Hi Jim,
Nice to see you here. Didn’t know you had been fitted with molds. You have Resound and I have Costco‘s Preza’s. Going in Friday for a fitting for molds. Any tips you or anyone else can give me I would appreciate it. Do you have acrylic molds or the softer Gel type?Sounds like you are very happy with them.
I think our Navy vet from Ark, his name escapes me right now, is fitted with acrylics and is happy.
I have been very pleased with my specialist at Costco, he has been doing this for over 25 years and really knows his stuff. I am sort of surprised that he has not suggested this but that I had to ask for them.
Wondering if I should have another audiogram. About a year ago he checked me and he said I didn’t need another one. Lots can happen in a year.
Will let you all know how everything turns out. As I had mentioned on here before, when I plug my canals I can really hear a lot better.
Glad to see you’re still around, too. I have ReSound silicone molds. They are not all that soft and certainly not very squishy. They can wear a bit with time but mine are 3.5 years old and still hanging in there. One benefit of molds is the receiver openings are much more recessed in the mold cavities and ear wax seldom gets directly down onto the receiver wax guard. A little bit of wax may fall into the mold opening but it’s always easy to clean out. I really like my molds compared to all the various types of domes that I tried and I tried them all. Most users seem to like molds better than domes and, hopefully, if you decide to give it a try, you will, too.
I like the Jodi-Vac for cleaning my molds but I’ve stopped using it on the HA body - which I decided wasn’t a good idea. The device is available on Amazon for about $100 (the consumer version).
@jim_lewis I guess what I don’t get is that they’ve converted from a set of speech-in-noise scores to decibels and done their comparisons on the decibels. My maths really isn’t there, so this conversation might be a waste of time, but wouldn’t it have been better to present a comparison on the original s-i-n scores?
If you take 0 as being profoundly deaf and 100 as being what these moderately hearing impaired people experience, the omnia brings that to 250? Most people would see that and think they would hear like bats.
I remember a video by Dr. Cliff a few years ago. He said then that about a 5 dB improvement (as if you were hearing the speech 5 dB louder) is about the most you can expect to get out of a HA in speech-in-noise situations. But, IIRC, he said with a remote microphone that you can effectively get as much as a 25 dB improvement in signal-to-noise ratio.
So, with that in mind, it’s probably not worth getting too worked up about any OEM claims until someone has the AI that can cleanly separate out the speech and throw away the noise. And it may sound paradoxical but a strike against Phonak for me is that their Roger devices are so expensive, and the batteries are non-replaceable. When the Roger On In is ~$1500, as much as a premium iPhone, where the battery is replaceable for less than $100, making the Roger On In a throw-away device that expensive is too much for me. Knowing that if I want the best speech-in-noise recognition, it’s going to cost me $1500 extra with Phonak is $1500 too much. Whereas I already own all the ReSound peripherals and the Multi Mic, although not Roger On caliber, is still pretty decent. So, I’m waiting to see what reviews say. Having no BT 5.3, no BT LE Audio is also a strike against Phonak. The Roger ReSound One is supposed to be BT LE Audio capable according to hearsay (it has BT 5.2) and I would expect the Omnia to have that or 5.3. And then Oticon More may be due for an update soon.
bluetooth 5.3 just improves packetization of LE protocol , not really needed for hearing aid at this time but it has slightly better battery life if both sides have bluetooth 5.3, just because it has 5.2 it doesn’t mean it support BTLEA, it just mean the bluetooth 5.2 core specification is implemented…
Thanks for the comments. I think what we’re looking at when we try to find out what BT an HA model supports is the sine qua non. If an HA has at least BT 5.2, it MIGHT support BT LE Audio but if it just has BT 4.2, it’s lacking the sine qua non. So, the Lumity only has BT 4.2, unless it’s somehow further upgradable, whereas one might expect that if the Omnia is derived from the One, it’s possibly at least BT 5.2. But I think we’d all agree at this point we’re waiting for Godot and just killing time until he/she arrives (but Godot never seems to get here in any timely fashion!).
From an business standpoint, they spent 5 years and millions of dollars optimizing bluetooth classic to fit on a cell battery, Why should they spend R&D budget on BTLEA and BT 5.2?
I expect a firmware update which enables BLEA because Cochlear announced that they are supporting BTLEA with nucleus 8 sound processor… the N8 and omnia both came out the same week probably they worked together and timed the.release
Perhaps Phonak used the same philosophy when it continued on with NFMI for years, while everyone else had already kowtowed to Apple to get on the MFI bandwagon… But seriously, Phonak has the resources to wait for the optimum time to incorporate BT LE Audio while everyone else plays Avis’s “We Try Harder” to Phonak’s Hertz.
It might be different where you are, but customers with Mfi aids and IOS have way more choices ‘out of the box’ here. Just on the initial control, call handling and integration (you don’t even need the app).
Most people know that the treble tap on the home button fires them straight into the adjustments without hindrance - and it works the same across all HA that we sell. I’m not a huge Apple fan, but this is a standout feature for anyone with a hearing loss considering an upgrade on their phone.
As long you restrict yourself to connect your hearing aids to IOS with MFI and Android with ASHA protocol supporting devices I agree but soon other devices as laptops, Chromebooks, TVs are considered they need a intermediary device to establish connectivity. Looking at this extended scope the approach of Phonak with BT Classic is more user friendly and universal. BT LE Audio will hopefully standarize it accross all heading aid manufactures.
I picked up a set of resound omnia demo’s from my audi yesterday … I currently wear resound 1’s … he set them up with … all around (AA) … front focus (FF) … restaurant (R) and outdoor (OD) programs… I tried the AA and OD program this morning while outside playing senior softball… I switched programs about every 15 minutes… I definitely preferred the OD program and was able to hear and understand conversations from every direction “MUCH” better … later I went to the golf driving range and while hitting some golf balls I could EASILY hear several conversations that guys were having 10 to 15 yds away, which in the past I would be able to hear them but not make out what they were saying … so this was a HUGE IMPROVEMENT for me … inside the house I’m still trying out AA & OD program to see which I prefer … so far leaning toward the AA prog. the scary part is I can actually hear the wife better when she’s talking BUT I’m not sure that’s a good thing…lol The omnia’s use the same 3D app as the 1’s just had to delete and re-install it on my Iphone… I will have to wait til Mon. to try the TV streamer and actually see how battery life is since my audi forgot to install that prog … I stream TV on weekends on avg. of 8 to 10 hrs especially during NFL season… with my 1’s I can stream all day and still have 60% battery life and they are almost 2 yrs. old
1 thing I noticed is the charger is a little smaller and has no battery charge indicator lights on it so to know how much battery you used you need to check the app … I will try to update my demo in about 5/6 days
So far I am seeing some erratic connection problems with my Omnia trial. Connectivity is slower versus my older resounds. Saves power by going inactive on the app when the app is not in use but then has to reconnect. Could not use the Marie receivers effectively with my hearing recruitment. To much ambience. Audiologist temporarily put on standard receivers he had but experienced some connectivity problems to his software. Still waiting for my replacement receivers for the Marie I can’t use. The initial setup took 4 tries with the installed Marie receivers. Updated to the latest iOS for iPhone and Apple Watch. Can no longer place the resound icon on my watch face but I can find it on the face where all the apps reside. Sound is so far not that great but I feel I need the Resound standard receivers to truly give it a fair evaluation and I am still waiting on these. Finally, when I received the Omnia they did not ship a charger so I had to borrow one from the audiologist till we could get one. Lots of bumps in the road. Might be better to wait a couple months to try these and give Resound time to get their act together.
The TV streamer program does not take up one of the four basic allowed program slots (based on Quattro experience). To use the TV streamer, you’ll have to pair your Omnias with the streamer. When you do that, the streamer programmer is automatically installed (or appears) within the Smart 3D app on your phone. For the instructions below, when you start pairing, the number of times that you press the pairing button to begin determines which of three HA channels (for the Quattro) the TV Streamer 2 is paired to, e…g., press 3x in a row, the device will be paired to channel 3. If you already had a device in channel 1, you’d want to use channel 2 or 3 for your streamer.
Pairing the TV Streamer 2 in channel 1
Make sure that the TV Streamer 2 power supply is plugged into
a wall socket and that the green light indicator on the front of the
TV Streamer 2 (9 on page 9) is ON. Your hearing instruments
must be OFF - open the battery door
Press the pairing button on the TV Streamer 2 (2 on page 8)
once. The yellow light indicator on the front of the TV Streamer 2
(10 on page 9) will now blink once every 2 seconds to indicate
that the TV Streamer 2 is ready to be paired in channel 1. Your
TV Streamer 2 will remain in pairing mode for 20 seconds
While pairing mode is activated, close the battery doors of
both hearing instruments and make sure they are ON. A suc-
cessful pairing will be indicated by an audible melody being
played in both hearing instruments. You are now ready to use
the TV Streamer 2
Firmware update should fix any of those issues. they just started bringing up bluetooth 5.3 to the hardware/software… more enhancement to be made when more bluetooth 5.2 era transmitter devices are coming out…
I have a CI and I won’t be posting a detailed review of it because of my unusual configuration of hearing loss… this will affect my opinion of it… I don’t actually care how well my hearing aid performs in noise or how far i hear… the effects are completely amplified by CI side… What i do care is how the microphone in quiet with just the resound omnia alone… I sure hope it is like the oticon dynamo in how sensitive microphone is just like you described… it is getting better in microphone sensitivity…
They added support for 3 generation of hearing aid. Resound 3d, quattro, and resound one… I’m more interested in N8 sound processor supporting the omnia