If this was his first pair of hearing aids then you would be absolutely correct, it would take him weeks, over even months, to get accustomed to the new sounds.

If this was his first pair of hearing aids then you would be absolutely correct, it would take him weeks, over even months, to get accustomed to the new sounds. From what I know of people with CIs (I wear hearing aids) the process of re-learning sounds is much harder - with hearing aids it is more about the barrage of sounds and noise, with CIs it is more about learning what the sounds actually represent as well as the noise etc. The opening sentence in the article does say that he has worn aids before but none were as good as his new Phonaks - so getting used to the new aids would be pretty easy for him.