How's your hearing?

I don't like the ringing that shows up already, so I try to protect my hearing. I've found that shooting a relatively quiet rifle with plugs and muffs is actually really peaceful at my place. On a good day the impact from the bullet is easier to hear than the rifle going off.

Frogfur...if you are ex-military, go see the Veteran's Administration. You may be eligible for hearing aids. I'm 76 now, and have had the VA provided aids since I was 70...should have filed for them earlier. If you have combat experience or were in-country Vietnam, you're covered.

All of us should be wearing plugs & muffs...and good ones too. Wish I had been more careful when I was young. Best regards, Rod

My hobbies are the shooting sports, playing guitar in several bands, going to rock concerts...

I can't hear squat. Look at my name! Can't spell for much either!

I’ve always worn hearing protection. Shooting. Working or attending rock concerts.

Pretty sure what got me is 35 years of sirens. In the squad car or, fighting someone on the ground and the next three units come thundering up with their sirens on.

Or, the 15 years on SWAT when I tossed Thunderflashes like rice at a wedding.

I can generally hear OK. But, certainly not great.

A buddy of mine is in the gun industry. He commented at the SHOT show…

“Ya know, the archery guys all speak very softly…the gun guys are all yelling at each other…”

My hearing sucks . I'm 38. It's not from shooting , well partially I'm sure it could be. I'm an auto mechanic that never bothered with hearing protection over the years. It's cumulative it seems and I struggle to hear what everyone else can hear easily . no ringing or any trouble like that but I just don't hear well.
Protect what you got . not everyone knew better but hopefully you keep it in mind.

My regular hearing is fine even after years of shooting most of the time using little to no hearing protection. But my high tone hearing is gone after working in a soda pop production plant for about 15 years. After hearing hundreds of thousands of soda pop bottles banging together my high pitch hearing is totally gone. They didn't tell us that it would damage our hearing until about two years before they shut the plant down. I use hearing protection all the time now to try to keep what I have left.

The hearing aid industry is changing fast.

Over the counter aids just became legal and there is the technology cross over from bluetooth earbuds.

I have both hearing loss and "poor high frequency hearing". The loss is both from getting old and from "damage". The other is genetic (my brother and I were diagnosed as children). I got my first hearing aids several weeks ago for under a grand for the set. The features are probably what I need, but I worry about durability and the short warranty. After I got them I also noted that the warranty does not cover damage due to sweat.

I NEVER wore any hearing protection until I was in my 30's. Before retiring part of my job required a yearly physical and hearing test. They told me, (in my 30's), that I had a very minor hearing loss in my left ear. The one closest to the noise for a right-handed shooter. I could hear most tones 100%, but there were certain tones I could not hear at all. Was told the tones I couldn't hear weren't common in the real world and I'd not have any problems. My right ear was 100%. But that prompted me to start wearing ear protection when shooting.

Shortly after retiring in 2011 I suddenly lost 100% of the hearing in my right ear, the good one. It happened overnight. Went to bed hearing fine, woke up deaf in one ear. An MRI was done to rule out a brain tumor and I was given steroids in the hope that it might restore my hearing. It did slightly. They still aren't 100% sure why, but it was not shooting, or noise related. There hasn't been enough research on my situation to say for sure, but they suspect a ruptured, or clogged blood vessel to the auditory nerve.

A normal hearing aid won't help me. There is a bone anchored hearing aid where a stud is attached to my skull behind the ear and a tiny microphone is mounted on it. The sound vibrates through the bones in my head. But it requires surgery, is expensive, and insurance doesn't cover it. I still have one decent ear and have adapted pretty well over the last 12 years. I hear as good as most anyone in a quiet place. I just get it all through one ear and have trouble locating which direction sound comes from. I've missed opportunities on deer. I hear them but can't figure out where they are until it is too late. Or they get so close I can't get off a shot without being detected.

In a loud room my right ear now just picks up jumbled noise which makes it hard to understand what I'm hearing in my left ear. I find wearing an ear plug in my right ear actually helps me understand what I hear in my left ear.

TacticalJanitor said:

My hearing is very bad. I nearly missed a new job 20 years ago because, "you almost failed the hearing test".

Lots of shooting and loud music (without protection)in my youth are probably to blame. I'm avoiding any aids due to the cost. People are talking about 7-10 grand on this thread. I'm not going to pay that much to hear what other people have to say.

Four years ago I received my first pair of corrective lenses. Though it was amazing to see better than I probably every have...it's been nothing but ongoing costs and irritation. A new prescription gives me a lot of anxiety. They will never get it right on the first try, and it will be a month of not seeing correctly, IME.

Are hearing aids similar in this regard? Nothing but ongoing costs and problems?

How much do they really cost over 10 years?

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Prescription hearing aids tend to start at $2000 or so and top out at ten grand. I suggest against both extremes.

Low end hearing aids don't work very well. They are fine for listening to one thing in an otherwise quiet environment, like watching TV by yourself, or conversing with one person. In any kind of a more demanding environment, results will be frustrating.

At the $10,000 level, somebody's making a lot of profit. Audiologists (as opposed to dispensaries at big box places) do have a lot of stuff to pay for (and usually bundle three years of "free" service into the upfront cost) so there is always going to be significant mark-up, but $10,000 is honestly a ridiculous price. Even the most expensive devices from top manufacturers don't cost the audiologist more than about $3000 for a pair.

At my practice we sell the top range of hearing aids for about $6000 a pair. We don't "bundle" service costs, though, and use a "pay as you go" model instead, which saves most people a pretty good chunk of change over the long term. That's very rare in this field though, and you can generally expect to add about $1500 to your initial cost, for the "free" service. Which means that the top models from the top manufacturers should be in the $7500 range.

What does the money buy you? The two big complaints from hearing aid users are background noise and sound quality. What we want is a device that sounds perfectly natural and amplifies only what you want to hear. Neither goal is ever going to be met perfectly, though the latter one is being approached by the best models, especially from the Oticon brand. And this is a case where you really do get what you pay for. Better models are noticeably, well, better.

Costco is a decent way to save money. They generally use dispensers instead of audiologists. Dispensers can be very good, but some are pretty bad too. Your odds of getting a competent audiologist are better than of finding a competent dispenser. Either, when competent, can do a very good job. Costco also skimps on programming the hearing aids, generally using the hearing aid manufacturer's "first fit" algorithms instead of more comprehensive approaches. (Real Ear Measurement is the gold standard, actually measuring the output of the hearing aid while it is in your ear. It's a good idea to ask for it, if you're being fitted by an audiologist, and even to go somewhere else if it isn't being offered.) Essentially, Costco offers "good enough" at a relatively low price - though at my clinic we do brisk business "refitting" Costco hearing aids to maximize their performance.

Medicare, by the way, does not help with the cost of hearing aids. Any clinic which tells you they do is playing games with you. https://www.medicare.gov/coverage/hearing-aids. (Note that some private insurers offer Medicare Advantage plans which do offer some benefits. Generally speaking, those benefits won't amount to much, which is also true of most private plans. I'd expect to have significant out-of-pocket costs.)

Also, the ten year cost of hearing aids is going to include another set of hearing aids. It's rare to get them to last that long. Most clinics tell you to replace them every three years, but I think that's a little greedy. Most of the time, five years is typical, and often that can be stretched to seven or so.

A little more...

Over-the-counter devices are interesting. It's brand new, and they're off to a rocky start so far, with several big names quitting before even getting started. Nevertheless, I expect them to eventually be a healthy part of the game. One major concern is that when left on their own, hearing aid users will seriously "under fit" themselves. That is, they will set their own hearing aids to a level which is far below what they actually need for optimized hearing. The issue is that in most cases, hearing loss is quite gradual and the brain adapts to it. When "normal" volume is restored all at once, the brain rebels: "Everything is too loud!!!". With time and exposure, the brain re-adapts - but the exposure is necessary. If you "self fit" to a comfortable volume, you never adapt and you never get best results. I don't know how the industry will fix that, but they will have to.

jmr40 said:

I NEVER wore any hearing protection until I was in my 30's. Before retiring part of my job required a yearly physical and hearing test. They told me, (in my 30's), that I had a very minor hearing loss in my left ear. The one closest to the noise for a right-handed shooter. I could hear most tones 100%, but there were certain tones I could not hear at all. Was told the tones I couldn't hear weren't common in the real world and I'd not have any problems. My right ear was 100%. But that prompted me to start wearing ear protection when shooting.

Shortly after retiring in 2011 I suddenly lost 100% of the hearing in my right ear, the good one. It happened overnight. Went to bed hearing fine, woke up deaf in one ear. An MRI was done to rule out a brain tumor and I was given steroids in the hope that it might restore my hearing. It did slightly. They still aren't 100% sure why, but it was not shooting, or noise related. There hasn't been enough research on my situation to say for sure, but they suspect a ruptured, or clogged blood vessel to the auditory nerve.

A normal hearing aid won't help me. There is a bone anchored hearing aid where a stud is attached to my skull behind the ear and a tiny microphone is mounted on it. The sound vibrates through the bones in my head. But it requires surgery, is expensive, and insurance doesn't cover it. I still have one decent ear and have adapted pretty well over the last 12 years. I hear as good as most anyone in a quiet place. I just get it all through one ear and have trouble locating which direction sound comes from. I've missed opportunities on deer. I hear them but can't figure out where they are until it is too late. Or they get so close I can't get off a shot without being detected.

In a loud room my right ear now just picks up jumbled noise which makes it hard to understand what I'm hearing in my left ear. I find wearing an ear plug in my right ear actually helps me understand what I hear in my left ear.

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If you do actually have damage to the auditory nerve, the bone anchored devices won't help either. They simply bypass the outer and middle ear and stimulate the cochlea more directly. The auditory nerve links the cochlea to the brain, so cochlear stimulation is still useless. The same is true for cochlear implants, unfortunately.

A type of hearing aid known as a CROS might be of some benefit. This is simply a hearing aid worn in the good ear and a microphone/transmitter (which looks exactly like a hearing aid) worn on the bad ear. The CROS device "listens" and transmits to the device in the good ear, so that the wearer hears from both sides. The result is nearly miraculous for some users, hopelessly confusing for others, and somewhere in the middle for most.

What?

Partially deaf in one ear, can't hear crap outta the other.
Have lost about 40% in my left, 30% in the right ear.

Mostly due too young stupidity.
Loud music in my cars/trucks, Trail Groomers.

Concerts, "Hey, let's go stand by those big speakers!"

Stupid kids.........
And then decades of not wearing protection running heavy equipment with the window open if there was one, and chainsaws etc.

Got hearing aids about 15 years ago.
Yeah, they help but nothing gets rid of the ringing....
and now some kid is playing a xylophone at odd times of the day.
Oh well, just have to ignore it.

And the mask mandate didn't help either.
I was surprised at how much lip reading one does.

All I can say is "Protect what ya got!"

.38 Special said:

A little more...

Over-the-counter devices are interesting. It's brand new, and they're off to a rocky start so far, with several big names quitting before even getting started. Nevertheless, I expect them to eventually be a healthy part of the game. One major concern is that when left on their own, hearing aid users will seriously "under fit" themselves. That is, they will set their own hearing aids to a level which is far below what they actually need for optimized hearing. The issue is that in most cases, hearing loss is quite gradual and the brain adapts to it. When "normal" volume is restored all at once, the brain rebels: "Everything is too loud!!!". With time and exposure, the brain re-adapts - but the exposure is necessary. If you "self fit" to a comfortable volume, you never adapt and you never get best results. I don't know how the industry will fix that, but they will have to.

Click to expand...

Wow. What a wealth of information. Thank you for taking the time to write all that down.

I imagine that like many, I can't really imagine what it's like to hear properly after so many years. You mention lip reading, and that reminds me that for the first ten years of our marriage, I had to train my wife to look directly at me when speaking (or suffer repeating herself endlessly). I don't think it's really lip reading (for me), but is probably more related to the CROS tech you mentioned. I need to hear something in both ears to detect the details.

In our home, the closed captioning is always turned on, and we are seriously thinking about learning sign language (for a hobby). Something tells me it would be a very good idea to prepare for the years to come.

Thanks again!

TacticalJanitor said:

Wow. What a wealth of information. Thank you for taking the time to write all that down.

I imagine that like many, I can't really imagine what it's like to hear properly after so many years. You mention lip reading, and that reminds me that for the first ten years of our marriage, I had to train my wife to look directly at me when speaking (or suffer repeating herself endlessly). I don't think it's really lip reading (for me), but is probably more related to the CROS tech you mentioned. I need to hear something in both ears to detect the details.

In our home, the closed captioning is always turned on, and we are seriously thinking about learning sign language (for a hobby). Something tells me it would be a very good idea to prepare for the years to come.

Thanks again!

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There actually is a name for that informal kind of lip reading: "speech reading". And yes, it can be very important! The trick is that in cases of noise-induced hearing loss (which comprise the great majority of hearing loss cases) it is the high pitches which are most severely affected. When we speak, the higher pitched sounds of speech are created mostly by the lips and teeth (unlike the lower pitches, which are mostly formed further back in the mouth) and so can be seen by the listener. So old gunmen tend to "hear" part of the conversation and "see" the rest.

That's also why the wives of old gunmen tend to be grumpy. We literally can hear the lower pitched voices of our poker buddies better than the higher pitched voices of our spouses!

In general my hearing is OK but due to repeated exposure to gunfire/ Artillery fire there are certain frequencies that I just can't hear.

The first thing the VA gave me was a set of hearing aids. These hearing aids aren't like the hearing aids my grandfather had. they're computer tuned to my specific hearing loss. I can program them on my phone. I can call my audiologist and she can program them remotely.

I can listen to music on them and they sound as good as any Bose Speakers I've ever heard.
I can route my TV through them
I won't say I can hear a pin drop but I can hear a clock tick.

frogfurr said:

After shooting for 58 years my hearing is starting to fail. Early years we didn't use hearing protection because we didn't know any better. I still work FT and can't hear anything in meetings. Shopping for hearing aids next week. Hopefully something small and doesn't cost 2K.

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It all depends on your insurance. Without insurance $2k would be cheap. IIRC MSRP on mine was more like $7k. Insurance brought it down to $1.5k.
Modern hearing aids are marvels. For meetings you can use your phone like a remote microphone. Put the phone by the speaker and it sends sound to the aids.
Mine also Bluetooth from my tv. I can watch war movies at 2am and not wake the wife.
They also have directional settings to optimize pickup forward, left, right or behind. Think driving and you’ll see why that can be handy. You can focus the aids on the person across the table from you.
Separate mode for noisy places like bars and restaurants is great.

Night Rider said:

In general my hearing is OK but due to repeated exposure to gunfire/ Artillery fire there are certain frequencies that I just can't hear.

The first thing the VA gave me was a set of hearing aids. These hearing aids aren't like the hearing aids my grandfather had. they're computer tuned to my specific hearing loss. I can program them on my phone. I can call my audiologist and she can program them remotely.

I can listen to music on them and they sound as good as any Bose Speakers I've ever heard.
I can route my TV through them
I won't say I can hear a pin drop but I can hear a clock tick.

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Damn. That post made me think my vision was going too!!

Night Rider said:

In general my hearing is OK but due to repeated exposure to gunfire/ Artillery fire there are certain frequencies that I just can't hear.

The first thing the VA gave me was a set of hearing aids. These hearing aids aren't like the hearing aids my grandfather had. they're computer tuned to my specific hearing loss. I can program them on my phone. I can call my audiologist and she can program them remotely.

I can listen to music on them and they sound as good as any Bose Speakers I've ever heard.
I can route my TV through them
I won't say I can hear a pin drop but I can hear a clock tick.

Click to expand...

What brand do you have? What you describe is what I was looking for, but seem to be unable to get.

I have been wearing hearing aids since 2015. I bought a the type that automatically adjust to different noise conditions like road, crowd, and restaurant noise. They were expensive ($3200) back then. I just had them tuned up and they are working like they did when brand new. Yes, hearing aids efficiency are based upon technology that can require periodic adjustments. Mine had deteriorated to a point where I thought I would have to replace them but the audiologist had me come in to get the adjusted ($75). A lot cheaper than a new pair. Since being my aids I became a COSTCO member. They have a hearing ais department. If I ever need new ones I am going to buy them there. My sister just bought a new pair there and their price was about $800 less than my audiologist wanted for the same aids. Costco also tunes them up at no charge. Finally, beware of scammers who will up sell you. I won’t get into it but when I bought mine Miracle Ear tried to sell me a $6,000 contract that would not have made my aids work any better.

I never was able to hear the higher ranges even in college. When we took hearing tests before getting our teaching certificates the others who were waiting for testing could hear what I couldn't from the other side of the room.(they were laughing) Flunked my army physical when I got drafted in '72 because of it. Add 30 years of operating or working in close proximity to rock drills and heavy equipment, it's surprising I can hear at all. I've gotten used to the tinnitus.

tominboise said:

I can't hear you over the screaming in my ears.....

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