If you have a normal everyday hearing loss, there is a good chance the majority of your loss is in the high frequencies. This is the most common type of a hearing loss and it makes it very difficult to hear words clearly. It is typical to hear sufferers complain that people are mumbling. The most important parts of speech for clarity and understanding are high frequency sounds. Those sounds are the consonants of speech such as /s/, /k/, /th/. These sounds give words their clarity. When your high frequency hearing is impaired, these sounds don’t come through very clearly. Most of the time, hearing aids do a great job at bringing these hard-to-hear consonants back for you, so speech can be heard clearly again. However, sometimes the damage to …show more content…
Not just that, you will also hear sounds that you have not heard and would really have no chance of hearing. Sounds like birdsong and other high frequency sounds. The Challenges The hearing aid is altering the original signal and outputting it at a different frequency, this can sound odd. Some of the sounds, like /s/ for example, sound unusual at first,, I have often heard Patients say that it sounds like everyone is talking with a lisp. This is because they are hearing those consonants clearly for the first time. Many people will appreciate this feature immediately, but there will always be an adjustment period. The thing about frequency lowering is that it helps you hear sounds that you haven’t heard in a really long time. This can be quite a shock. When frequency lowering is first activated patients often do not like it, however, if a patient sticks with it for a few weeks they get used to it and it improves audibility significantly. There is no question that things sound unusual for a while, however, the benefit of hearing those high frequency sounds outweighs the fact that they don’t quite sound