What are your favorite apps for hearing loss or tools you use?

Posted by futuretech @futuretech, Oct 2, 2020

Hi all, technology is moving so fast right now, and I have never felt like my audiologist has been on the cutting edge. Personally, I have had hearing loss for thirty years, I know there is not one solution or one specific hearing aid that solves everything. I'd love to learn about the small things people have found that have made a difference. For me zoom captions have helped a lot lately, but masks are hard when in public. Any tips are appreciated!

Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Hearing Loss Support Group.

Julie: Its an app that costs $12.99/month after two week free trial. It is supposed to help you hear sounds/voices better through headphones. That is all I know about it at this point...I think you have convinced me to at least try the two weeks! Will keep you updated.

REPLY
@julieo4

Thank you for sharing this. My tinnitus sounded like crickets. I had it for years, but after getting a cochlear implant it went away except for now and then. I enjoyed the sounds of summer, so managed to put those tinnitus critters in the background most of the time. Work environment is the cause for many people due to noise that was not filtered and ears that were not protected. Keep us posted about the AudioCardio device. Two weeks is a very short time to try it. What is the cost of the device?

Jump to this post

Reply to Julie: Thanks for mentioning that a CI may cancel out tinnitus! I've had constant humming in my useless right ear for decades, and may become a candidate for a CI if I lose much more hearing in my sorta good ear, so this is very good to know. Actually, I learned years ago to, for the most part, just ignore the 24/7 hum. I only realize it's there when someone writes about tinnitus.

REPLY
@joyces

Reply to Scott K: Like auditory hallucinations, sometimes tinnitus "plays back" some sound you've heard...that day or decades ago. It might be possible that you're "hearing" your old office environment replayed. If I'm exposed to more sound than usual (pretty quiet here), I often "hear" some of that sound during the night. Perhaps it's possible that our ears never just "make up" sound, but always play back something we heard at some point in our lives. Of course, norms can't begin to understand all this!

Jump to this post

You are much more eloquent writer than me but that is exactly what I thought was going on. About 75% of my hearing loss is genetic...I have 5 other siblings and all of them suffer some degree of loss. The other 25% was industrial noise and not worrying about hearing protection until I was 40. It is interesting though that some people exposed to loud noise(shooting range for instance) never suffer the same degree of hearing loss!

REPLY
@julieo4

More info in this one. 🙂 I am in Appleton Wisconsin; founder of HLAA Fox Valley Chapter...way back in 1984. Watching the development of technology over those 37+ years has been amazing. We talked about how amazing it would be to have speech to text technology back in the Rocky Stone days. TV captioning was new then and required a rather heavy piece of equipment called a caption decoder to attach to your TV to see the few programs that were captioned then. It was a start. We can thank SHHH/HLAA for advocacy and education related to the progress of technology that benefits the hard of hearing population.

Jump to this post

Yes indeed. HLAA is my Hearing loss champion!

REPLY
@joyces

Reply to Julie: Thanks for mentioning that a CI may cancel out tinnitus! I've had constant humming in my useless right ear for decades, and may become a candidate for a CI if I lose much more hearing in my sorta good ear, so this is very good to know. Actually, I learned years ago to, for the most part, just ignore the 24/7 hum. I only realize it's there when someone writes about tinnitus.

Jump to this post

I'll chime in on my HLAA affiliation since several have brought it up but I want to also respond to @joyces since she mentioned that she might get CI in the hopes that it helps the tinnitus as it did with @julieo4. One of my chapter members developed tinnitus only after getting a CI. It is very bothersome for her and she regrets getting the CI. She probably forgets the benefit of being able to hear better. But, nothing has helped with her tinnitus. I don't think she is giving treatment options enough time to be effective, such as meditation, but I'm only guessing since she responds quickly with her results after I've brought them up.
I am president of HLAA, Michigan State Association in addition to president of the Western Wayne County Chapter.
Tony in Michigan

REPLY
@tonyinmi

I'll chime in on my HLAA affiliation since several have brought it up but I want to also respond to @joyces since she mentioned that she might get CI in the hopes that it helps the tinnitus as it did with @julieo4. One of my chapter members developed tinnitus only after getting a CI. It is very bothersome for her and she regrets getting the CI. She probably forgets the benefit of being able to hear better. But, nothing has helped with her tinnitus. I don't think she is giving treatment options enough time to be effective, such as meditation, but I'm only guessing since she responds quickly with her results after I've brought them up.
I am president of HLAA, Michigan State Association in addition to president of the Western Wayne County Chapter.
Tony in Michigan

Jump to this post

Wow. TY for all you do!

REPLY
@julieo4

Thank you for sharing this. My tinnitus sounded like crickets. I had it for years, but after getting a cochlear implant it went away except for now and then. I enjoyed the sounds of summer, so managed to put those tinnitus critters in the background most of the time. Work environment is the cause for many people due to noise that was not filtered and ears that were not protected. Keep us posted about the AudioCardio device. Two weeks is a very short time to try it. What is the cost of the device?

Jump to this post

I like your choice of tinnitus sound, Julie, although I know you could have done without it entirely.

REPLY
@joyces

Reply to Julie: Thanks for mentioning that a CI may cancel out tinnitus! I've had constant humming in my useless right ear for decades, and may become a candidate for a CI if I lose much more hearing in my sorta good ear, so this is very good to know. Actually, I learned years ago to, for the most part, just ignore the 24/7 hum. I only realize it's there when someone writes about tinnitus.

Jump to this post

@joyces How wonderful that you've learned to ignore your hum!

REPLY
@joyces

Reply/question to Th1: I've tried both Live Transcribe and Otter, but find that I wind up losing even more content because looking at my phone means I'm unable to "read" the person speaking, plus the phone lags behind. I'm not smart enough to process what I'm hearing while looking at my phone to see what was said a couple of moments ago. I finally gave up on speech-to-text for meetings, except for using Live Transcribe to provide a history after a multi-hour meeting is over. That, however, doesn't enable me to participate in the meeting, just to know what I failed to hear correctly, for the most part. FWIW, both apps fail miserably with technical discussions, which is undoubtedly a big part of my problem with them.

Jump to this post

I have wanted to try the speech to text apps but this is my fear. Not being able to face the person speaking.

REPLY
@tonyinmi

I'll chime in on my HLAA affiliation since several have brought it up but I want to also respond to @joyces since she mentioned that she might get CI in the hopes that it helps the tinnitus as it did with @julieo4. One of my chapter members developed tinnitus only after getting a CI. It is very bothersome for her and she regrets getting the CI. She probably forgets the benefit of being able to hear better. But, nothing has helped with her tinnitus. I don't think she is giving treatment options enough time to be effective, such as meditation, but I'm only guessing since she responds quickly with her results after I've brought them up.
I am president of HLAA, Michigan State Association in addition to president of the Western Wayne County Chapter.
Tony in Michigan

Jump to this post

Curious- I have being to conferences in Rochester, Utah and Minneapolis - I have talked to folks getting /having CI . Never heard this until I was on Twitter this past week. Is it true if the CI does not work; you cannot go back to hearing aids

REPLY
Please sign in or register to post a reply.