Hey! Resurrecting this thread to report that I got fitted for my hearing aids on Monday. They are Oticon OPN MiniRITE models, and so far they are working very well and making a big difference. Here’s my after-action report…
They’re not cheap! Even with my $2500 coverage benefit from insurance, I’m out several thousand bucks. But very worth it IMO. All of a sudden I can hear the high-end again!
They sit behind the ear and have small speakers on the end of capillary tubing, and those go inside the ear canal. The little soft plastic “domes” into which the speakers are fitted are perforated, to allow natural sound to still get in: they are not molded plugs that fill the ear canal. This allows the units to work only on the part of the spectrum where I’m deficient while still allowing lower-freq sound to come through normally; a full plug would have to work across the whole spectrum, and that’s not what I need.
They are quite small, and don’t interfere with my eyeglasses, nor do they get in the way of wearing headphones. That was about my only real concern from a logistical standpoint. No feedback of any kind when they’re enclosed in the cans either.
Naturally, “there’s an app for that”, and my Android phone can control the units via Bluetooth connectivity. I can choose between one of two presets, one for quieter environments and one for louder (these are updateable, I can add more later if need be) and control the volume within each preset. They’re also compatible with “If This Then That” functionality, such that I could (if I had the “smart home” components) program certain other lights or appliances to come online when I turn on the aids each morning or power them down each night. That’s all for later though, no need for that yet.
The app includes a “mute” button as well, for example if you’re outside and it’s windy, that produces some unpleasant sounding interaction with the fine mics on the units. But what this also does is provide “A/B” functionality: I can mute and unmute the aids to hear with and without them instantly, and this REALLY shows how effective they are. It’s as if I’ve been living with a low-pass filter in place with the cutoff at about 6-8 kHz, and having these in removes it. Using the mute button to a/b is like toggling the LPF on and off!
I retook the online hearing tests yesterday and that revealed that my tinnitus sits right at 6k. I still have a deep trough there because the tones are being drowned out by the ringing in my ears. But having the other freqs restored overcomes it, I can latch on to the sibilants so much better that I don’t notice that anywhere except in the test.
All in all, a very satisfied customer, I’m very glad I finally got this done. I have not had to ask my long-suffering wife to repeat herself for days-- major process improvement! 
Hope y’all are safe and well.
Makes it handy on the streams to have 12 strings in natural, double drop D, and DDD with a capo with a couple of six strings in natural & capo’d configs so I can just switch guitars between tunes (although there is plenty of tuning, can’t be helped!).