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Hearing Health and Hearing Aids

olbriar said:
I don't wish to live in a walled garden but the days of playing with Android is over for me. The last four years of poor communication between my aids and my phone wiped the memory of them originally working well for almost two years. If the new aids give me communication problems, I'll be seriously looking at the icrap. (rip my lips off for saying it) It wasn't that they flat didn't work. They worked for notifications and very sorry phone connections some.. but you never knew when they quit. The phone would send the notifications to the aids but the aids would quit receiving them. There was no knowing what phone calls or text I missed until looking at the phone history. And if I answered a phone call, I would have to tell them I'd call them back. I would then turn off the aids and make the call. Phone conversations were impossible for either party to hear over the background static if they actually stayed connected. I never streamed audio... the quality was terrible and would suddenly stop after a few minutes. In other words... I could have a functional phone or I could have hearing assistance. I could not have both at the same time. UNACCEPTABLE!
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I have Oticon and it plays nice with my iPhone, fwiw.
 
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I get my new ears Saturday. I'm excited to hear better and to be able to communicate via my phone. I'm excited to try the tv audio streamer. I'm excited to get all of my notifications.
My good friend that I talked into aids shortly after I got my first set had his hearing retested Monday and is getting new aids. Though his aids have served him better than mine, they are over five years old and starting to have problems. He went with the Phillips aids and I the Sennheiser. Both aids, like most all aids of today, have an added AI chip that helps manage environments and suppose to adapt to the user. We shall see....
 
These new Phonak made for Costco aids are amazing. I'm still trying to figure them out like most all new electronics but the enhanced hearing is crazy good. The first think I noticed is they reproduce music well. I can once again recognize a song after hearing the opening few bars. That's something my old aids ruined. Music was so poorly reproduced it was near impossible to know what song was playing... no matter the volume. It's the same with voice. I've had a terrible time with understanding some voices and my wife's voice was part of the group. I think the new aids will help me communicate better with my wife.... maybe :) Phone conversations are simply stellar. That is a wonderful improvement. As I sat here this morning I was amazed that I could hear a train whistle as it came into town. I never heard that with the last aids and I can't remember the last time I heard the sound. I hear the air traffic overhead. I hear a dog barking far in the distance. I hear my keyboard that sounds like a thrashing machine while I type. The bottom line is the Phonak aids are not only presenting sound at an enhanced volume, the level of realism of the sounds is off the charts. I look forward to being in a group environment that I have tried to avoid for years. If these aids will allow me to not seem a fool in a group and can follow conversations and join in... I'll be dancing. And if I can sit in a restaurant and communicate with my wife and not hear all the patrons and kitchen staff over her voice, these aids are ticking all the desired boxes.
 
I'm figuring out the ins and outs of these new aids. One huge difference is the ability to answer a phone call and talk as well as hear the other party while my phone is within BT range. It uses the aid's microphones to pick up my voice and send it to my phone. Double tapping the aid or the top of my ear will answer and hang up the phone. It does put the ambient sounds the aids are getting into the conversation so a very noisy environment will not be good. I believe this designed means to communicate will be far superior to my old aids that required you to speak into the phone to converse. I talked with my sister using the aids for almost an hour last night. It was the first time in years that we conversed on the phone. We text all the time but talking was out of the question unless I turned my aids off. The quality of the call last night was stellar and we both enjoyed a lengthy sports and programming discussion.

I was able to test the aids while shopping at Walmart yesterday. The store was bustling with customers making the normal amount of noise and conversations. Though I didn't speak or was directly spoken to, I felt comfortable. Quite a change from my old aids where it was just unpleasant noise in that sort of environment.

The only negative feature that I can likely disable is a tone alert from the aids that I am out of BT range of the TV streamer. I'm still playing with the streamer. It's connected but not working as it is supposed to. It will give me something to mess with.
 
0h yeah I had ph0nax f0r a l0ng time bef0re I switch with Widex, there was ultimatelly a l0t 0f battery damange t0 them, and they where n0t fully waterpr00f at all in the end, the t0ne was strange, with my Widex when I c0nnect my S0und assisstance with them it sh0ws my blue light when s0me0ne texts 0r calls, pretty handy when I cann0t find my cell..
 
As in all things, they change as time goes by. The aids are rated to be submerged at a meter depth for 30 minutes. I'm sure I'd run out of air long before that :). As for battery life, only time will tell. They have plenty of charge at the end of a days use now.
 
I got to the bottom of the problem with the TV streamer. As I stated before, it establishes a connection to the aids and the associated phone app but there isn't any audio being sent and or received. I should have considered what was causing the problem but my memory is poor. I have a sound bar connected to the TV via HDMI Arc. To make that work properly I had to go into the audio setting on my TCL TV and choose Arc as the designated audio output. My only other option was to let the TV auto choose which output to prioritize which was a fiasco. The TV streamer is connected to the TV via an optical connection. It works great if I go into the audio settings and choose it for the designated output but that eliminates the soundbar. The problem is the way the TCL handles the audio outputs and not the streamer. The only audio input the two devices they have in common is optical. I'll buy an optical splitter and a longer optical cable for the sound bar and try that at some point. I'm in no hurry. With these new aid, I can hear a mouse fart at twenty paces. I should be able to hear the audio just fine from the soundbar and the audio level remain a comfortable level for my son.
 
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