I have the KS10. I have an appointment next week for a hearing test and a trial run of Philips 9040. I’ll also get some changes made to my KS10s as, at a minimum, I want good backup HA.
This all started when I learned about the openness of Oticon hearing aids. I started a thread, which eventually morphed into KS10 technical questions. Volusiano has been helping me but doesn’t have KS10s, and suggested that I start a KS10 thread to hopefully get participation from experienced KS10 users. So here I am. For reference you can see our conversation in the thread titled “How to Trial Oticon More”, starting with Post #78.
I’ve always been frustrated with the way that the KS10s focus and seriously attenuate ambient sounds when in the Automatic mode. I would like to hear more of the world. I learned in my Oticon thread of the Philips/Costco HA that, while not the same as Oticon, has some of the Oticon openness landscape. So I’m going to try the 9040.
I got to wondering if the KS10 sound can be opened up, when I’m not focused on speech and just want to hear more of the world.
Specifically I would like to know if, in the Automatic mode, background noise can be brought up so that, for example, I don’t walk around Costco feeling like I have cotton stuffed in my ears. I don’t need optimum speech recognition in this sort of setting, because I’m likely not talking to anybody.
For those situations where I really do need great speech in noise, such as restaurants, I have one manual program - speech in noise. This shuts down ambient noise, which is fine in this sort of setting. I also have Roger Select for really noisy speech environments.
So, can the KS10 Automatic mode be programmed to be more open and let me hear the sounds of the world better? If not, Valusiano has suggested adding a music or outdoors manual program and seeing how that works.