I am replying to the posts about CI that was posted in my HA thread.
The best way is I read an audiogram of aided CI results, such as this one:
That person has in the left ear a 90 and 100db loss at 250Hz and 500Hz and NR above that. His HAs are giving only 40db gain, perhaps the reason was the same as Hear Again's who had an audiogram like his and Hear Again has said before that she didn't benefit from HAs or more gain. Regardless, a CI in his case as well as Hear Again's made sense and the odds of it being better than HAs was quite good.
His right ear is similar to mine, but he needs better HAs. I am already hearing much better than he ever did with HAs and my audiologist believes I could be hearing low frequencies at 15db and mid frequencies at 35db(and if transposition works, ill hear the highs the same as the mids) So from reading case studies like his, I can conclude that you simply can't have much residual hearing period(90db or worse) and no residual hearing in the mids and highs.
All the case studies, the patients exhabited profound HL in the CI ear and no better than severe-profound in the contralateral ear. None of them were aided to better than moderate with HAs either. All of them achieved a 10-20db improvement with CI and were able to hear high frequencies. They achieved a CI threshold in the 25db to 40db range.
To answer your other questions, that's a no. I did see pics of how CI is programmed. Theres threshold(T) and comfort(C) levels. I am still learning why some people can't get better than 50db or 60db threshold while others seemingly reach 25, 20, even 15db thresholds!
The best CI results ive ever seen was 10db. 25db is still great for CI but if your ear and CI is capable of better, why not try for 20db with a different map?
I do feel that people focus too much on the clarity of speech. It may be a big deal for hearing people(and perhaps late deafened postlinguals) but for most of us, especially the prelinguals, we relay on other methods of accessing speech such as lip reading, ASL(im 100% oral) and writing/typing. When people talk, they usually look at others in the face. I read their lips and understand almost everything they say. I combine lip reading with hearing their voice and don't understand why anyone has to struggle? 
What kind of speech comphrension test? Those are very impressive scores
You can call(I assume you now hear phones) your audiologist and ask him to email or fax a copy of your audiograms. Just tell him you lost/misplaced yours and you need another copy.
In that Law and Order the murderer was very afraid of being left behind when his friend would join the hearing.
