I often wonder how Beethoven would react to modern-day hearing aids considering his great frustration with the ear trumpets of his day. We don’t want hearing aids that ply our sound world with obvious artifice, like a supposedly “acoustic” album that’s been overworked by a manic sound engineer. In this vein, I don’t think Beethoven would like how so many modern-day digital hearing aids massage all kinds of processes into what the wearer hears. At the piano, I usually start practicing without my hearing aids, entering a world of profound silence familiar from my earliest years, when I wasn’t yet fitted. Knowing it, I can hang onto it once I do put my hearing aids back in, and then work on the sound.

Source: New York Times December 27, 2020 15:11 UTC