improving ear canal shape for IIC users

[trevorman]

Is there anyone out there who is able to improve the quality of their hearing by "pricking up your ears"? It's akin to pulling down on the lower or upper part of your ear which, apparently, straightens out the ear canal and lets in more sound --at least, high frequency sound-- except that you doing it entirely by facial muscle control. I can do it pretty easily now but it takes an expenditure of effort --like smiling big-- and I can't do it without simultaneously raising my eyebrows. But the effect, for me as someone who uses an IIC hearing aid, the improvement is significant.

Obviouslywhen I do this I'm deforming the shape of my ear canal in some advantageous way. I'd like to make it a permanent state of affairs for the sake of better hearing. Some muscles are pulling or pushing on the ear canal in some way that result in this effect. Has anyone looked into this phenomenon or have any information about it? Maybe I should be asking this on a plastic surgery forum, but I'm wondering if there might not be some kind of Botox injection or snip-and-tuck that could improve my hearing!

[Um bongo]

You may also be pulling your tensor tympani muscle, or opening the end of the eustacian tube (which affects the impedance of your ear drum). Both of these can appear to alter you hearing.

Sorry, but changing the basic shape of the ear canal doesn't have a great effect. Pulling the pinna out and cupping your hand around it does give up to 20 dB increase in higher frequencies though.

[wutzizname]

Curious, are you only noticing this when you have your IIC in, or do you hear the improvement when you're not wearing your aid as well? I wear Soundlens too, as well as some other aids interchangeably, and I can often improve the sound with any of them by flexing my ear up. However my take on this is that by flexing that muscle I am breaking the seal between the aid and the canal, reducing the occlusion and allowing more direct sound in...basically, combining the filtered/amplified sound with more of the natural. The net of this appears to be louder volume. In theory, I think one might get the same effect if there was enough room to add a larger vent to an aid, but of course the pinhole ones are about all they are able to offer.

If I'm not wearing my hearing aids and I flex the same muscle to lift my ears up, I do not notice any hearing improvement. Hence my conclusion above.