Siemens is selling its hearing aid business. It has shortlisted one strategic buyer and five private equity firms as potential buyers. The New York Times reports that the sale price could be over 2 billion euros (1.8 billion pounds).
Siemens Hearing, which competes with Switzerland’s Sonova Holding and Denmark’s William Demant Holding A/S, is projected to make pre-tax earnings of some 170 million euros in 2010.
Seen on the New York Times.
The Hearing Aid Repair Shop is part of the Mary Hare Foundation, a UK charity that provides schooling for deaf and severely hard-of hearing children.
The repair shop began operating in 2002 by repairing aids for children and young adults. Recently they’ve started fixing hearing aids for adults too and now offer a post service. Impressively, they will fix any make and model of hearing aid.
At the time of writing, you can get your hearing aid cleaned, checked and tested for £20, and you can get a repair for £78, which includes a 6 month warranty, postage and packing and a pack of batteries!
That’s really good prices and would be a great way to fix or breath some new life into your ailing or broken aid.
Visit The Hearing Aid Repair Shop or Mary Hare websites for more info.
The following is a guest post from Samantha Harvey on behalf of National Hearing Care.
In our day-to-day life, most of us are exposed to noise; from the sound of a passing train to the noise of a nearby construction site. Normally, these sounds are not loud enough to damage our hearing, however, if we are exposed to loud noises that are above 85 decibels on a regular basis, it can result in noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). Hearing loss may even occur if a person is exposed to an intensely loud noise just once, such as an explosion.
Within the ear, there are many small sensory cells, called hair cells. These hair cells work to convert the energy of sound into electrical signals, which are then sent to the brain. These hair cells are extremely sensitive and once they become damaged, they cannot be repaired.
Clearly, people who work in loud environments, such as construction workers or musicians, are at risk when it comes to NIHL. However, people who work in these types of professions are not the only ones at risk. According to a study carried out by a group of scientists from the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks, many people are damaging their ears just by listening to music on their MP3 players or iPods.
The study found that those who listen to their music players at high volume for around five hours a week were exposing themselves to more noise than is legally permitted in workplaces such as factories or construction sites. The study also found that the maximum volume on many popular devices can generate the same amount of noise as an aeroplane taking off.
The danger with this is that people are unaware of the damage they are doing to their ears, because it happens so gradually that the damage is only noticed years later when it is too late. The researchers advise listening to music devices at only about 60 percent of the maximum sound output in order to prevent NIHL.
Another way to protect your ears when listening to music on an MP3 player or iPod is to invest in a good pair of headphones. Noise cancelling headphones will prevent you from setting the volume too high when you are listening to music in a noisy environment, such as an aeroplane, bus or train.
Night clubs and concerts also present a risk to the young people who frequent them. According to research carried out by the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID), between 60 to 70 percent of all frequent clubbers or concert goers have reported some form of hearing loss.
This is unsurprising considering that nightclubs can produce sounds up to 129 decibels, which is louder than the sound produced by a pneumatic drill. Those who work in environments where sound levels exceed 85 decibels are required by law to use hearing protection.
In order to minimise these risks the RNID recommends that people take regular breaks and stand far away from speakers when clubbing or attending a concert. If you visit these types of venues on a regular basis (every weekend for example) it is recommended that you use earplugs.
Special earplugs or earmuffs should always be used when engaging in any activity where noise levels exceed 85 decibels; this can include regular activities such as mowing the lawn or using power tools. NIHL is 100 percent preventable, so it is important to be aware of the risks and take the necessary precautions.
I’ve written before about how important it is to have a great audiologist. But that’s not the whole story. You are involved too and you are just as important as the audiologist.
When you’ve been fitted with your new hearing aid for the very first time it will be set-up to match the results of your hearing test. You are in the audiologist’s office with your new aids in your ears and you are listening to lots of new sounds. If you experiencing any problems straight away like not being able to hear or your are getting some feedback, tell the audiologist and they will re-programme your aid to fix the problem.
So now your visit to the audiologist for fitting is over and you’ve started your trial period in which you decide if you want to keep the aids or not – most places will offer a one or two month trial with either a money back refund or a free swap to a different aid. It’s during this time that you are the important one, your audiologist has set the hearing aids for your hearing loss and now it’s up to you to find out what is working for you and what isn’t.
Your audiologist should have made a follow-up appointment for you so that you can report any problems and get them fixed – if they didn’t do that then book one yourself on the day of your fitting for a week’s time.
I can’t stress how important the trial period is for you, lots of people don’t like their new hearing aids because they don’t work as well as they thought they were going to. In worst cases, people will just dump their hearing aids in a draw and never use them because they’re pieces of junk. But they still have to pay for them.
The key thing is: it takes time to get used to new hearing aids. Your brain needs to adapt to the new sounds. If you’ve had an untreated hearing loss for a long time then your brain needs to re-learn how to interpret spoken words that it hasn’t heard for so long – this isn’t easy. People with a mild hearing loss should find it easier to adapt than someone with a severe one.
If you have a two month trial on your new aids then it is absolutely critical that you wear them as much as you possibly can in all of the situations that you are going to want to hear in (at home, at work, bars, sports events, etc). And just as importantly: reports everything back to the audiologist on your visits, the good things as well as the bad.
If you can wear your hearing aids enough to find all of the problem and get them fixed then you are going to be able to make a much more informed decision at the end of your trial period. And worst case: you might have a problem with them that can’t be fixed, best to discover that while you are still in the trial.
And remember, it takes time to get used to new hearing aids. Your brain will be working hard to make sense of the new sounds and it will also adapt to them over time, so you might not hear exactly the same in the first week that you are wearing them as you will in the eighth week. If you wear glasses then you’ll know that everything seems a bit blurry and weird when you first put on a new pair but that soon disappears as your brain compensates for the new visual signals it is getting and it’s the same with your ears and hearing aids.
I visited Ascent last week for a bit of re-programming and while I was there I managed to get a quick look at the new iNSTAFit hearing aid from Audiosync.
The iNSTAFit is part of the iSync family and is running on the same S Series technology from Starkey. What makes it different from the iSync is that it is not moulded to fit your ear, instead the aid is a thin straight tube and so one size fits all. It’s about as wide as a pencil and about 2cm long – it’s small. As you can see from the picture below, it’s only very slightly wider than the battery that’s in it.
You wear the iNSTAFit in the rubber case as you see it above, it has a bit of rubber that extends about 1cm from the top that you use to pull it out of your ear. The rubber shell also doubles as a way to keep the battery in place.
I don’t have the fitting range of the iNSTAFit to hand but I believe it is being sold as being suitable for up to moderate-severe hearing loss whereas the iSync can support a severe loss.
I’ve already written about how impressed I am with my iSyncs and seeing as the iNSTAFit is running the same technology I can only assume it’s good too but I haven’t actually tried one out. Gotta be worth checking out if you want an invisible hearing aid.
I’ve been wearing a pair of iSyncs for about 4 months now and I thought it was time I reviewed them. The iSyncs are the world’s first IIC (Invisible In the Canal) hearing aids.
In the interests of fairness I should let you know that I got the iSyncs for free from Ascent Hearing – this came about when I was visiting their Banbury branch in the summer to have a chat with Michael Nolan. Turned out on the day that they were looking for someone to trial the iSyncs and I was in the right place at the right time. So I started the day thinking I was going for a cup of tea with Michael and ended the day as Europe’s first IIC wearer! Ascent have done a write-up of the fitting here and, believe me, if I had had any idea my picture was going to be taken and put on the Internet I would have had a shave and a haircut before hand.
The term Invisible In the Canal (IIC) is not an idle boast. These hearing aids really are invisible, even if you look right down someone’s canal the only thing you can see is the plastic wire that is needed to pull them out. The iSyncs are fitted so that they sit in the second bend of the canal, in other words: very, very deep. I’ve been wearing hearing aids for the best part of 30 years, have had numerous fittings and mould takings and I was totally shocked about how deep the impressions for the moulds were going. So be prepared for this, it’s a little uncomfortable as you are not used to have anything that far down in the ear – it’s much further than CICs.
The same as with any new hearing aid really, it takes a bit of getting used to. I found that in the first few days of getting them I was not pushing them far enough into my ear – it takes a bit of courage to push them that little bit more so that they sit where they are supposed to. They are so deep that you think you’ve pushed them as far as you can but you haven’t.
When I was at Ascent they watched me putting them in and made sure I had pushed them far enough – if they hadn’t done that then I don’t think I would have ever pushed them deep enough.
If your iSyncs are producing feedback or feel uncomfortable then you probably haven’t pushed them far enough in.
I can only compare the iSyncs with the hearing aids that I have previously worn and they are definitely the best so far. They are very similar in terms of quality to the Starkey S Seriesthat I wore (in fact, I think they have the same internals) but they win out over those in a few ways:
Voices are crisp and less muffled than they are with my old pair of Destinys. I have the noise reduction capability turned down to a minimum because that’s the way I like it and I do not ever hear the reduction kicking in, which I have down in the past when trialling out other aids. Music sounds good and I’m able to wear headphones without any feedback.
I’ve been wearing aids for many years and I’m used to people noticing them in my ears and it doesn’t bother me that they do. Having said that, it’s kind of liberating to be wearing hearing aids that can’t be seen by anyone else – it gives me a bit extra confidence and I don’t feel like the guy with the hearing aids any more. It sort of evens the playing field a bit.
I’ve had quite a few emails from people asking me if I recommend the iSyncs. Well, all I can tell you is that they are the best hearing aids I’ve worn in terms of sound quality and ability to hear and that they are invisible to other people, which is really nice. I can’t tell you if they are better than hearing aid X because I haven’t worn hearing aid X. The iSyncs are groundbreaking in terms of their size and how deep they sit in the ear and are giving me a great hearing experience so far.
I like to watch TV with subtitles/captions on. It’s just easier, it saves me having to have the volume up too high for everyone else – particularly when the rest of my family have gone to bed, I can watch my favourite shows without waking them.
This would be great if the quality of subtitling wasn’t so hit-and-miss.
Some channels have no subtitles at all, which I can live with and doesn’t bother me that much. I just don’t ever watch that channel.
What does bother me though, and it bothers me a lot, is the channels that provide half-assed subtitles. The channels that miss out entire sentences. The channels that have text that freezes on-screen for a bit and then lags behind the audio for the rest of the show. The channels that don’t always manage to delete the text before displaying the next sentence and you end up with a mass jumble of words. The channels that have titles for some programmes but not others.
But the absolute worst thing, and I reserve some special level of bother for this, is when a programme will have perfect subtitles on one channel and then completely broken ones when it switches to a new channel. We watched series 1 of The Mentalist on Hallmark – a great series and it had perfect subtitling. Now series 2 has come to the UK and it’s on Five – the subtitles suck, they lag behind and the miss entire sentences out.
How can subtitles for a programme be broken on one channel and work fine on another?
Feedback can be a problem for hearing aid wearers. It results in an annoying whistling or squealing sound.
A hearing aid has one input: the sound comes in through the microphone. It has one output: the sound goes out of the speaker into the ear drum. But, sound moves in all directions unless something blocks it. Feedback occurs when sound coming out of the speaker travels back into the microphone and is amplified again.
There are a few things that can increase the chances of a hearing aid producing feedback:
Turning the volume down is an obvious solution but you have the volume set high because you need it! If that’s not possible then seek the advice of a hearing aid professional. They will be able to reduce the size of the vent or completely close it and also check the fit of the aid. If you have had your aids for a while and they no longer fit snugly into the ear you should be able to have new molds made rather than buy completely new instruments. You can take a deeper look at why hearing aids whistle here.
The Museum Of Endangered Sounds is a website that collects famous and memorable sounds from obsolete technology such as video game systems and VHS video recorders. Coming across that site got me thinking: what sounds would I put into a museum? What sounds are important enough to me that I’d want them stored and shared with others? Not just sounds made by out-of-date machines, but any sound that means something to me.
Seeing as I have a progressive hearing loss that has been getting worse since I was 5 years old, there’s a pretty good chance that I wont have any useful hearing at all at some point in the future, I’ll be deaf instead of hard of hearing. What sounds would I miss most? What sounds trigger fond memories and make me happy? We all have favourite songs and we all love to hear the laughter of loved ones, that’s the things that spring to mind first, the obvious things, but what else is there? What sounds effect us in positive ways and maybe we don’t even notice it?
The sound of a Harley Davidson like your Dad used to own when you were young. The sound of trees rustling at the bottom of your garden. The sound of your Mum singing her favourite song as she prepares dinner. The click of the door shutting in your beloved car. The list is unique to each of us, we all have sounds that trigger an emotion or remind us of a happy moment. Sounds that are either long forgotten or are heard so often that they have been relegated to the background in our busy, noisy lives.
This is a few of the things that I would put into my museum:
The sound of the sea lapping onto a beach is mesmerising. We don’t get to the sea very often, we live near Oxford, which is about the furthest from the sea as you can be in the UK – and often when we are there it is on a busy and noisy beach in the school-holiday season. But just occasionally there’s only the warm sun, a quiet beach and the sound of the sea. My Wife and I went to Kefalonia many years ago and we happened across a small deserted beach, we sat on the sand for hours listening to the water, was lovely.
I’m a big football (soccer) fan and watch it a lot on TV but there’s nothing quite like going to a stadium and watching a game live. The sounds of a match add just as much to the atmosphere as the visual. The crowd’s songs and chants, the collective “ooooooh” of a missed chance, the sound of 8000 people standing up at the same time as a team nears the goal and, of course, one half of the stadium going ballistic when their team scores.
We’ve got a little West Highland Terrier called Oscar, he’s getting on a bit now, he’s 13 years old, he sleeps a lot. Occasionally he’ll be having a dream and he’ll start making running motions with his paws and barking in his sleep. Accept it’s not a proper bark and it’s not a whine or a yelp, it’s the contented, warm woof of a dog who has finally caught that pesky cat from across the road.
What would you put into your sound museum?
Can you help with this problem?
I got an email from Michael about a problem that he is having with his Starkey 5 RIC aids – I’ll let him explain:
In the higher registers of an instrument there seems to be two notes, side by side, one slight flatter than the other and one of them slightly late. So every note, whether from an instrument, voice, whistle, cell phone beep, car door beep, ignition warning, etc. has the distortion. Not all speaking voices but some. And it is all the time in any mode. When I sneeze I sound like a Wookie – no kidding.
Has anyone come across this problem before? Apparently Michael’s audiologist has said that there’s nothing they can do about it.
He is running the standard programmes: normal, music and restaurant – all of which have the double-note sound. I’ve suggested that he get his audiologist to create some new programmes that massively reduce (or, if possible, turn off) noise reduction, compression and feedback elimination to see if that helps.
I know that some hearing aids produce an opposite sound to break the feedback loop but I don’t know if Starkey use that or whether it would ever be audible?
Any help greatly appreciated.
Itshearingaidknow 