[sci.electronics] Band-pass hearing aid anyone?

stephen@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Stephen J. Muir) (02/03/87)

My fiancee is hard of hearing in the middle frequencies, but normal at the
extremes of the audio spectrum.  She has been told that a normal hearing aid
would deafen her and that a band-pass hearing aid is not available.  Does
anyone out there know if such a thing is available please?
-- 
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bill@sigma.UUCP (02/07/87)

<193@dcl-csvax.comp.lancs.ac.uk> stephen@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Stephen J. Muir):
>My fiancee is hard of hearing in the middle frequencies, but normal at the
>extremes of the audio spectrum.  She has been told that a normal hearing aid
>would deafen her and that a band-pass hearing aid is not available.  Does
>anyone out there know if such a thing is available please?

I suffer from much the same problem (significant loss of hearing in the
human voice range) and checked into this a couple years back. I was told
that this type of hearing aid isn't available. I guess we just have to
suffer, for now..


-- 
William Swan  {ihnp4,decvax,allegra,...}!uw-beaver!tikal!sigma!bill

chan 'eil Gaidhlig math againn /kha nel' gal'ig' mweh ag0n'/
(we do not speak good Gaelic)

ornitz@kodak.UUCP (02/08/87)

In article <193@dcl-csvax.comp.lancs.ac.uk> stephen@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Stephen J. Muir) writes:
>My fiancee is hard of hearing in the middle frequencies, but normal at the
>extremes of the audio spectrum.  She has been told that a normal hearing aid
>would deafen her and that a band-pass hearing aid is not available.  Does
>anyone out there know if such a thing is available please?

I do not know of any commercial product that meets your needs, but you might
try posting to the handicapped newsgroup.  I built a similar device for my
father-in-law to help him hear the telephone better.  He has lost about all of
his higher frequency hearing (as have many older folks).  My amplifier 
included automatic level control, pre-emphasis of the highs, and bandpass
filtering of 300 to 2700 Hz.  This was a fairly crude all-analog circuit
but he was well pleased with the result.  He said that voices did not sound
natural to him anymore (he was hearing some highs again) but that they were
more understandable.  If I had it to do over, I would use a switched capacitor
filter and a few other tricks.  Do not give up - perhaps a hearing aid company
will come out with what you need.

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