Hearing loss is terrible. I am nearly deaf, and I think it is something organic going on. I can't find anyone who will look into it for me, so it is a big issue. If the captions on the TV don't work, I have to try to discern what is going on by their actions. The biggest problem is isolation. In any group I can't understand the conversations, and if I try to turn up the hearing aids, the noise filters don't work well. I may be able to get help in Washington, so I will try there next time I go down. Last time I was there, they declared me totally deaf in my left ear, so they gave me a crossover hearing aid set, which sent all sound to my right ear. I could hear better but had no directionality. Deafness is lonely @Beth Gallagher so try to persuade him to get assistance if you can. It is a blow to the ego, so some men won't look for help. My 98-year old aunt wouldn't wear hers "because they made her feel old...."
Sorry about your deafness, @Don Alaska . At this point my husband's hearing isn't bad; just "selective." He wears the headphones because he says he can hear the dialogue on TV better but in normal conversation he has no problem hearing. My post was more about the fact that he forgets he has them on and walks all around the house and yard with them on, and they are the big "over-the-ear" type so he looks like a test pilot without a plane.
I am familiar. I bought the wife a pair of Bluetooth headphones with a noise cancelling microphone so she can answer her phone while mowing the lawn. She usually uses them to listen to music, though. I thought you said he needed them to hear the TV.
Both of us have trouble with hearing dialogue on TV for some reason. It seems like there is too much "dramatic music" or something. So to keep from turning the TV volume up to blast, he prefers to wear the headphones. He says the sound is much better but I don't like wearing anything on my head so I'll have to take his word for it.
Many TVs now have rough "equalizer" settings for sound. Often given names like music, sports, theater, etc. Sometimes trying them out might reveal a setting that make dialog easier to hear.
Oh believe me, we have tried every setting on the TVs. We've even bought soundbars which seem to help a little. Also, some channels are worse that others; when I watch ID (Investigation Discovery) the sound quality is terrible.
My wife has a hearing aid in her left ear, she had Micro surgery in that ear About 40 years ago. The other ear They tell her a hearing aid will not help, she might want to try bone conduction type for that ear. She has a very hard time understending dialog on t v, No matter how I set it. The T v we recently got does have a voice setting, It does reduce the background noise and increase the vocals. Before the fire, my daughter bought her. For her birthday a zvox Sound bar which is specifically designed for the hard of hearing, and It Did help. It's adjustable And you usually can find a setting to your liking. I'm thinking maybe I got to try bluetooth for her or headphones that have wifi.
Despite several years in a paper bag plant, my hearing isn't too bad, but age has taken a toll. Already, I can understand why deaf people are so often irritable. My wife gets upset when I don't hear what she's saying, I think because she's convinced that I'm not paying attention, and when we're riding together in the car, she continuously sets the radio to two clicks below a volume that I can comfortably hear. While I am fine without the radio being on at all, at the volume she sets it, I can hear it just well enough for it to be annoying but not well enough to follow it without straining. When I ask her to turn it up two clicks, she will do that, but it's not long before it's back down again. I don't think she means to, but that's just the level that's comfortable for her. When we first married, my hearing was better than hers.
We have wireless headphones for watching TV and they are great! My husband cannot hear squat, and he will not get hearing aids. We have just gotten another new set last week because my husband’s headphones started to crack on the top. He taped it up. That set was 13 years old and we couldn’t find a replacement headphone, since that particular style/number has been discontinued.
We have a set of headphones for tv watching, also. We don't use them all of the time, basically only for some movies. After I had a hearing test, some years ago, and found out my hearing had gotten pretty bad, we bought me a set of hearing aids online. They were just "ok". I ended up going to a VA Clinic for a Hearing Test. They done some kind of "injection molding" into each ear and gave me (free) a set of very high quality, up-to-date, hearing aids. Compared to the online ones, the VA ones were superb! Got a cleaning kit, extra filters and a charger with them.
I got bluetooth headphones just to listen to YouTube videos on the pc and not have to deal with dangling wires. But the sound was delayed. It didn't sync with lip movements. Phones were fine as long as you didn't watch the video.
My hearing is fine as far as I know, but I sometimes find it difficult to hear what a speaker is saying especially with the movies I rent. Some actors don't emote to the back row and only think they are speaking to the other person on stage 2 feet away.
Same here. I have great hearing but some TV/movies just have poor sound quality where the music drowns out the voices.
Can you hear the commercials okay? If you can hear the ads but the program is not clear, it is entirely the program that is the issue. Commercials are often "processed" so they actually seem louder even though the volume is the same. That is because the processed signals produce clearer audio.