My daughter is only 14, but I can see that she much prefers the sound of digital aids--unless it is just because it is what she is used to hearing. She had analog from age 1 to 5 and digitals from 5 to 14. When she first got digitals, she really seemed to hear MUCH better than with analogs--but she was only 5, so that's hard to say for certain. The digitals worked great for her over the years--then last year, she began having trouble with them. At this point, one was repairable, and one was not--we had one repaired and it is supposedly under warranty for a year.
We know that it is time to buy NEW hearing aids, but we just can't afford it right now. So, for now, she uses one digital hearing aid and leaves the other ear unaided. Her OLD analog aids still work--she tried them but said that she did not like the way they sounded. I was wondering if she could wear one analog and one digital, but she said no--she will be fine with just one digital for now. To me, I would think analog is better than nothing and two are better than one--but to her, she says she prefers to just wear the one digital. It's her ears, so that's fine with me!
Still, she is more than willing to try two again when we can buy two new digital aids--guess we'll just have to wait and see. Times are tough, and that is a huge expense we just cannot handle right now. In the past, the "professionals" would have given me a hard time about not making her wear two aids--her hearing loss is about the same in both ears and the gain with digital aids also seems to be about the same. But now that she is older, I am letting her make those kinds of decisions--if it works for her, than that is fine with me. Honestly, I haven't noticed her hearing less with one than she did with two--as far as I can tell, as long as she has one, she is able to tune into sounds around her.
I guess maybe it is the difference between hearing things in mono versus stereo? When she listens to music on her Ipod, she used to take off both hearing aids and listen directly through the headphones. Now, she sometimes leaves on one hearing aid and puts one earbud in her other ear--essentially, listening to music in one ear and the world around her in the other. I even find myself doing that sometimes--just using one ear bud for music--because then I can hear when people are talking to me, if the phone rings, etc. So I guess listening in mono versus stereo really isn't such a bad thing!
But as to the digital versus analog question: my daughter COULD use analog in the other ear but doesn't seem to like the way it sounds compared to her digital aid. However, the analog aids are over 13 years old and still going strong, while the digital aids are less than 9 years old with only one still working(after being repaired). I'm not sure exactly how different the analog sounds to her, but she describes the sounds as being "squeaky" or "scratchy"--but they check out fine when listening through a stethoscope, so they are working fine--just sound different to her and she doesn't like them.
