Hi all,
I am new to HA. I have an appointment with Costco in two weeks to try out a pair of their Kirkland 6.0 hearing aids.
I hear the there is an app called Signature Navigator that pairs directly to your hearing aids, so you don’t have to use any external items.
I’ve never worn hearing aids, so I am try to learn about them here.
Does anyone have any knowledge of these hearing aids and what do you think of them?
Also, I use the built in Bluetooth in my car for my cell phone. Can I use it together with the Bluetooth and the hearing aids, or must I turn something off.
Thanks for looking.
The bluetooth functionality on the Kirkland hearing aids is only available using an iPhone. The tech at the Costco I went to said that it should work with certain newer Android phones however they were unable to pair the HAs with my Nexus 6p which is the a very recent Android phone that always has the most recent version of Android.
If you want to use the hearing aids with a bluetooth device in your car you have to buy an intermediary device from Costco which is a few hundred dollars.
I was completely underwhelmed with my experience both with the tech person at Costco and the performance of the hearing aids. They amplified ambient noise like my refrigerator way too much and did nothing to help me hear in a crowded situation. And the tech programmed the left hearing aid for my right ear. I returned them within a week.
Your refrigerator complaint is typical for all new hearing aid users – regardless of brand. You are hearing sounds that were suppressed by poor hearing. This complaint shows up frequently here. You have to go a number of weeks, typically, for the mind to get uses to the new sound; it then filters them and they move to the distant background. Typing on keyboards, motors, fans and such are new to the brain and it features them and slowly learns to mute them.
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Your refrigerator complaint is typical for all new hearing aid users – regardless of brand. You are hearing sounds that were suppressed by poor hearing. This complaint shows up frequently here. You have to go a number of weeks, typically, for the mind to get uses to the new sound; it then filters them and they move to the distant background. Typing on keyboards, motors, fans and such are new to the brain and it features them and slowly learns to mute them.
I’m not a new hearing aid wearer. I’ve been using them since 2005. Compared to the Oticon Agil Pro hearing aids I was wearing prior to the KS6, the sound floor on the Costco hearing aids are much noisier.
I’m currently demoing a pair of Widex dream 440 and they have a really good base amplification level compared to the KS6 and the Oticons.
Usually people put their audiogram in their signature. Senior members can make recommendations based on your hearing loss.
It’s my opinion, being a hearing aid wearer and an experienced computer and electronics person, that there isn’t an implementation of bluetooth in the hearing aids themselves that is worth the money. You may feel otherwise after trying it but my experience is that bluetooth is marketed as a feature of the hearing aids themselves but is in fact a feature of an intermediary streaming device. Or, if the hearing aids themselves do have Bluetooth, it’s functionality is extremely limited, as is the case with the KS6. I personally would rather spend money on hearing aids that have been developed to help me hear better in noisy environments than ones that have been developed to sort of work with bluetooth. Most companies that makes hearing aids at this point have a way to connect bluetooth devices to the hearing aids.
The Android app only supports Samsung Galaxy smartphones:
http://ks6userportal.com/compatibility/
Amplification of soft environmental sounds is a matter of personal preference. Some people want to hear their refrigerator, others don’t. The KS6 has an expansion control which can be increased to make the hearing aid less sensitive to soft sounds. You might want to try another fitter at a different Costco location.
Thank you for the advice. That’s good to to know about the fitting. I’ve decided that Costco is too far out of the way and the fitters too inexperienced to warrant the cost.
In regards to the bluetooth, one of the other fitters mentioned that about the Galaxy. My question though is why does it only work with that particular phone? It certainly isn’t due to a better implementation of bluetooth in the Galaxy or a more robust version of Android. It’s most likely a partnership between the two manufacturers (cell phone and hearing aid) for cross marketing purposes. I don’t care to pay for a poorly implemented “feature” of a hearing aid that I am unable to use. I feel that although the KS6 hearing aids are more affordable than many others on the market that the cost to value ratio is actually very low. The sharp catch on the battery doors on the KS6 hearing aids point toward the wearer. A sharp object built in to the surface of a device that a person wears on her/his body for extended periods of time is an indication of extremely poor design.
Because Samsung, Motorola, HTC, LG all have their unique tweaks to the Android OS. Resound worked to gain compatibility with Samsung Galaxy first, because that phone is the biggest Android seller.
Because Samsung, Motorolla, HTC, LG all have their unique tweaks to the Android OS. Resound worked to gain compatibility with Samsung Galaxy first, because that phone is the biggest seller.
It is also possible that only the newer aids from either are using a different chip than others currently. Both are top-line products and would go for more expensive components. Such a chip might have lower latency to work with low-power Bluetooth. This seems likely as the Apple 5 doesn’t work while the 5S, which has a newer upgrade, does. The high end Galaxy would use higher end chips and want to be most competitive with high end components.
legally resound, starkey and apple can’t call this bluetooth.
The packets are probably straight BLE. BLE doesn’t have an audio standard so that is the proprietary part, running audio over BLE. Bluetooth licenses are free but there is a responsibility to be interoperable with other Bluetooth devices, so they wouldn’t want to call it BLE because they want to control the list of devices it works with.
BLE is also called Bluetooth Smart so when you see Resound use the word “Smart”, as in Smart Range, it is a clue, without actually spelling it out.