A buddy of mine dives with the ear cover mask. Its cool and works for him. Everytime I dive with him I help him plug in the little ear cover tubes into the mask as when he adjusts they always pull/pop off the mask when we hit the water.
He also says he can hear better underwater.. I've not tried the mask because the plugs work great for me.
Can you find out if equalization is required and whether there is a difference in pressure without water in the ear? After all I suppose pressure doesn't matter as long as there's no water?
I couldn't hear anyway (oh yeah I'd love to be ale to wear hearing aids, but I think those would block the ear covers from working properly and mind you I wouldn't want to get $1k hearing aids wet).