Some About.com Deafness blog posts continue to draw comments over the years. A reader who is a musician with hearing loss, recently posted on the blog post "Desperately Seeking...Analog Hearing Aids." This musician said digital hearing aids simply don't work when he is making music. Plus, he mentions a blind study of digital versus analog hearing aids (I am not aware of this study) that allegedly found people actually had no preference. So many readers have complained about how companies are only making digital hearing aids while they prefer the sound quality of analog hearing aids. Apparently there would still be a market for analog hearing aids...if companies would make them.
I don’t blame them. digitals are horrible for music because of so much filteration.
I prefer analog over digital. Every time, my hearing aid dealer would try a digital on me, I ended up going back to analog.
There is just no comparison to the quality of sound. I need to get new aids. I certainly hope I can get more analog aids and not be forced to get digital.
I have a pair of BTE Starkey’s, analog. If the man contacts Starkey Hearing aids, they have a hearing aid that is built just for music. I believe it might be an analog hearing aid call Tunz. Mine are old BTEs. At the time I purchased them the digital were just coming out. I tried them against the analog and in conversation there was no difference and the digitals were more expensive then. So I bought the analogs. This was 10 to 11 years ago. Still working just fine.
Two suggestions: Compile a list of manufacturers and then visit their web sites. Find out if any manufacturers still make analogs. If any do, phone them to ask for the names and locations of the dealers nearest you who sell their analog model(s). Alternatively, phone a hearing association to ask for some leads.