DD will be along to tell you exactly what you need. IMO, go to Costco and try a few. I’m a big Siemens fan. All the brands have their fan-boys.
I’d be all over Costco if it were feasible but the closest one is a three hour round trip away.
What’s crazier - driving 1.5 hrs one way or spending 5-6k on hearing aids?? The Costco I went to is a 3-hour round trip.
I don’t know your exact situation, but it can be done.
I’ve had 4 visits so far and no more planned.
Great point! Plus I don’t think Costco charges a “restocking fee” like I had to pay as high as $450 when I returned a pair of the latest Siemens at a NON Costco Dispenser.
[quote="japple,post:10,topic:24208"] What's crazier - driving 1.5 hrs one way or spending 5-6k on hearing aids?? The Costco I went to is a 3-hour round trip.I don’t know your exact situation, but it can be done.
I’ve had 4 visits so far and no more planned.
[/quote]
Driving 1.5 hours each way isn’t that bad, since you probably won’t be going that often. I have gotten two sets of aids from Costco over the last 8 years and only needed a few visits the first months I had them. It is well worth the free trial, loss/damage guarantee and no restocking charge to make the trip. Plus, you can save a lot of money while there buying other products they carry. You will probably end up going there just to shop even when you don’t need to go there to adjust your HA’s. Go for it. You will be glad you did.
Slightly OT. I recognized the advantage of a Costco membership five years ago in the photo department. I usually place an order of 200 5X7 whenever I shoot grammar school soccer or basketball. Use to be 39 cents each, now 59 cents, a heck of a lot cheaper than the $1.25 at other places. The savings I get more than makes up for their membership fee.
My reluctance to going somewhere 1.5 hours away is that with the place I trialed the Siemens at I was pretty much there every week for 6 weeks making one change or another. If a three hour round trip that’s a lot of time off work.
randyp1234,
I have seen your audiogram before and that’s hard to fit. aids typically can’t fit a 65 dB loss and have a low noise floort at 2-3 kHz.
Why do you think that loss ‘needs’ a BTE fitting?
Dispenses like this aren’t binary: ‘You should be wearing X’.
Consider the curve, consider where the most relevant part of speech is, consider what’s ergonomically, acoustically and what’s cosmetically appropriate. Also consider the client’s expectations as well as the pathology of the canal etc.
There will be very little risk of a noise floor issue when the best hearing levels are 25dB.
Fitting an inverted loss like this without REM has potential to cause problems as you can’t tell the true gain generated as a function of the canal/aid resonance circa 2.6 KHz. If the aid is churning out too much gain here the client will become aware of it really quickly. At the other end of the loss if you fully implement the gain at 250 Hz say 20-25dB you may run into the upward spread of masking even at conversation levels (65dB) you’ll get around 90dB out which will rattle your teeth, due to the energy generated at this frequency.
Really needs somebody who knows what they are doing TBH.
Randy
Some have Saturday hours. Have you checked?
Doubledown:
I’ll try and describe what I’m calling a distortion as best as I can. You know how traffic makes a kind of hissing noise when you’re a half-block away or so? That sound through the aids sounded like I was listening to it through a hose, or it was the bottom of a well, or in a tunnel. It also happened as I was putting on and taking off my coat that had a nylon shell. Any sound like that, including my wife’s voice sometimes, had that bottom of a well sound.
As to your other questions: She started me out with double domes but I very quickly complained of a “stopped up” feeling so she switched me to the tulip domes. These were more comfortable and sounded better. Like I’ve read most new users do, I also complained that the high frequency sounds were too loud but that mid frequency sounds were still “muffled” by the domes. I felt that I was hearing the mid frequencies sounds through the domes rather than through the aids. Once I finally got her to give me some volume control and “turned them up” the feeling of the mid frequencies being muffled went away.
The trade off was feedback. Because of the way my ear canal is shaped I never felt the domes got a good seal and once the volume was turned up they squealed a lot. She finally decided that I needed custom molds but by the time I got them I was on the last week of my trial and I wasn’t confident enough that we’d get them right to keep them.
I had a medium receiver in the left and a small in the right. I’m sure part of the problem was me being unable to communicate the issue but also the Audi I was assigned seemed to be as new to this as I am. My bad, I know, for not asking for someone else sooner but if I go back to them I’ve already told them I want someone else.
Randy
— Updated —
I did, and they do. Along with evening hours until 8:00 three nights.
Randy
Um bongo,
bte can provide more gain. but I think I am focusing too much on his bad ear. a rite probably would be better.
Nobody here knows if randyp1234’s audiogram is accurate and I was speculating. but clearly what I am concerned about is not what he meant by distortion. but it remains to be seen if this distortion is masking the issue I am concerned about.
randyp1234,
I might be blowing the whole dynamic range issue out of proportion.
The COSTCO in East Peoria, is about an hour away… certainly isnt three hours. I live in EP and know how far Decatur is. You should go check them out…
Mapping software says 1.5 hours one way. This equals 3 hours.
Too true!! As soon as I get over a cold I have now that has my head clogged up I’ll be making an appointment.
Make the appointment now. Busy stores have first visits a month or more out.
Thanks KenP! I called them last week and they’re running about two weeks out.
Of the brands you listed your AuD carrying, I would recommend Siemens. If they have it, I would recommend Oticon, as I am an official Oticon fanboy. I have the t-shirt to prove it.
Don’t buy Audibel. At least if you end up with a Starkey you can go to different offices, but with Audibel you can really only go to Audibel. When our Audibel office shut down they all started flooding me and until I pirated the Audibel programming software it was a real pain in the butt.
I am going to second the comment.
Nearby Starkey dispenser has been working with me (actually his audiologist) nd she does not have and looks like she will NOT have the Audibel s/w to adjust my Audibels.
I think all this has to do with “territories” .
Whatever.
btw> If anyone has the installation files for the Audibel version sub-brand of Starkey Inspire fitting software sitting around on your harddrive somewhere please send me a PM.