We're certainly a small niche in the overall hearing market, and our requirements are the most demanding on the industry. I wonder if they ever will really take us seriously. On the other hand, with the greying of America, more and more will have trouble hearing music. They might provide the pressure to up the standards. I've tried three sets of hearing aids. Only one was suitable for tuning/voicing etc. My audiologist says that technology has zoomed ahead since I got mine less than two years ago, but I'm skeptical... We'll see within about three years as I expect these to last little longer than five years..... les bartlett -----Original Message----- From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Diane Hofstetter Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 12:17 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: RE: Customers with hearing aids Hearing aids are amplification devices made for people who have a variety of hearing problems. The lucky ones are those who simply have a conductive loss in which all frequencies are compromised equally. In those cases all you have to do it provide a simple amplifier and the person hears normally again. However, the vast majority of hearing losses are sensory(loss of the sensory nerve cells) neural (loss of nerve connections in the brain), and these hearing losses are extremely difficult to solve, if that is possible at all. Thus some customers will never be able to hear their pianos sounding right again. Others will hear a vast improvement over what they can hear without hearing aids, and the lucky few will have virtually normal hearing again. With the advent of the new expensive digital technology the biggest issure now is to determine what is needed to hear music ( or, for the piano technician, piano tuning) properly and how to adjust the acoustic parameters to make that possible. Millions of dollars have gone into research on speech perception, but not music, and definitely not piano tuning. Diane Hofstetter -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.10/720 - Release Date: 03/12/2007 7:19 PM
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