Advices for mixing with hearing loss

matthieuL said:

Thanks for the brand advice !
Forgive my ignorance, as I never tested hearing aids, but isn't the sound too much artificial ? I fear that a sound going through a microscopic mic, then processed in a small device and finally released by a tiny membrane, would be very degraded ? I suppose it depends of the quality of devices, did you try other brands before Widex ?

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actually no, that's the only one i have tried and I must say that what I hear sounds quite "natural". but what is "natural" for one that has always been "deaf"?! :D

widex had several musician as "sponsors", which I admit led me to chose that brand


there are ways to reduce background noise and to filter / enhance some frequencies (this is true for all brands). this helps understanding speech in noisy environments but is completely useless and unnatural when you are listening to music. if this noise suppression is on, imagine to listen to e.g. a distorted guitar and gradually apply an low-pass filter at high frequency... you start to hear the sound "changing" and filtered! what i did is ask to make a specific program for music without any sound modification.
it works quite well...

if you want to take the step, probably you can find some shop that will let you try the airing aids for free. it was an easy decision, I admit...

in any case, the sound is much more "natural" with these devices than with my "damaged" ears! :D

matthieuL said:

Below 2000Hz, I have an almost uniform volume loss of 6-10dB, and after that a drastic loss at 4000 Hz(-70dB) and above (-60dB at 8000Hz).
If I boost the right monitor, my left ear will hear it and it will be a mess. That's why I think I should work with headphones (anyway, my workstation is in a corner of a non-treated room...).

I think I will try and boost the lost/attenuated bands, but roughly to avoid the rabbit hole of measures, plugins, etc. So my brain could compensate itself (like many seem to say here) from a better start.

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Hi @matthieuL, sorry about your hearing loss.

I also have a frequency response dip in one ear and did consider trying specific eq in headphones to compensate for this, but I have not tried it.

As mentioned by others, your brain will compensate for differences to some degree, why I'd also make sure to listen to music with the specific eq turned on for a while, to recalibrate perception, before performing any mixing using that eq curve.

I also believe that switching L/R channels to check levels on the opposite side is a good idea. Further, I think assessing the hearing and monitoring using music, and perhaps specific frequencies, in mono can be beneficial. When listening in mono everything should be placed right in the middle, regardless of whether you are using monitors or headphones. This way you might be able to get a sense for how much, and which frequencies, are displaced, and know how you could compensate for this in your mixing. Perhaps it could also aid in trying out a specific L/R-asymmetric eq curve, putting all sounds dead center. Here I'd also experiment with attenuating frequencies on the better side, not just boosting on the other side, and see how that works out.

Good luck! And please report back if you try specific eqing in headphones.

Before adjusting EQ settings, consult with an audiologist to understand the specific frequencies affected by your hearing loss.