Well, more accurately, yesterday.
I’ve got my volume and sensitivity cranked up to about 80% of max at this point. I find that in a noisy room having the sensitivity cranked is really unhelpful so I move it up and down a little sometimes.
I have not been doing a lot of ear training because I have been so busy, but keep trying, and I also continue to spend at least an hour every day as a listener without my hearing aid which forces my brain to listen more intently.
During a conversation with a friend yesterday I made the observation that a lot of the “noise” in the implant is actually not noise, per se, but sounds that my brain has not actually re-mapped yet. I think that’s why the noise gradually reduces, not because it goes away, but because my brain is now processing it correctly and putting it in the proper box. Why it doesn’t re-map say, a dog bark to being a car backfiring, or a bird tweeting to being a gate squeaking I don’t know.
We have a pedestal fan which is really quite noisy, even on the low setting and last night I had to turn down the volume on my implant so that it was tolerable. I’m not sure why that noise would be so intrusive, but it is. After some further attempt at tolerating the sound my wife turned it off. I guess I am going to have to find a quite one.
Last night we were playing dominoes and, as I sometimes do, I switched on Pandora which is about 20 feet away on the TV soundbar. Prior to having my CI, and turned on, I often could not make out the tune, even ones I knew very well.
As last night proved, at really low volume, I could hear and enjoy the music. Including songs with which I am not very familiar.
4 thoughts on “Acclaim CI – Noises Today”
Thanks again for your detailed observations through your journey. Your comment about being able to enjoy background music hit home with me. My inability to hear incidental music – say, background music in a restaurant has been such an annoying aspect of wearing hearing aids.
Generally, CI suffers from the same background noise that hearing aids do because they amplify sound and the brain doesn’t get anywhere near enough information to determine which sounds are close and which further away so pretty much everything comes in at the same volume. My experience with my CI so far is that, ignoring the Donald Duck effect, my CI is much better than the hearing aid it replaced.
In time, hopefully, the Donald Duck effect will be totally gone. It seems that it is happening slowly so I’ll take it 🙂
Hello! I’m an avid reader following you from halfway around the world in Korea. Thank you so much for posting every week and sharing such valuable information. These days, I find your content more fascinating than any other blog or website. In August 2025, I lost the hearing in my right ear due to sudden sensorineural hearing loss of unknown cause, leaving me with a 75dB loss and 20% word recognition. Feeling a great sense of loss, I discovered Envoy Medical and this blog while browsing Reddit. Since I know I will likely need a cochlear implant someday, I have been following your posts with great interest. I am currently wearing a hearing aid to keep the auditory nerve active, even though it doesn’t provide much functional benefit. I just wanted to leave a message to say how much I appreciate your wonderful information and hopeful posts. I wish you nothing but better days ahead.
Hi Kim,
Sorry to hear about your hearing loss. I know it’s very frustrating and there is a point at which hearing aids provide little benefit.
So far I am very happy with the combination of my hearing aid in my left ear and my Envoy Acclaim cochlear implant in my right. It has made such a difference to my comprehension. I can tell, almost every day, that my brain is changing to adjust to the cochlear implant, even though I think it will still be a while before I can rely just on the implant. I do spend at least an hour a day without my hearing aid and every day I am surprised by what I suddenly understood being said, even if it was just a few words.
I really like the convenience of the completely internal device. Charging can be a bit inconvenient sometimes but that is also because I like to let the battery run down below 20% before charging and always charge to 100% to try to help the battery to last longer.
God bless you. If I were you, wait until the Envoy Acclaim is generally available.