I know it’s a little late in the month for an epiphany; but – despite its tardiness in not only time, and some other dimensions – Tuesday morning was the occasion for a rather remarkable and personal one.
I have written on here, before, about my struggles with increasing deafness: particularly my hard-won aural relationship with music and theatre. I have also detailed how – in the process of enabling these acts; of wringing out every single gram of what is left of my hearing… – I have begun to morph into something of a cyborg.
Until Tuesday, all of my efforts had been based around maximizing the amount of sound entering my head through my ears: either via my hearing aids, or with various combinations of headphones and amplification. My latest (and longest-lasting) setup (sans hearing aids) – after much experimentation; and taking into account the recommendations and experiences of those also ‘deaf’ – consists of a pair of AudioMX AX‑05 circumnaural headphones, plugged into a FiiO K5 desktop headphone amplifier: into which itself was slotted FiiO’s Alpen 2 DAC and headphone amplifier (which could therefore also be used on its own outside the house); and into which (finally) was piped (or, rather, cabled) the sound from my iPhone (on which I keep all my Apple Music playlists).
