I hesitate whether to wade into this conversation.

I understand that there are differing opinions in this thread. I will offer personal experiences as well as discussion with co-workers that are audiologists that deal with Ian's request, as well as input from my company's years of leading the in-ear monitor industry.

The situation is not nearly as simple as it may seem.

Many factors in effect. Ian's link highlights a good lion's share of them.

Pitch perception and one's ability to control one's own voice to a particular fundamental is not a universal rule. Different singers cue on different aspects of their own voice.

Some non-open fit Hearing aids can provide too much fundamental from the voice - not because of the sound coming into the hearing aid, but because of the occlusion effect of bone conducted sound that gets trapped between the eardrum and the hearing aid. One's brain does not normally hear so much fundamental frequency. In fact, what you hear/perceive from your own voice is not necessarily fundamental driven.

You can try this yourself - put well-sealing earplugs in your ears and try to speak/sing. You'll note that your hearing system can get swamped by 'bass'. This is one reason why you see many well-trained studio vocalists removing an earcup of a non-occluding headphone and putting their hand up to the 'naked' side - to feed more of those mids and highs back to the ear. I know that this works for me. Research 'phantom pitch' online to get some understanding of the phenomenon of perceived pitch, and how it is not nearly as simple as just resolving the fundamental.

In the in-ear monitor world for singers, one of the key aspects of them working properly is to get the proper balance of mid and higher frequencies presented back into the ear, to sound natural for the singer. This is true for folks with normal hearing. With various types of hearing loss, this becomes even trickier because of the brain's attempted adaption to the hearing loss over time.

Ian, we've discussed the possibility of a customized headphone listening setup - not unlike Mac's suggestion and not unlike what is suggested in the article. If your hearing aids are not well-vented, try taking them out. You'll need to boost mids and highs with a graphic EQ to make up for the aids, but at least you'll have tunability. But it might overcome some of that occlusion effect and give you back some of the 'air' that your brain needs to hear to help sing on pitch.

-Scott

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