Unfortunately, I still don't know the answer. At least to my ears, music sounds clear and beautiful, so why is speech so muffled and hard to understand? My hearing loss remains a mystery. A thorough evaluation at a university hospital might reveal the cause, but nothing I can do on my own will uncover it. For now, I'm left with an unresolved limitation: I can't tell whether the problem lies in the peripheral auditory system, the central auditory system, or the cochlear implant itself.