I am New and I have earmold questions

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HADork

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Hi, my name is Jennifer and I have been wearing HAs for more than half my life. I am not completely deaf but my hearing is not wonderful either. My loss is severe.

I wear behind the ear HAs and always seem to have ear molds issues. Let me explain.

When I got my recent pair of Phonak HAs my audi gave me soft molds, never had a soft mold before. First few times was painful as the fit was too tight. Then when I got a good fit, I was having tube problems. The tube could not be all the way in the mold or else it would interfere with the vent and I would get that "plugged up" feeling in my ears.

So I switched to hard ear molds and was quite happy with them as the tube problems went a way.

Audi left and I got new audi who wanted to keep the same shape of my hard mold but switch to a soft mold. Soft molds came in and no plugged up feeling of course when they came in the tubes were already put in whatever place they were in. I got my tubes changed yesterday and the plugged up feeling was back and I was like vents are clogged. My audi was like no they are open. After an hour of pondering why my ears felt up, I decided to do what I did in the past and pulled the tubes out somewhat to relieve the plugged up pressure on my ear. It works. In the past this was a not a good solution because over time the tubes would shrink and fall out. I am not sure if this will happen with these molds. I am so worried about something that is probably so dumb

Question, what do I do? Is this normal? How can a tube cause that much interference with a vent? The thing is that the tube opening and the vent opening converge into the hearing aid mold opening (the part that goes in your ear).

My soft molds are clear and after only months of using them, they look gross LOL! I am sorry but part of me just wants to go back to my hard molds but audi said soft is a better seal. Yeah, but I don't want to feel plugged up either. Either way, in the future, I plan to get a new mold. I don't know if I should stick to soft or go back to hard molds. I went a happy year having them while it wasn't the case with soft molds with all my tube problems.

I have very small ear canals so that could be part of why my ears so so sensitive to air flow.

Has anyone ever had problems with tubes interfering with vents?
 
you should try different types of earmolds like the hypoallergenic
I wear them since I can't wear "real colored" earmolds due to allergy.
 
If you don't like the soft ones surely you can make them get you the hard ones that work? You have to wear these all day it is all very well for the audi to say these are better but that is a generalisation and there will always be exceptions. I too hate that plugged feeling and have to have vent holes even though my audi said I would be better of with a sealed mold. I accept that I am losing some sound through the hole but I would not be happy with plugged ears all day.

If it doesn't suit you, get them to supply the molds you like. Too often we accept the audi must be right when really they are not! :)
 
Hmm, how about next time asking your audiologist to order ear molds from a manufacturer that uses tubing that snaps in instead of being glued in?

Apparently its difficult to get rid of the glue from the old tube and that can change the acoustic effects of the ear mold.

See this article:
http://www.bradingrao.com/More Than Meets the Ear.pdf

The author talks a little about that in the far left column on page 3 of the link.

It's an old article that was written for parents of children with hearing aids but most of the information is still good and also useful for adults. I would say that the only way the article may be outdated is that many hearing aids now include technology to cancel feedback -- IF the audiologist takes the time out to make that programming adjustment everytime you get your tubes or earmolds & tubes replaced. It just takes a couple of minutes, literally, at most. But still, not all audis will automatically do this.

Pacific Coast Laboratories are one of the companies that make ear molds that work with snapped in tubing. Pacific Coast Laboratories - Products
There are probably other companies that manufacture ear molds that use snapped in tubing, but I don't know their names.

Your audiologist may wail and protest about using a different vendor than he or she is accustomed to -- but insist. It's a better product. I don't know why they wail about it, but that has always been my experience. Whether they just don't like dealing with one more vendor or if their wholesale costs are effected by how many ear molds they order in bulk per month ... I don't know what the reason is. But expect some wailing.

Lastly, you didn't ask about this -- but I think people with hearing loss get better results using an appropriately shaped sound bore for their loss.

Most audis don't do this. They just ask the ear mold manufacturer for a standard sized bore and program the hearing aid as much as possible to make up for the loss in frequencies caused by the inefficiently shaped (for your hearing loss) ear mold. I think this causes unneccesary additional distortion from unneccessary additional amplification. This has been my experience. (The more amplification, the more distortion.)

I have a sloping loss* so I usually go for the CFA #2 which, because of the way the bore is shaped, does not roll off the high frequencies as much as the standard shaped bore does.

I hope this helps!




* Its a more common type of hearing loss and means that I hear low pitches better than high pitches.
 
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:welcome: to AllDeaf forum. I hope you have fun reading and posting all the threads here. See you around here. :wave:
 
Hi,
About the earmolds. I currently use a hearing-aid for my left ear. My earmold is soft, but the tube is snapped in instead of glued and there is a vent hole next to that, but it doesn't converge at all. Maybe the converging thing is the problem as it is less likely to allow the pressure to equalize with two holes instead of one. It's like being in a too warm car. Do you open one window, or do you open two windows? One for inflow, the other for outflow.
I have never had a problem with the ones I have. It's comfortable and perfect.
 
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