OK... verrrrrrrrrrrrrrry interesting.
This report is based only on the very first day. I've only been hearing with the implant less than 4 hours:
Some women's voices sound fairly good, but some sound pretty scratchy. Men's voices are mostly poor. No one sounds good enough, yet, for me to understand without lipreading.
My own voice, however, is the worst of all by far! I sound like an extremely poorly digitized Darth Vader. Nothing I say sounds anything even remotely close to how I should sound. As a matter of fact, every word I say sounds like other words entirely. And sometimes when I say, for example, a two-syllable word in which the first syllable is accented, the processor makes it sound like I accented the second syllable. Argh!
Overall, everything sounds as though the processor is set to receive primarily the highs and lows, but very little of the mid-range. It makes most things sound pretty lame, missing this vital mid-range.
And finally, I am getting the awful -bing suffix appended at the end of every sound. It sounds like every sound, and every syllable, just ricocheted off a pinball machine bumper making an echo-y Ding! in response.
The audiologist's voice seemed easier to understand than my wife's. Not sure why this is. The audiologist is also a woman. They must have different pitches. Also, some people sound a lot quieter than others, and some people are almost silent. It seems that in order to hear someone well, they need to be within arm's reach.
Certain sounds are really jarring, such as dishes in the kitchen. Holy cow!
I know it's only the first day. I know this takes times. I know things will improve. Just been a really interesting first day. So far, the way I used to hear with a hearing-aid is a million times better than how I currently hear with this CI. We'll see how much better this thing gets in the coming days. My next audiology appointment is in about 10 days.
Glad to hear things are going well!