Hey @emile.heilbron,
I hope you are well.
A couple of observations from me after having the Phonak’s for 3 or so weeks…
I’ve been walking the dog in the park recently and noticed the birds chirping (great to hear, BTW!). With the Starkey’s I could hear them loudly but could not tell at all from what direction the chirping was coming from and I couldn’t tell whether it was close by or far away; however with the Phonak’s can easily tell the direction and roughly the distance. I can tell if the bird is on my left or right side, or in front or behind. Couldn’t do that with the Starkey’s.
Connectivity is so much better with the Phonak’s and it’s great having them switch automatically between my work phone and personal phone. I did have an issue the other day when I was out walking where the devices constantly kept losing connectivity (I’d get an ascending and descending musical tone in one or both ears). I shut down the app and tried again. No luck. Turned off BT on phone. No luck. Opened and closed the door on each HA, again no luck. This went on for about 45 mins. Then as suddenly as it started, it stopped and they connected and stayed connected. The only thing I can think of is that the day before I had upgraded from iOS 16.1 to 16.1.1. Not sure if that was coincidental or whether it was a factor. It seems to be stable now.
Another thing I have noticed is that a few times a day (maybe 5 or 6) the sound goes really dull/flat - almost as if the HAs are turned off. It comes back again after about 30 seconds. Not sure what’s causing this as I have checked the wax guards, cleaned the vents, etc to make sure everything is nice and clean. I’m wondering if it could be some sort of auto adjustment feature making adjustments on the fly and then implementing them. Would be interested to know if you or anyone else noticed this with these devices? I have another adjustment session next week so will ask the audi and see what he says.
I’m still struggling with voices. I came across another thread here where someone had downloaded a tone generator and identified some dead spots in his hearing, while wearing his aids. I did the same thing and set up a tone sweep from around 100Hz to 9500Hz and (if I did it right) I noticed a few dead spots in each ear where I could not hear the tones at all: Left ear - 2900-3600Hz, 4800-6300Hz, 6700-8300Hz, and 8500Hz up. In the right ear: 5100-6100Hz, 6600-7600Hz, 8300Hz up.
The poster got his audi to move the Speech Recovery feature down and a lot of his lost frequencies were improved. I don’t know much about this feature or how it works, but I’ll talk to my audi next week and see if moving it will help me recover some of these frequencies. Any input or insights from anyone else reading my thread would be welcomed.
Thanks,
Richard