really as your brain gets used to anything with time
Other sound are better in quality compared to voices, I do hear like what I used to be, well sometimes I feel I hear more, LOL, it depend if I'm relaxed or tense, for example I hear my cat licking/cleaning his coat/paw in the next room, I'm not sure if I heard this when I was normal hearing or may be I did but my brain scanned it out, I did not have same cat, lol, this cat is different
Music: heavy metal, Piano are very similar as when I was normal hearing, but guitar is awful not sure why, may be I need special mapping, I'm not complaining.
Normal hearing comes natural, both sides, flowing in ...., CI hearing is just to let you go through life and get you going, it will never feel same, what I have noticed it that whatever I used to understand or hear over the phone with my hearing aids just before my CI is the things that I hear now with CI, if there is a new word or something I had a difficulty before I still feel same and I'm trying to train my brain to take it and learn it, it seems that the cortex of our brain is the one that does the hearing not the inner ear (cochlea) at least in my case, it seems that the longer you have the CI the better that you can start to acquire more sounds and perceptions, so some people may need 2 years, others 3 years, if this is the case with anyone, just hang in there you will get to it.
The background noise bothered me a lot when I got activated, I could not imagine that I would ever go through it, I'm amazed now 3.5 month post activation how my brain took all the noise in and I no longer feel that things are noisy, this may be (IMO) the most important step that anyone needs to pass first to get the sounds coming, these sounds are not noise for normal hearing person, they are normal everyday sounds that they scanned them out and allowed the speech the flow through it, I hope you understood what I'm talking about, I do admit that I pushed myself hard to accept these sounds/noise/background noise as is and move on, may be this is paying off for me.
I know that no matter how long I will have the CI on it will never acts like my previous normal hearing, I'm glad where I'm now, I'm doing way better that the 2 hearing aids together at the max of their ability, this is enough for me, anything else will be an extra gift from the God.