by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
A man explained,
I recently encountered two positive experiences in regard to my hearing problems and wanted to share them in case they may be of help to others.
1. With the passing years (I’m 87) I’ve lost the ability to enjoy my favorite music of the “Big Band” era when wearing hearing aids. I’ve found the use of inexpensive earbuds (less than $12) in place of my hearing aids could restore the beautiful sounds that I remembered from long ago. They have worked well when plugged into a computer, a CD player, or an iPod. I’ve used four different brands of earbuds and all worked well.
2. The piano, from which I’ve derived pleasure playing for eighty years, began to sound terrible to me and I had to stop playing. My children came up with the idea of using earbuds in conjunction with a digital keyboard. Happily, it worked beautifully and I’m now back to playing again.
As you can imagine, I’ve been very pleased with the above aspects of hearing improvement and I hope they might prove beneficial to others.
You are not alone. Numbers of seniors seem to have trouble hearing well (music or speech) with their fancy digital hearing aids. But using simple earbuds or headphones (often coupled with analog assistive devices) can work very well if the volume is loud enough.
In regards to playing a keyboard, I do much the same as you. In my case, I can’t get enough volume out of my keyboard speakers, so I have to use powerful external amplifiers. Sometimes I use one amplifier and earbuds, but my favorite way is to use a professional amplifier and blast the sound right at my ears. I love the music then.
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