Review on 🔊 Etymotic QSA Personal Sound Amplifier: Brushed Gold, Single - Enhance Clarity, Boost Soft Speech, Discreet Design. 2 Levels of Enhancement. by Kelly Caballes

This is a review for those thinking about using it to hear birds. Recently, while walking with her wife, she asked me to identify the bird she heard. fun right? But I couldn't hear the bird. Less fun. I've noticed that I've lost some hearing in the upper range. This is not scary, but noticeable when communicating with people with normal hearing. So I tested some solutions to the problem. I don't need multi-thousand dollar hearing aids, but there is a new line of Personal Sound Amplification (PSAP) products that are cheaper and designed for people with mild hearing loss. However, most of them have not been tested by poultry farmers. So far... Etymotic's Silent Bean Amplifier fits in the ear, doesn't protrude too much, fits my ears and feels more like a regular hearing aid. Its weight is not noticeable, it does not cause discomfort and does not collide with my glasses. Yesterday I wore them for bird watching for 5 hours and didn't really feel uncomfortable. It also doesn't come with my phone app or any Bluetooth capabilities. You can't listen to podcasts while pretending to be listening to your family. No need to fiddle with your phone to find the perfect settings. They have a switch that toggles them from normal to high gain. It also requires regular tiny hearing aid batteries (size 10) which in my experience last a week or two. There is no switch. To switch off the device, open the battery compartment about 2/3. The battery is preserved and the Bean turns itself off. Do they also work for bird song without a special hearing test and app? Yes of course. The tests I've run put this device ahead of other PSAPs I've tested. I have used them for many hours in the field and have found them very useful. Just yesterday I was sitting in a field without beans and I saw a savannah sparrow flying into a bush and periodically tossing its head back. I put the beans in my ears and as if by magic the bird sang and was easy to hear. And I could hear another Savannah that I haven't seen. They are hard in the wind. Bobs are great with tap dancing. I hear them like never before. I could hear woodcocks in the distance. I could hear Prachtsinger like a 12 year old. I like beans very much. After all the PSAPs I've tried, I'm feeling a bit cut off from the world. Your voice sounds strange. Sometimes you hear your footsteps. People treat you strangely. Beans aren't so bad on all of these counts. I've found that if you pull them out of your ears as far as possible without getting screeching feedback, they don't produce hollow voices and footsteps. I even cut the earbud in half so the beans don't stick out of my ears so much. Also my experience of bird watching and interacting with other people in them was better. Apparently they didn't think I was an alien when I wore beans because they just looked like hearing aids. It's normal for bird watchers my age and older to wear products that look like hearing aids. And now the decisive argument. Yes, they do a really good job of letting me hear the birds. All PSAPs I've tried work, to be honest. I have a slightly strange sound reproduction in them. But not as bad as the other two. I felt pretty safe with my ID calls in them. And I think it will get better as I get used to hearing birds singing through them. The biggest difference was being able to locate the birds I was hearing. I heard the three-part call of a Tennessee Warbler through the trees and knew it was in the upper right part of the oak tree. With other PSAPs I've tried, I've looked everywhere without knowing where the bird is. Maybe it's because the beans are a bit more like part of my natural ear. But for some reason, Beans made finding birds a lot easier for me. For me, the fact that I could find birds visually, not by hearing, was important enough to overcome the lack of interesting Bluetooth capabilities. . Of course I would like to be able to listen to podcasts instead of listening to my brother. Who wouldn't? But I really enjoyed finding the birds I heard. How will other ornithologists learn to trust you when you're calling for birds they can't hear and then consistently can't find them? Beans allow me to find these birds. For me that was important enough because I liked them the most that I tried. Check out my full review and other emergency call center reviews on GNPbirds dot net.