iCHENFIT Music app for iPhone and iPad

Take off your hearing aids and enjoy wonderful music with iCHENFIT Music.

1. Background

iCHENFIT Music is the first specific music player for people with hearing loss.

iCHENFIT Music is based on the new auto-fitting and amplification strategy CHENFIT (more details about CHENFIT can be found on: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ichenfit/id579298013?mt=8).

When listen to music with hearing aids, wearers would find that the perception is not very good because: (1) hearing aids have limited frequency bandwidth (approximate from 100 Hz to 6000 Hz) which may be satisfied for speech but not music; (2) the re-pick music by the microphones of hearing aids may introduce noise and distortion. With iCHENFIT Music, you can enjoy the wideband, stereo, and digital music which amplified by the real-time processing strategy.

2. User Guide
(1) Setting
(1.1) AUDIOGRAM
Type in the audiogram provided by professional audiologist, then press the “Save and Fitting” button to save the data and do the auto-fitting.

(1.2) AMPLIFICATION MODE
“Nonlinear” mode is recommended to be used for cochlear hearing loss (which has damaged outer hair cell and/or inner hair cell, like presbycusis and drug-induced hearing loss). It automatically adjusts the gain for different input levels (more gain for soft sounds and less gain for loud sounds).

CHENFIT now can only find the optimal amplification for average cases (there is still no way to quickly fit each type of hearing loss with optimal gains). Some individual may be bias from average and find that this mode is not so suitable. At the same time, as the user’s device has not yet been calibrated for sound pressure level, some bias may be introduced. In these cases, you can use “Linear” mode instead.

“Linear” mode can be used for users with conductive hearing loss (like having problem in eardrum or middle ear bones) and those with cochlear hearing loss who are not satisfied with “Nonlinear” mode. This mode has a fixed gain for all input levels. So you may need to turn up volume button for soft sounds and turn down for loud sounds manually. Before choosing this mode, please turn down volume button to avoid over-amplification.

(2) Music
(2.1) List
“List” will synchronize the music list in iPod library. Every time when new songs are added to the iPod library, you need to terminate the iCHENFIT Music and then restart it.

(2.2) Player
The manipulation is similar to other music players (like iPod).