How powerful are your hearing aids/CIs

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HOH2000

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With your HAs/CIs, what CAN you hear and also what you CAN'T hear? Just curious.

I have a HA for my left ear and no amplification for my profoundly deaf right ear (used to have a CI but hated it and no longer wear it anymore).

I can hear people's voices, babies' cries as long as they're in the same room as me, the TV at a volume 12 or louder, music but not lyrics, ambulances/fire trucks/cop cars sirens about five or ten feet away, screams (sometimes in the next room over), the pencil sharpener only in silence (without people talking and all), the vacuum, and fire alarms.

I can't hear whispers, water running, cries from another room, alarms, oven timers, car horns, walking, rain, dogs barking and growling from a certain distance, I can't discriminate the sounds of instruments (if you give me a recording of a guitar or a piano and ask me what instrument is being played I wouldn't know) and high frequency words (s, th, z, e, an) and low frequency (m, o) words, and bells. Oh, and birds singing. And sometimes the door knocking...

What about you guys? :D
 
I hear just about everything with my CI's. I can't think of anything I don't hear. When I had my HA's I couldn't hear anything in upper frequencies, understanding kids' voices was impossible, I couldn't hear smoke detectors go off, timer on the stove, phones ring, etc., etc.
 
HOH2000 said:
I can't hear whispers, water running, cries from another room, alarms, oven timers, car horns, walking, rain, dogs barking and growling from a certain distance, I can't discriminate the sounds of instruments (if you give me a recording of a guitar or a piano and ask me what instrument is being played I wouldn't know) and high frequency words (s, th, z, e, an) and low frequency (m, o) words, and bells. Oh, and birds singing. And sometimes the door knocking...

What about you guys? :D
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I CAN hear all of the above with my CI. There is no comparison of a CI to a hearing aid. It is easier to compare it to normal hearing. There isn't much that I cannot hear.

Are you sure you didn't properly rehab with your CI by consistently wearing the processor during all waking hours and persistently getting it programmed?
 
The CI can be programmed to hear at just about any volume after one had adapted to it. However the ability of one to tolerate that loudness is another story altogether. Also a more important question is how much CLARITY of the sound do you have.
 
BleedingPurist said:
Are you sure you didn't properly rehab with your CI by consistently wearing the processor during all waking hours and persistently getting it programmed?
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I was implanted at 8 years old. I did "train" myself, I had it programmed, etc. Because I was implanted at a later age, and before then, I wore a hearing aid, so I was used to the sound of that. Also I have a hearing aid for my left ear, and with the hearing aid and CI together, the sounds weren't so good. At 14, six years later, I finally convinced my parents, speech therapist, audiologist, and hearing specialist to quit wearing my CI. I'm a lot happier now and not as miserable.

I know that the CI isn't like a hearing aid. But it does depend on the deaf person. Like I have a friend who has two CIs and he only hears about maybe half of what I hear with my HA, and he had had them for over a decade (he was implanted at 4). Also I have two severely hard of hearing friends with CIs, and they can hear better than I can with my HA...
 
soutthpaw said:
The CI can be programmed to hear at just about any volume after one had adapted to it. However the ability of one to tolerate that loudness is another story altogether. Also a more important question is how much CLARITY of the sound do you have.
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Perfect clarity....yes, hearing and understanding are two different things but I can tell you which type of bird is signing, which instruments are playing in an orchestra or band concert, which direction a sound is coming from, etc.
 
I can hear most of what you mentioned that you cant hear with my CI BUT I dont have the clarity like HOH-ME does.
 
shel90 said:
I can hear most of what you mentioned that you cant hear with my CI BUT I dont have the clarity like HOH-ME does.
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Differences in technology....as much as Southpaw is trying to justify his choice of CI, there is a difference, that has been vetted out by independent engineers and just simple common sense. Obviously the ultimate goal of a CI is to get speech and yes, all 3 companies can give you that, but when you are working with a limited number of electrodes, there is just only so much sound that can be produced. Yes, people can hear music, but can you hear the harmonics in that music that give you the rich sound, locating sound (for bilateral users) is a safety issue, can you do that? When sitting in a room with 50 people talking, can you understand what anyone is saying? How about going to movies where you can't read lips, can you do that without subtitles, etc. No, not everyone's ears are going to allow you to get to these points, but when the technology in your head prevents you from getting to this point, that is the issue.
 
HOH-ME said:
Differences in technology....as much as Southpaw is trying to justify his choice of CI, there is a difference, that has been vetted out by independent engineers and just simple common sense. Obviously the ultimate goal of a CI is to get speech and yes, all 3 companies can give you that, but when you are working with a limited number of electrodes, there is just only so much sound that can be produced. Yes, people can hear music, but can you hear the harmonics in that music that give you the rich sound, locating sound (for bilateral users) is a safety issue, can you do that? When sitting in a room with 50 people talking, can you understand what anyone is saying? How about going to movies where you can't read lips, can you do that without subtitles, etc. No, not everyone's ears are going to allow you to get to these points, but when the technology in your head prevents you from getting to this point, that is the issue.
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I wish you would stop attacking me and sating things about my posts that are not true. No where did I try to justify any CI at all. (Show me where I did
I was pointing out 2 facts to answer the OP's question. First that CI is not limited in how much volume it can produce from a practical standpoint because it's not limited to depending on the hair cells in the cochlear or middle ear to produce the electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. A CI produces its on electrical stimulation directly to the nerve. As such larger real and theoretical DB gains can be obtained via mapping. My second comment about clarity is that you will often have a decrease in clarity over a certain volume. Research shows this. Also I have experienced that when I could still use a hearing aids, the clarity was better than CI.
So I was just illustrating that volume is only half of the equation and the OP should consider Clarity of sound as an equally important factor. If I could switch back to hearing aids I would do it. But I got too a point they were ineffective for me. If I had to choose, I would give up CI in favor of ASL in a heartbeat. Fortunately I don't have to make that choice.
So please refrain from speaking for me. I am able to do that just fine myself.

If anyone is trying to justify their CI choice, you should look in a mirror. This what not a thread about CI vs CI technology
 
soutthpaw said:
I wish you would stop attacking me and sating things about my posts that are not true. No where did I try to justify any CI at all. (Show me where I did
I was pointing out 2 facts to answer the OP's question. First that CI is not limited in how much volume it can produce from a practical standpoint because it's not limited to depending on the hair cells in the cochlear or middle ear to produce the electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. A CI produces its on electrical stimulation directly to the nerve. As such larger real and theoretical DB gains can be obtained via mapping. My second comment about clarity is that you will often have a decrease in clarity over a certain volume. Research shows this. Also I have experienced that when I could still use a hearing aids, the clarity was better than CI.
So I was just illustrating that volume is only half of the equation and the OP should consider Clarity of sound as an equally important factor. If I could switch back to hearing aids I would do it. But I got too a point they were ineffective for me. If I had to choose, I would give up CI in favor of ASL in a heartbeat. Fortunately I don't have to make that choice.
So please refrain from speaking for me. I am able to do that just fine myself.

If anyone is trying to justify their CI choice, you should look in a mirror. This what not a thread about CI vs CI technology
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You are the one that keeps saying that the technology between the brands is all the same and it doesn't make a difference which brand you use. I am saying you are wrong. Ci's are not about volume, of course if you turn anything up too loud the sounds are going to distort, even with 100% normal hearing, if you turn up the speakers on your Ipod, the sound distorts. It's all about programming and the ability for your implant to create the sounds you need to produce full, rich hearing. Your brand just simply does not have the technology to back that up and produce the sound, mine does. Yes, this is a thread about Ci to CI technology when they are asking to compare what you hear, how can it be otherwise? I don't need to justify my choice because I am very happy with my choice, you, on the otherhand keep coming here and downplaying the technology for the other manufacturers, thus justifying your choice.....

I'm not attacking you, I'm simply pointing out that your conclusions are wrong.
 
Read the title of the thread. That's what I responded to. So post in the appropriate thread if you want to discuss brand differences. I also never claimed there was no difference between brands. Let's not detail the OP's thread.
 
HOH-ME said:
Differences in technology....as much as Southpaw is trying to justify his choice of CI, there is a difference, that has been vetted out by independent engineers and just simple common sense. Obviously the ultimate goal of a CI is to get speech and yes, all 3 companies can give you that, but when you are working with a limited number of electrodes, there is just only so much sound that can be produced. Yes, people can hear music, but can you hear the harmonics in that music that give you the rich sound, locating sound (for bilateral users) is a safety issue, can you do that? When sitting in a room with 50 people talking, can you understand what anyone is saying? How about going to movies where you can't read lips, can you do that without subtitles, etc. No, not everyone's ears are going to allow you to get to these points, but when the technology in your head prevents you from getting to this point, that is the issue.
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I never had that expectation to understand speech without lipreading. I just wanted sound access so lipreading wont be a nightmare at my job. It has met my expectations so I am all good.
 
Yes, I wasn't creating a thread about CI vs. CI technology. I do understand that clarity is equally important. I should've mentioned that in my first post. I'll say that my clarity with my HA is about 50 or 60 percent. Without probably 10 percent at most. I definitely can't tell which sound comes from which direction. What my thread is about what sounds you can hear with a HA or CI. While they're both very different technology, they're both amplification, and they give us hearing (though it does depend on the user, of course). I'm not trying to get in an argument, but can we please keep this on a positive note? Thank you. :)
 
HOH2000: CI is NOT any amplification, it's direct electric stimulation of the hearing nerve.

And with my CI I can hear pretty everything, I just don't understand everything :)
 
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