Hi,
I replied to Chazz off-line and he suggested that there may be more hearing-impaired birders on Tweeters who might be interested in my experience with this product.

I bought this device several years back (a bit pricey at $750) and use it about 1/2 the time when I'm in the woods, parks and meadows. I've lost almost all of my hearing over 6000 hz so this is important adjunct to my ears.
Pluses: It really does work, doing a great job of picking up high frequency sound and digitally reducing the sound and feeding it back through the earphones. I haven't systematically kept track of batteries, but I'd say they last 16 hours or more.
Cons: Feel and fit a little clumsy plus add to my bird-nerd look with bins, camera, scope, eBird enabled phone and our favorite birding costume from Columbia PFG and Tilley. It's been hard for me to instantly recognize the digitally altered sound as coming from a specific bird variety. Mainly it lets me know that birds are around, they are a particular direction and then I start trying to get a visual. They don't work well near a constant underlying sound like running streams or groups of birders walking on gravel.
It's probably vain, but I tend to wear them all the time when I'm birding by myself (except if I'm out looking at ducks or shorebirds) and much less often when I'm birding with others.

Bottom line is that I'm glad I have them and probably should use them more and try to improve my bird sound id knowledge of the altered sound.

Hope this helps
Dick


-----Original Message-----
From: Tweeters <tweeters-bounces at mailman11.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Chazz Hesselein
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2018 2:15 PM
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: [Tweeters] RFI: The Songfinder- A digital bird song hearing aid

Dear Hearing Impaired Tweeters,

I started birding after I had damaged my hearing. My lower frequency hearing is still pretty good but higher frequencies, e.g., many warblers, kinglets, crossbill flight calls, forget it. I got some hand-me-down hearing aids that didn't seem to help much for anything. I went online and read the ABA article on high frequency hearing loss which was pretty favorable regarding the Songfinder hearing aid system. Do any of you have any experience with Songfinder? If so, does it improve your ability to locate birds? How long do the batteries last? Is it a worthwhile investment? Any other thoughts?

Thanks,

Chazz Hesselein
Port Orchard, WA
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