My hearing loss started when I was in the Navy, so I get my aids from the VA these days. I have no idea what they cost; I started going to the VA when I could no longer afford upgrades that worked. I also have a very severe loss. I just got a set of the Resound LiNX Quattro aids, and they seem quite good. They replaced a set of Siemens aids that also worked well but gave me problems due to the fragile nature of the connection between the amp and the speaker. Every time one broke I had to send it off to the VA acquisition center in Denver, and they sent them back the factory to be fixed. The backups I had were terrible, so I'd be without effective aids for a month or more. Now, at least, if there's a problem I'm covered a bit better.
It can be hard to find an audiologist who can set up aids for music. I got one that can, but it took a few tries. One of the things you have to do is cancel out the noise reduction function. Your aid will think of the sustained tone of the string as 'noise' and try to get rid of it. The results can be odd. When I first got the Siemens aids they set them up very well for speech, but any time I played the guitar it sounded like it was buzzing, badly. I more or less stopped playing because it sounded so bad. Now that things are set up a bit better I'm trying to get back into the habit of playing. I'm still not totally satisfied with the music setup I've got, which is just the 'generic' one that comes with the aids, but when I picked them up I didn't happen to get the person who knows how to set them up. I'll keep trying.
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