Costco Kirkland Signature 9.0 (Product Information)

Was fitted yesterday with the KS9 devices in Watford in the UK. Just to let the international audience here know, Watford is a town about 10 to 15 miles north of London and is the location of one of the 4 Costco Warehouses in the UK. I won’t go into the distractions that I had yesterday - Levis 501s for £35 and a whole aisle of Xmas goodies including Lindor chocolate and Ferrero Rocher at knocked down prices :slight_smile:

Anyway, the audiologist was efficient and quickly did a REM and set me up on NAL-NL2. It didn’t sound loud enough at first, so she set it to 110% prescriptive target. I have clear custom cshell moulds, which disappear into my ear - apparently not very noticeable from the side, and the aids themselves are remarkably small - about half the size of my previous Venture V90 aids. Did a quick check outside in the main warehouse area, the audiologist talking behind me. Went through the Easy Line Remote App and the basic settings. Did not add any manual programs - so just had the automatic program.

Observations so far:

  • The high frequency pick up is something to behold. I could hear the rustling of food wrappers and other sounds - not obtrusively with very good clarity

  • The transitioning between automatic programs is unnoticeable. I couldn’t tell if any switches were made. This to a large extent is true of the previous Phonaks - the Venture.

  • The connection to my phone - Samsung 8, was very good and the streaming was good.

  • Plugged in the TV connector. Found that for some reason it would not connect to the usual Audio out socket with the Optical cable - no green light - but I had to plug it into the Satellite Audio out socket instead. This is a slight disadvantage as it means that for digital non-satellite programs, I won’t be able to use the connector.

  • Tried then to connect to my laptop. This is when the fun started and I discovered the one device pairing limitation of the KS9s. If you are going between the phone and the laptop (I am sure this is a known fact now in this forum), it’s ok pairing at first to the laptop, but when you go back to the phone, you have to forget (disconnect) the current device (in this case the laptop) and re-pair the phone (which has to be removed from the device list before you do this), and you also must turn the hearing aid on and off (before you remove and re-pair). This is not a deal breaker for me, but it is slightly inconvenient. Hopefully the KS9 will get a firmware update to fix this at some point, and I will ask the fitter to ask Phonak/Sonova about this.

Overall, it’s pretty impressive for a 1st fit straight out of the box. I will get Noahlink Wireless and change to the Phonak adaptive prescription formula and do some tinkering soon.

Need to check their performance in noise.

There is a follow up appointment in a month.

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Glucas - nice review. Visited your fair city to the South this summer to see the Red Sox / Yankee baseball game during the heat wave. Ug! But we enjoyed the visit. We are in Georgia USA.

My KS9 are on order. Phone is also S8. Question on pairing:

To pair to laptop - turn on laptop BT then open (shutoff) and close (turnon) each aid’s battery door to pair the HA to the laptop? To switch to the Cell phone - turn off the laptop BT, turn on the Cell phone BT then open and close the battery doors to pair to the HAs to the cell? Correct? A bit of a pain but I did note that the KS9 only pair to one device at a time whereas the Marvel Audeo M90 pair to two devices. Hopefully Sonova can change this, but I assume this is one way to add value to the pricier Marvels.

So can you pair one HA to the laptop and the other to the Cell phone at the same time - kind of a half and half solution so you can use both?

Also, you mentioned that the transitioning from one automatic program to another was not noticable. However, could you tell from the Aid’s performance whether a change was in fact made? Do you know how many automatic programs there are?

Will be interested in your noise testing … crowds, restaurants, social settings, etc.

Good luck and keep us updated. All the best.

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Hi JJR,

Thanks for the response. Not had the pleasure of Georgia! (Only Tennessee and Arizona in the southern states).

Yeah - the pairing is a bit of a pain. I think you have described it right. Once the aids are paired to one device, you can pair it to another, but when you try to go back to the original device you have to shut it down(by switching it off and on), lose that device and re-pair it.

Great question on whether you can pair individually. I don’t think so - because one aid has to be dominant - at least that’s what I was told yesterday.

On automatic changes - absolutely - otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to hear the radio in the car, or talk in noise. There is only 1 automatic program - but it switches to around 7 or 8 programs (which can be set manually and switched to if preferred) - from memory, when I saw the list yesterday - there was Calm Situation, Comfort in noise, Speech in noise, Speech in loud noise, Echo, Music, Car. I cannot remember the remaining 1.To complicate this further, the AutoSense 3.0 may blend some of those programs even further. Phonak talks of over 200 different configurations.

I will post updates as I haven’t had time to really test them in noise. Hope they are useful.

Cheers.

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Here is the list of programs and a sample of the adjustments.

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Since you can not use BT for more than one source, it is best paired to your phone, and use a TV connector for all others, works great with the computer.

RDB

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I had a similar experience and it turned out the bluetooth on my phone kept connecting. I notice it especially when moving or driving, but not as much when remaining in one place. I ended up turning off the bluetooth for audio when I’m not using it. Bluetooth for phone calls is still active.

It’s too bad that the KS9s seems unable to distinguish between pairing/unpairing vs connecting/disconnecting, but in almost all other respects I am really enjoying them and definitely intend to keep them, so on today’s grocery trip to Costco I ordered/purchased another TV Streamer for my laptop and got an appointment to have my fitter kick up the high frequencies a bit more to account for my honey’s very soft high voice, since I’m still often asking her to repeat herself. Hers is the only female voice I have difficulty hearing, which has always been a challenge with the hearing aids I wore for the past 12 years, so I need to be patient in working that out. I assume I’m going to need more volume on those high frequencies, but welcome any tips from other experienced users here.

I look forward to enjoying the same hands-free automatic connecting/disconnecting with my laptop that I presently enjoy with the TV set, as well as the very low battery consumption of the latter, whereas connecting to my laptop with the built-in bluetooth burns through batteries almost daily.

This will also perhaps ease the wear-and-tear on the hinged doors of my KS9s. :smile::rofl:

@Listeninout. No luck getting that to work in my S8. :frowning:

S8 sequence, settings> sounds and vibrations> bottom of page under “Looking for something else?” in the blue window, select Answering and ending calls,…

RDB

Yeah, it is turned on, but no names are announced. I’m assuming some other setting is interfering.

Actually it is very subtle and hard to hear, only contacts will be announced, and even then it;'s a close call, I do like the auto answer after 2 seconds, and may cut off the name.

RDB

I am a new user of the KS9. I have a problem.

When I use the hands-free phone feature I am getting a lot of static on incoming voices. This is not a problem, since when there is no sound on the other end there is no static. As soon as the person on the other end starts talking, there is static imbedded in the voice. There is no such static when the person on the other is listening to my voice.

I had a brief session today with the HA fitter. This fitter wears the same aid as me, and had the same sort of problem. He corrected his problem by changing a setting in the software. When he checked, he found that mine was already set correctly.

He turned down the streaming bass level, and it seemed to help when we tried it out at the store, so we thought that the problem was that the bass power was overrunning the receiver amplifier and driving it into saturation.

When I got home and took the first call, the problem was obviously still there. This has to be a common problem, and there has to be a solution - Phonak would not release an aid with this problem. The problem is not a Bluetooth distance problem, as I can put the phone as close to the HA as I want and there is no change.

Suggestions, other than going back to Costco for another try?

Do you get any static when listening normally with the microphones picking up the sound? How about when streaming from the phone, iTunes, or??

Restart your phone
Repair the connection
These things can improve static distortions

What’s the difference between the KS9 TV connector and a Bluetooth TV transmitter from amazon for about 1/2 the price?

Not really. He cut the bass down, and that makes things sound a bit more shrill. But no, basically, to all of your questions.

You know, that’s the first thing that I should have thought of, and didn’t, of course. I just did it and had my wife call, and it actually seems to be better. Good suggestion, thank you. I’ll take a few more calls and see if this was the problem. Strange that I’ve been streaming radio programs into the aids from the iphone, as recently as this afternoon, and never had any static. I wonder why a phone call streamed into the aids would have static and a radio program wouldn’t…

Most likely the Amazon one will have a slight delay in the sound and the speech won’t sync with the picture.

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This could be caused by your phone. Depending upon settings, noise from your phone via your Bluetooth connection can suppress your normal hearing aid sounds temporarily. I believe you can suppress those sounds via a setting on your phone.

I’m finding the bluetooth pairing almost impossible lately. I’ve had it connected and streaming into both aids both on my old Blackberry Key2 (an android) and my new Samsung Galaxy S10e, but it’s gone AWOL on both phones most of the time lately. Often they both will pair only with the Left aid (the one we set up as dominant), and the ability to stream is either limited to the left side (which is unfortunate because that’s my really bad ear and the streaming fidelity has always been hideous), or else both aids don’t show streaming for phone calls or media even as an option. I’ll be seeing my Costo rep soon about this but honestly I’m fed up.

The thing is, I could get this stuff to work at first, after a few stumbles, but now it’s a challenge all the time. Sometimes I can’t even pair just to control the aids never mind streaming.