It has been a few days now. The aids are still in factory warranty until 2020. I don’t know if the warranty is even transferable. Anyway, they have standard receivers, short wires, and power domes. I might switch to open domes. Occlusion doesn’t seem any worse with the power domes. Somehow, I thought that it would. The programming for these seems a good bit different to the V90s. I started a whole new profile for these and used “Audiogram Direct” instead of entering my old audiogram . That is a strange program. It won’t let me test below 250 Hz, and it won’t let me adjust the level high enough in the higher frequencies to hear because they are outside the fitting range of the aids. That given, I used the resultant curve and after trying the various fitting formulas, settled on Phonak Digital. I might play with that some more. I find “Sound Recover 2” a good bit different to the older version. I could tell that the older version was on and working. With SR2, I can’t really tell if it is doing anything or not. At first, I thought these Belong aids were doing a better job than the Venture aids. But, after a few days, they have become annoying just like the Venture aids. I can’t really tell, so far, if they are actually helping my issue of speech intelligibility. The clock on the wall ticks awfully loud now. I am going to go one more day before I make changes to the programming. I have decided that my hearing isn’t as bad as the audiogram would have me believe and by using it at first, I was using way more gain than I needed. I also am not doing anything above 4 kHz. Nothing is going to get that back, so I am just going to forget about it and concentrate on the highest frequencies where I have some hearing left. I’ll be back in a few more days with another post about how things are coming.
Does the programming software have in-situ audiometry included? If so, you can run it to get a more accurate test of your hearing loss specific to how the hearing aids you’re wearing are amplifying the sound for you. Then represcribe the hearing aid to the in-situ result for more accurate amplification.
I believe that’s what audiogram direct is.
Yes, it sends tones through the aids and otherwise works a lot like a conventional audiogram. You have a choice whether to enter audiogram data, or use the Audiogram Direct data. Which is what I did. Like I said, it has some pecularities. They do say to do it in a quiet setting. Mine wasn’t all that quiet, but I think I got good results. It seems like it can also measure the level at which things become uncomfortable. I wasn’t able to do that because the aids couldn’t put out enough sound. I was interested in that because loud noises seem to bother me a lot more than they did. I read somewhere that people with high frequency loss have a much reduced dynamic range. I can believe that.
You could probably create kind of a mixed audiogram using info from Audiogram Direct and your official audiogram (highs that Audiogram Direct won’t go high enough for) and make guesses at UCL if your audiogram didn’t include that. Ideally you wouldn’t notice Sound Recover 2 except for being able to detect higher frequency sounds, but without the distortion that Sound Recover would create. To me it sounds promising, but will likely involve a lot of trial and error.
I don’t know about your programming software, but Genie 2 for the OPN which I wear seems to be able to combine the official audiogram and the in-situ audiogram. So the UCL values in my official audiogram still do get used (Genie 2’s in-situ audiometry doesn’t have UCL measurement capability anyway). For example, if I only use the in-situ to measure one side only, then it can represcribe for that one side and continue to use the official audiogram for the other side.
It has been a while since I posted an update on how “Sound Recover 2” is working. It isn’t. I have quit wearing my aids because they don’t help my problem and only annoy me. I turned the sound recover 2 up to maximum but couldn’t tell that it did much. Sometimes, people speaking on TV would sound like they had a lisp, but out in the real world I still have as much difficulty understanding people as ever. I think I just waited about thirty years too long to consider getting aids. I am used to the way the world sounds without all those high frequencies. I did have an incident the other day that gave me pause. I was walking about 3 miles from home in a somewhat remote wooded area and came across a rattlesnake. I could see his rattles shaking out their warning, but could not hear them. I was glad I saw him before I got too close. I gave him a wide berth and continued on my way. But it did make me think a bit about what I can’t now hear.
Sorry to hear that it didn’t work out for you. To the point that you’re not wearing hearing aids anymore because you deem them to be of no help for your loss.
I think there’s one more avenue to try, if you’re willing. That is to buy the Bernafon Zerena from Costco which is supposed to have the frequency composition technology that the OPN calls Speech Rescue.
I know that you said you’re on social security and can’t afford expensive aids. But the Zerena has a more affordable price from Costco than other expensive hearing aids from audiologist channels. If I recall correctly, the Zerena 9 from Costco runs around $2600 or $2800??? Not in the $6000 range of you were to buy outside of Costco.
Although the nearest Costco is 1.5 hour away from you, you can probably call ahead and arrange an appointment so that they’ll have the Zerena ready for you to pick up on one visit only. Since you self program, you’ll most likely be able to do your own adjustment on it at home for further fine tuning and don’t have to go back to Costco each time. Just make sure you ask for different types of domes to experiment at home. Worst case scenario, you have six months to take it back for a full refund. Heck, you can even get your Costco membership fully refunded as well.
If you look at my audiogram, you’ll see that my 2Khz loss is very similar of not worse than yours. And my highs are a gonner just like yours. Yet I’ve had very good success with the frequency composition. I can hear the “s” and fricatives in speech much better now, and all the electronic beeps and cricket sound and bird chirping, etc were never heard before but now come in loud and clear.
I think it’d be worth one last try with the Zerena before you call it quit and not wear hearing aids anymore. The fact that you self program makes it worth the effort.