Day 26 - Getting Wet!

Sorry for the long delay since the last post. Things have continued to go great with my trial.

Since I'm nearing the end of my 30 day trial, I figured it was time to try out the Audiologist's advice and get a little wet :)

My family headed out for a nice long weekend that included swimming at a big pool and then floating a local river in tubes.

The swimming went just fine. I didn't go diving or intentionally put my head under the water, but I got plenty wet. No problems at all.

The next day I laid down in my tube and floated the river with the family 3 times. This river has some pretty good little rapids and you end up getting soaked many times. I got drenched and went under a little getting sprayed right in the ear with water. The first two times when just fine, and then 1/2 way down the last run I got a pretty good soaking my right Lyric stopped working. My hearing was pretty much out for that side as it seemed to convert into an ear plug.

With one working ear, I decided to leave it in for a few hours just to see if it might drain itself. I'm pretty sure it just got really wet and I don't think I got water actually behind the aid itself.

After a few hours I decided to try my magnetic adjustment tool to see if I could get it to respond. Nothing. About 3 hours later I tried the adjustment tool once again and to my surprise, it beeped and turned on! I was really happy to see that they must have dried out on their own. I adjusted the volume back to normal settings and by the next morning things were pretty much back to normal.

Next week I have another day on the lake planned with lots of swimming involved. I'm going to try and put them to the test again just to see what will happen. I'll keep you posted.

Day 16 - Loud Restaurant

We went to one of my favorite Brazilian Steakhouse restaurants last night and it was packed! Aside from being packed, it was incredibly noisy! They had recently changed the layout a little bit by putting up these glass dividing walls all over the place. This caused the noise to really echo around and just amplify. I really struggled as the Gouchos approached the table and mumbled with their accent what type of meat they had on their skewer. I had to keep asking the other person at the table what they were saying. I didn’t want to end up eating garlic roasted parmesan grease balls on accident. The other person I was with was having just about as hard of a time understanding, so I didn’t feel too bad. I was very ready to get out of there by the time we were done eating. I almost wonder if they amplify the noise on purpose just to get you to leave quicker after you’re done so they can turn the table.

The noise may have been awful, but the food was excellent as usual.

Day 14 - Flying

I travel a lot on airplanes for business, typically every 3 weeks. I take a lot of precautions for my hearing in that I always have either my custom fit ear plugs or my noise cancelling earphones on once I get onboard. It’s not so much that I worry about damaging my ears on the flights as much as it does make my ears ring due to my noise sensitivity.

I left my Lyrics on for the first few minutes while on the plane to test out how they dealt with the noise. I placed a test call on my phone to see how they were working and chatted with my neighbor for a minute. The Lyrics seemed to be dealing with the noise just fine and weren’t doing the annoying volume switching at all.

I used my earplug style noise cancelling earphones for the duration of the flight to listen to music and movies and then kicked my Lyrics back on one arrived at the gate. I was able to hear my music and the movies just fine and equivalent to my previous review of listening to music on Day 9.

On a side note, this was one of the first times I was making adjustments to the Lyrics while in a real public setting. It seemed a little awkward and I wondered what people would think with the way I was holding my hands up to my ears. It’s probably just me, but I was glad that the on/sleep programs can be switched between very quickly.

Day 12 - Sleeping with them on?

I was hammered last night staying up late to work. I usually put my Lyrics to sleep when I go to sleep thinking that the noise of the pillow might be annoying or keep my up.

I woke up the next morning and was surprised to hear sounds I wasn't used to and realized I had left them on all night. It didn't end up bothering me at all.

I think I read somewhere though that putting them to sleep at night saves on battery life, so I don't think I'll be making a habit of this anytime soon. Still, it would be neat to be able to leave them on 24x7.

Day 9 - Music via headphones

I finally got a chance to try out some fidelity tests with some music and my headphones.

I'm used to taking out my old BTE hearing aids when listening to music with headphones. This was going to be different since I can't take the Lyrics out to plug them in.

I currently use Sony noise canceling ear-plug style earphones. These earphones block out a lot of outside sounds by virtue of their plug-style design. They also feature a microphone on each ear-bud which processes the outside noise and then feeds in anti-noise to cancel it out. I only use the noise-canceling feature when I’m in noisy environments though such as airplanes.

To start the test I left my Lyrics on at their usual level 4 volume. I placed the ear-buds in my ears and turned on my iPod. The music sounded really clear, but was missing some low frequencies and sounded a little artificial like it was being pumped through a couple of speakers, (which I guess it technically was).

I took the earphones out and put the Lyrics into Sleep mode and tried again. The results were MUCH better. I heard the lower frequencies much better and the sound was more natural. I can only attribute this to a different amplification pattern during sleep mode along with the possibility that the higher volume was allowing more of the natural sound to "leak" through the Lyrics instead of just being processed by the Lyrics themselves.

I didn't notice much of a difference as far as understanding speech or the words during my test, so it doesn't seem like the Lyrics were changing much from what I'm used to hearing. Part of the problem may be the kind of music I listen to :)

I did find that the ear-plug style design was not able to be inserted as far as usual due to interference from the Lyrics. Still, they seemed to be doing their job well in blocking out the outside noise. I'm going to look for a pair of the larger Over the Ear headphones to see how they sound compared to my earplug style.

Overall I was pretty happy with the test. Nothing will be as good as natural hearing, but this seems a pretty reasonable compromise for the benefits they provide.