My wife was shopping for new glasses today in Costco so to kill time, I stopped by the Hearing Aid Center. I asked whether there was a firmware update coming along that would bring bidirectional calling (handsfree) for the Jabras and the reply that I got the firmware update was still being worked on and to expect it sometime around February to March, 2022.
I pulled up a scanned PDF copy of my 2018 audiogram on my smartphone (the one in my HT avatar) and asked the Costco tech whether I could wear the M&RIE receivers. He said it wouldn’t be recommended for my loss because an open fit was recommended for my good low frequency hearing but I’d get a lot of feedback with an open fit given my moderately severe high frequency loss. I pointed out that I was already wearing an almost occlusive fit with custom silicone molds and a 0.5-1.0 mm vent in each mold. I didn’t care about “natural” sound and felt that I got better directionality (when I wanted it) and better noise control, better speech understanding, from a more closed fit. He said then that they could try a more closed fit with molds if I didn’t care about “natural” sound. I pulled out my left receiver and showed him the mold is rather small, with just enough space for a standard Quattro MP receiver and 4 mm bore Select-A-Vent hole to accept various size vent plugs. He got a M&RIE receiver out and the main thing that I noticed was that it seemed to be longer but not that much thicker than my current MP standard receiver. I suggested that if the mold were just made with a fixed 1 mm vent hole (no larger bore to accommodate the Select-A-Vent scheme) that then there might be enough space for the M&RIE receiver. He also said that if I didn’t want acrylic molds, they could have silicone molds specially made for me and that their molds for the Jabras are made by ReSound. When I asked about trying the M&RIE receivers and seeing if I was happy with them, returning the whole shebang if it didn’t work out, he allowed that that was possible but didn’t seem too happy to have a customer proposing that-perhaps because he’d already advised against the M&RIE receivers for other reasons than the available space in my left ear mold - so he’s got a customer on two counts pushing against the grain. Still going to wait to see what new HA’s are released by the major brands in the coming year - and waiting for possible derivative versions to show up at Costco could certainly extend the wait!