This reminds me of one aspect of my hearing loss that's been hard to explain.
Amplification doesn't fix everything. My hearing loss is complex, a mix of conduction problems in the middle ear and something neurological as well. I can hear very high and very low frequencies surprisingly well. There's a big bite out of the main speech band, though.
I find that speech, with background noise, that goes through a mediocre microphone, 200 - 3000 Hz pass filter, and then a digital compression codec, and then through a loudspeaker -- no matter how loud -- can sometimes be nearly unintelligible to me. It's loud enough. But I can't figure out which sound that's supposed to be. It's just too distorted.
I take my hearing aids out to listen to music, most of the time. Despite usually being able to better hear the melody and lyrics with the hearing aids in. Because I know the sparkle you speak of, and it's wrecked by all but the very best-quality electronic amplification. Some people think it's odd that I'm finnicky about quality speakers, etc. when I'm half deaf. But every decibel of SNR counts when I lose most of it in my head.
(And I too hope one day they can fix that for both of us.)
The other thing you miss with hearing aids, and even headphones, are the low frequencies picked up more by the body than the ears. Sunn O))), for example. I’d rather listen raw, too, but I raise the level somewhat, which can bother others.
What I probably need is a DAC for my sound system. The music streaming services like Apple don’t provide an adequate way to equalize the audio and balance to compensate for my hearing loss.
Edit: I keep hoping that Apple will do a better job here with their next release of AirPods Pro. One of the problems with Apple Music is they set the max volume too low. I can sort of understand the desire to help people protect their hearing, but their max level is less than IRL, and there is no way to bypass that setting.
Tidal is better. And there are plenty of YouTube channels I listen to at half volume, so it’s not the Apple hardware causing the problem.
Amplification doesn't fix everything. My hearing loss is complex, a mix of conduction problems in the middle ear and something neurological as well. I can hear very high and very low frequencies surprisingly well. There's a big bite out of the main speech band, though.
I find that speech, with background noise, that goes through a mediocre microphone, 200 - 3000 Hz pass filter, and then a digital compression codec, and then through a loudspeaker -- no matter how loud -- can sometimes be nearly unintelligible to me. It's loud enough. But I can't figure out which sound that's supposed to be. It's just too distorted.
I take my hearing aids out to listen to music, most of the time. Despite usually being able to better hear the melody and lyrics with the hearing aids in. Because I know the sparkle you speak of, and it's wrecked by all but the very best-quality electronic amplification. Some people think it's odd that I'm finnicky about quality speakers, etc. when I'm half deaf. But every decibel of SNR counts when I lose most of it in my head.
(And I too hope one day they can fix that for both of us.)