Name: Carl
Age: 81
Location: California
Hearing profile: Severe to profound hearing loss
Occupation: Certified Flight Instructor for the past decade. Forty years as an airline pilot and captain with extensive domestic and international flight experience in Mexico, Canada, Europe and Asia.
What do you love about your job? “Being able to share with others my enthusiasm for aviation.”
How did your hearing-loss journey begin? “It may have started when I was very young. My dad and I went to the shooting range a lot. That may have contributed to it.”
What kind of impact has hearing loss had on your life? “I was painfully shy growing up, afraid to talk to girls because I might not correctly hear what they said and embarrass myself. I didn’t realize till later that my progressive hearing loss probably had a lot to do with that.”
What’s it like to live with hearing loss now? “This morning was typical. I left the house saying ‘What??’ to my wife about three times. She said, ‘Get your hearing aids fixed!’ – those were her last words as I went out the door. I try, I really try hard with the hearing aids, but….”
What was your first phone call like with SonicCloud? “With my personalized hearing profile, I could hear loud and clear. It was absolutely amazing. I was completely shocked by how well I could hear. It was so much better than with hearing aids.”
What were your toughest hearing issues? “First, I do have kind of sensitive ears. With SonicCloud, the clarity was amazing but it wasn’t painfully loud. Also, S’s and Sh’s are really hard for me. We worked on boosting those sounds to the level where I could hear them, programmed the app just for me. I had a hard time distinguishing the numbers ‘two’ and ‘three’ when they were spoken as well. SonicCloud finally allowed me to hear the difference.”
What is your favorite part of using SonicCloud now? “When I made that first SonicCloud call, it was amazing. It was a whole new world for me. My heart was really starting to pump. I didn’t say ‘What?’ once. Not once. I didn’t have to ask for anything to be repeated. That has continued to be such a blessing for me. Now if you can just get this quality of sound into the cockpit of my plane, that would be fantastic!”
