I have talked in the past about how I've upgraded from an analog to digital hearing aid and the quality definitely is better. I actually wore my analog one for paintball and noticed how different it was right up until the battery died and I had to spend the last two matches unable to hear my teammates telling me where the other team were! As much as the digital is an improvement it is not perfect. One thing I have struggled with is watching TV, obviously the trend with TVs now days is that they are very slim, the problem with this is that it means that their sound quality isn't as good. We ended up buying a surround sound system in the hope that it would be better. The system is great but unfortunately it doesn't solve the problem that many TV shows have which is that the dialogue isn't particularly clear. There was a lot of controversy recently around the BBC's Jamaica Inn program with the dialogue being impossible to understand. There is also the problem that many shows have such big difference in volume between dialogue and action. I love game of thrones and the dialogue is one of the main reasons, the problem is you have to turn the volume way up to hear the dialogue and then you have to turn it way down whenever it switches to a sword fight or people riding horses etc. I understand that action scenes will be louder than dialogue but there shouldn't be such a big difference. Its fine when everyone is in the room watching it and if its a bit loud its not a problem but when you are trying to watch a program by yourself it can be annoying for other people.
It seems like I've seen quite a lot of movies at the cinema already this year (Inside Llewyn Davis, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Dallas Buyers Club and Captain America: The Winter Soldier) without any problems but most recently I went to The Amazing Spider-man 2 and it was LOUD! I don't know if it was because we went to a cinema that I haven't been to in years or if it was just an overly loud movie but I could hear it perfectly with my hearing aid muted. It may have been a one off but the fact is movies do not need to be that loud!
I also mute my hearing aid at concerts and my brother wears ear plugs in order to protect our hearing. I get that live music is meant to be loud but it seems crazy that you have to wear ear plugs or risk tinnitus to see bands/artists live. Obviously at large venues or outdoor concerts it needs to be loud so everyone can hear it properly but I've been to some fairly small venues where I've felt that even with my hearing aid muted that I needed to move back as it was THAT loud. Probably the worst concert experience that I've had sound wise was seeing Modestep support Lostprophets (before everybody knew about their singer being a paedophile). I'm not sure if it was their fault or if the sound guy could have done more but every time the bass note hit it was like being vibrated like a tuning fork. It made for a most unpleasant experience. Live music should be loud but sometimes less is more, I just wonder how many people are going to suffer from hearing problems due to overly loud concerts.
Thanks for reading
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