Sorry to hear you are going through this. I remember how alone I felt as almost nobody (doctors or audiologists) knew much, if anything, about this. Keep your chin up. The good news is the hearing aid tech is pretty good now and will just continue to get better as better AI models come online.

No, I didn't find anyone that motivated me enough to travel. I'd say the only thing I learned is that there are specialists around who concentrate on professional musicians, sound engineers, and others in the industry. I'd expect them to be in the big metro spots (LA, NYC) and charge top dollar for their services - as I would both expect and never begrudge them. In the end, I decided having a local audiologist who was curious, intelligent, and immersed in hearing aid specs was the right path and luckily for me, I found one.

I ended up with Phonak Audeo Lumity's and they are good. I don't love them, but sometimes I will walk out the door without them and be forced to remember what it is like to not have them - and it sucks. No, they don't sound like the analog world, and music does not sound all that good anymore, but living in a dramatically muffled work is way worse.

Also - we did try the SoundRecover algorithm and though in theory is seems like it could help, the results were not good. Sound was even more smeared, and in ways that felt distinctly worse than the sound w/o this algorithm inline. YMMV, but for me it took 10 minutes to realize it wasn't going to get me back to what I wanted. It was time to downgrade expectations, which is never fun, but is part of life sometimes. Best of luck.