Flying jets during the Vietnam War and working in construction and the restaurant industry took their toll on Dante C.’s hearing over the years. In his 60s, he noticed that whenever he was in a crowd of people, he would have particular difficulty understanding whoever he was speaking to.
Dante decided to try the Earlens Contact Hearing Solution to see if they could improve his hearing. Earlens works differently than conventional hearing aids to deliver a fuller spectrum of sound. Instead of playing amplified sound through a tiny speaker like other hearing aids do, Earlens transmits sound directly to the eardrum. As a result, Earlens can offer rich, natural sound with crisp highs and full lows.
The improvement in hearing that Dante experienced with Earlens has made a big difference in his ability to communicate with friends and loved ones:
“Being able to hear things that I couldn’t hear before and hold conversations like I really understood them and I’m not just shaking my head has been a wonderful improvement for me.”
In fact, Dante’s hearing improved so much with Earlens that he needed some time to adapt to his new hearing solution.
“It was exciting, yet it was a little difficult because I would hear a sound and I would not recognize it at first. I’d ask my wife. I’d say, ‘Do you hear that sound? Do you hear that noise?’ and she’d say, ‘That’s the water running outside,’ or, ‘That’s the birds chirping.’ They’d been chirping all this time and finally I could hear it.”
Not only is Dante hearing more sounds with Earlens, but he has also experienced the benefit in sound quality that is associated with the broader frequency hearing that Earlens delivers. In studies, a broader frequency range has been associated with both the perception of more natural sound quality*, as well as the ability to understand speech more easily**.
“I think it’s made a major difference in the fact that not only does it let me hear sounds, but the quality of sound that I’m hearing is very much a natural sound.”
*Moore, B. C., & Tan, C. (2003). Perceived naturalness of spectrally distorted speech and music. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 114(1), 408.
** Levy SC et al. Extended High-Frequency Bandwidth Improves Speech Reception in the Presence of Spatially Separated Masking Speech. Ear Hear. 2015 Sep-Oct;36(5):e214-24
