Anyone tried the Earlens and have any advice?

Hearing Aids
#10

Thank you Blacky. All of the tests were 20 words or more. I definitely guessed a lot on all of them. I am used to guessing in life and sometimes I get it right and often times I don’t. Per the advice given on this forum, I just made an apt at Costco, so soon I will have a 4th test to compare. I wear my hearing all day every day. Without them I cannot understand anything unless I’m lip reading.

I was wondering how I train my brain to focus on understanding? I would love to do that!! Do you have any suggestions for fitting/programming with my high frequency loss? I have never tried custom molds and am considering giving this a try with larger, shorter vents? Sounds like earlens won’t do much for me except frustrate me, so I’m going to try Costco brands first. I will ask for frequency lowering as well. Is this something that is available with the Costco Preza and regular Resound Quattro?

I really appreciate all of your advice. thank you!

#11

Thank you for the kind words and info. You are right. When I am just talking to one person who is facing me and I am concentrating on their lips I can hear pretty well. It’s in group situations or if someone is calling to me from across the room or in another room or has their back to me that I cannot hear them at all. I will def look into remote mics for group situations. Do you happen to know if my iPhone will work as remote mic for the resound quattro and costco preza?

#12

Advice I was given here is - audiobooks. Especially if you read the book in parallel.
What worked nicely for me is streaming everything in my ear, then brain finally get something useful to work from it.

I also tried LACE training (made a topic about it), but I found it too hard. When they would start with target speech in speech babble, I’d flank it completely. Also, I did only lowest level of challenge. I tried one day level up and I was horrible :joy:
I did that training when I started trialing my marvels 2-3 months ago. Luckily, it’s lifetime access so I plan to use it more, to help my brain with more challenging situations.

Some time after I finally finish the trial, and sort things out with the insurance to see if they’ll give any money :joy:

For other things, I’d say, go and be evaluated. Then gather information and come here and we’ll brainstorm.

My order would be first hear out the fitter, make tons of notes, adjust fitting. If that isn’t enough (to get your unaided wrs with aids), then look into molds and play with vents. Then if that’s given the best possible, peek into frequency lowering just to see if you can get more out of it. If you’ll have energy by then :joy:

#13

audiobooks sound like a wonderful way to train the brain. I’ll give that a shot! Thank you

#14

Someone who owns the Prezas would have to comment on Prezas vs. Quattros. One thing that I do remember was that one of our forum members, focusandearnit, had a severe enough hearing loss that with ultrapower receivers, he found that Quattro’s didn’t go far enough into high frequencies for him. I only need medium power frequencies and the ReSound MP receivers go much farther into the high frequencies.

I think the active user profile applies across all programs that you can have access to in the ReSound Smart 3D app. But one thing Neville, an HCP who frequents this forum, suggested to Volusiano is that if you want to compare fitting algorithms side-by-side (and if you can talk your own fitter into doing it), is instead of having the usual four ReSound programs, All-Around, Restaurant, Outdoors, and Music, the fitter could temporarily remove one of the basic programs like Outdoors and substitute a second copy of the All-Around program. Then you could have the first copy of the All-Around program using the ReSound Audiogram+ fitting algorithm and the 2nd copy of the All-Around program employing, let’s say, the NAL-NL2 profile. Just by switching in the Smart 3D program from All-Around program #1 to All-Around program #2 and back, you could compare fitting program sounds side-by-side in the same listening environment - and if you wanted to temporarily sacrifice the Restaurant and Music programs as well, you could even have additional versions of the All-Around program fit with DSL5, etc., to decide if any of the different algorithms make more of a difference to your sound perceptions.

Volusiano has a post from a while back that shows with the OPN fitting program how the different amplification schemes of the different fitting algorithms affect the amplification he gets for his hearing loss: New OPN1 ITE aids In his comparison, he didn’t find NAL-NL2 worked as well as he expected whereas I like it better than other fitting algorithms I’ve had the opportunity to try.

With an agreeable fitter, you could probably try the fitting algorithm comparison scheme for almost any other brand of HA that you might want to trial, too.

#15

Thanks Jim:) That is great advice and I will plan to do that! I have been searching the internet for discount sites and have found some very reasonable options, which I am seriously considering.

Also I am thinking of trying out the new Phonak Paradise 9? I had Phonak before my Widex (so that would have been purchased 6 years ago) and def did not love them, as they never really fit correctly (always sliding out of my left ear) and maybe they weren’t adjusted as well as they could have been either. I think I need custom molds and I won’t really be able to tell if I can hear better until I try them.

Honestly, I’m a little overwhelmed with the choices…the quattros were a bit tinny but I felt like I could understand speech better than my current or previous aids. Is tinny what is necessary for understanding? I tested the Phonak Marvels and I didn’t like them because I still felt like I couldn’t hear words…do I just need custom molds and then they would be wonderful? My most recent hearing aids, widex, have too much feedback and break often. I’ve had some advice here that the earlens won’t be substantially better than a better hearing aid because of my high frequency loss. The prices at Costco sound great but it’s so crowded and hard to get an apt. Anyway, sorry to go on and prob in the end all the hearing aids have pros and cons. I really need a fantastic audiologist to help me figure this all out.

Thanks for chatting with me and all the advice. I really appreciate it!!

#16

Trying out as many different HA’s as you can and picking the one that works for you best sounds like a great idea. Good luck and it will be interesting to hear what you settle on and why.

P.S. Relative to tinny sounds, for any HA, including ReSound’s, there are options to boost the relative amount of bass in the fitting software and a more closed fit traps more bass in your ear as compared to an open fit, which allows relatively more bass that the receiver has produced to escape your ear - this perception particularly comes into play in streaming where you are not hearing sound from your environment but rather “sound” streamed directly to your HA’s electronically and then produced directly in your ear canal by your receivers. The more closed a fit, though, the more you may be bothered by the sound of your own voice - some HA brands have adjustments for that, e.g., Signia Nx.

#17

Hey Jim, I’m interested to try NAL-NL2. How do you set different target rules on separate programs? I don’t see any options in fitting software for that, if you change target rule it applies to every program. Thanks.

#18

@jim_lewis (also, check correction at the end)
Resound works on one base concerning gain curve and then modify it by features (like noise cancelling etc)

Phonak has ability to have more bases (gain curve) and modify by features. But they all still depend on the chosen formula, eg you cannot have one program fitted with NAL-NL1 and another with DSL 5. Dependency is seen in terms how adjacent frequency behaves when you change gain at one frequency handle. Formula determines behaviour of the curve. You cannot enter the values directly as you’d like, like put 10 at 250Hz and then 100 at 500Hz and then 20 at 1000Hz.

Different bases for phonak means that you can have eg calm where gain at 250Hz is 20, and music where gain is 40 (all other left same or changed automatically because of non ability to put discreet values).

You cannot do that with aids that work from single base, like resound is.

But even with phonak, when you do verification with REM-speech mapping aids are in special mode for that, you don’t program some program but aids, the base.

Maybe oticon really has ability to do completely independent several bases. Can’t recall that I’ve heard about it though.

Ok, correction, single base and multi base I picked up was for the automatic switching.

Still, base formula for phonak is the same. You can change gains but behaviour how curve moves will follow the formula.
For resound I concluded that I don’t have the ability to change gains per frequency, but granted, I didn’t stare at the programming software for days. I concluded that they don’t have automatic programming as phonak which I like, so I closed it.

Easiest way to compare two formulas woud be to fit two aids and swap them for comparison in different situations.

@julieMK


If you haven’t already, I highly recommend this guy, and also value hearing channel (and their blog) to gather information.

In my experience, paradise and marvel are the same from hearing abilities. But I have good high frequency hearing so I wouldn’t notice if they did something different.

One thing I’ve noticed is that we don’t use same words to describe same sounds. Eg tinny, distorted, sharp and so on.
If you aim for best speech comprehension, then chase that and ignore if people sound like Mickey mouse. After a while it’s all be your new normal anyway.

Earlens use light to cause your eardrum to vibrate. Hearing aids use sound.
But, for you to hear, your eardrum has to send vibrations through the middle ear bones, they excite cochlea and it sends signals to the brain.
If only cochlea is damaged (no matter which frequency), it really doesn’t matter how eardrum was excited in the first place.

One use case where earlens could shine, is if their optic device is tiny - for people who have huge loss but tiny ear canals who couldn’t use big receivers. Or in general have better domes/molds option for people with really small canals.
But I have no clue what’s the size of that part for earlens, so might be quite the opposite.

Or if someone has some really problematic ear canal, I can’t even imagine what would that be, where sound could be messed up but light wouldn’t during the travel on that short distance between output point and eardrum.

Or if independent of that tech, their mics and software are insanely better for eg speech in noise situations. But I highly doubt that. If they did something so revolutionary, it would be on the headlines already :slight_smile:

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#19

ReSound must have changed the application of the fitting algorithm. Back in March, 2019, when Volusiano remarked that it was Neville who had suggested the idea to him of having different fitting algorithms applied to different copies of the same program within the smartphone app, I was able to do it for my ReSound fit (would have been v1.5 or less of Smart Fit, probably). I even had the music program set up to use Audiogram+ whereas All-Around, Restaurant, and Outdoors were NAL-NL2. I couldn’t upgrade the last few versions of Smart Fit and had to do a total new install for each. So I was surprised recently when I restored my fit from a backup that all programs including music were NAL-NL2 fit now (but I didn’t appreciate why). A “new” feature, relative to my memory of past versions, is when you look in patient profile, both the fitting algorithm used for the patient and the user experience profile assigned to the patient are now summarized on the patient profile page and both these parameters can be changed on the patient profile page without any announcement of recalculating anything - it just happens. So that’s new, too, by my recollection.

I’ll see if I have an older version of Smart Fit on another computer (1.5 or less) and double-check how that behaves. Maybe I was badly hallucinating at the time?! :slightly_smiling_face: The forum does not like DIY discussions in main threads so any further comment I will contribute to the DIY area.

#20

The Dr. Cliff video on Word Recognition was good. I’d quibble a bit about shortening the word list being a problem. If somebody gets the first 9 or 10 words right, odds are there is little to be gained by doing a full 50 word test. If however patient only gets 5 out of 10 right, getting a more accurate score is of more value.

Totally agree with your comments about speech comprehension and ignoring sound “quality.” I think there should be more patient education letting people know that things are going to sound different because they haven’t heard certain sounds for a long time and that softer sounds will sound much louder because otherwise they wouldn’t be audible. Basically a brief explanation of dynamic range and compression.

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#21

Relative to previous comments made here: Anyone tried the Earlens and have any advice?, here’s what I found out by going back to Smart Fit 1.3 on an older computer.

In Smart Fit 1.3, one could pick the fitting algorithm under Target Rule but it wasn’t applied until one right-mouse-clicked on a program tab and applied the change either to just the current program or all programs (one ear or both ears). So by only applying an algorithm to one specific program, you could have programs active at the same time that ran under different fitting algorithms. The change survives saving the patient profile to disk, closing, and reopening Smart Fit. It’s not ephemeral (and the difference in sound between programs showed up in my ears when using the Smart 3D app). In Smart Fit 1.8, as soon as you pick the fitting algorithm under Target Rule and apply it, it’s applied to all programs immediately. So in March, 2019 with Smart Fit 1.3, one could do with ReSound Quattro’s as with OPNs and experiment at the same time with different fitting algorithms used on different copies of the same program to compare the sound differences between fitting algorithms at the same time in the same environment but no longer (unless using the DIY info, you latch onto a copy of Smart Fit 1.3). It looks like the exact fit, though, may have changed a bit between version 1.3 and 1.8 so whatever one concluded using v1.3 might not carry over into v1.8.

The patient profile page in v1.3 did show the User Experience level setting in a dropdown but not the fitting algorithm in use. I guess ReSound wanted to eliminate the possibility that one could carelessly have one program set to one fitting algorithm and other programs accidentally set to something else. So now all programs have to use the same fitting algorithm.

Edit_Update: I also found my original post from back in March, 2019 where I described copying Neville and Volusiano’s experimental OPN idea for my Quattro’s in the Edit_Update note at the end: GN Hearing introduces ReSound LiNX Quattro (probably using Smart Fit v1.3)

#22

That holds for medium losses.

However if you have significant cochlear damage (or dead regions *), it probably distorts sounds. And chasing the dragon ‘natural sound’ is just doomed to endless unhappiness. Then it’s definitely better to adapt to the aids ASAP and give brain time to learn to work with that messy sound and extract the info nevertheless.

About * - there’s hypothesis that if you need more than 60db, you probably have something dead out there. And whenever there are dead cells or almost dead, they either produce distortion because they’re broken or adjacent cells (on cohlea, not on the audiogram) get ‘something’, which doesn’t correspond to any proper frequency that was sent.

My hypothesis is that if you don’t hear pure tones, but they have some prrrr or other type of vibration, you might found dead regions and you definitely have distortion that will affect everything.

I think I even somewhere read about that, but let’s say this is just an assumption based on my mess.

So for low frequency loss if there’s vibration and not tone, open fit and NAL-NL1 is worth trying - to remove all that bass that only brings distortion and not useful information.

For high frequency loss with vibrations, I’d go with frequency lowering and with that move skipping that damaged part of the cochlea.

What I hear is miles away from natural, it is sharp and still distorted but less than if I just use headphones and amplify. But, I get comprehension with HAs that I can’t get with headphones plus without them yes it sounds natural with a great earplug. At least those things I can detect.

And I opted for putting HA in good ear, sending distorted sound (this time my guess is that I just hear how poor those speakers are :joy:) but having them balanced for streaming. Ability to follow things streamed into my ears in stereo is worth every cent.

I didn’t know that in games you can hear at which side something happened. With this 2 ear setup I can, without streaming even, only with soundbar.

You start noticing things once you start learning about sound in ears. I think that also helps with training the brain.

#23

Many people with severe to profound losses also have medium losses. It’s likely the medium losses that most need the gain. Oticon has some Audiology Online classes on difficult to fit losses and they stress that the idea is to aid the losses that are aidable and not try to give the most gain to the biggest losses.

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#24

Ok, I meant that giving story about dynamic range and not hearing some sounds for some time works for people who have at most medium losses.

Since you said that patients should be educated about that. I agree. I just think that harder losses and if they have any vibration during audiogram should get additional story explaining things. Since then it’s not about sounds you now hear and previously you didn’t but about distortion.

Once you get into significant cochlear damage, then it’s better to work with what’s left than introduce even more distortion. With that I agree. I also checked some course on that, plus read a ton. And that’s exactly what I was referring to. Because damaged cochlea gives distortion and unnatural sound, and it is not about dynamic range left.

So, I think there are one or two explanation stories about what is expected from the HA sound people should get, depending on their loss.

#25

The iphone as a remote mic feature is called Live Listen. It works with made-for-iphone hearing aids. So it works with the ReSound Linx Quattro. I don’t see the ReSound Preza on the made-for-iphone list so it won’t work for that one. It’s good to try out Live Listen but don’t rule out remote mics if you don’t like it. There are other mics that work better. Phonak is overpriced and I like Oticon’s ConnectClip best.

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#26

Starkey also has table mic, if that’s desired use for the mic (eg in restaurants, or dinner with a family at home).

Works similar to the phonak select from what I can gather from the info, costs half the price of select, and it’s tied only to latest starkey aid.

#27

I just found out about this looking online for an audiologist. Seems pretty expensive.

#28

We put a page together here:

I do wonder if anyone in the forum has tried the Earlens 2.0 ?

#29

How about someone (not me, preferably one with experience with this technology) starting a new discussion group on the latest development called Earlens Patients - Earlens I just saw their ad in today’s San Francisco Chronicle. I am interested in this because I will then have a way to compare this device to regular hearing aids which I am currently wearing. Thanks.