The Lyric are simply very sophisticated analog amplifiers with sensitivity to bring in the high frequency sounds… along with EVERYTHING else.
These were my -first- venture into the HA world at 55 and brought me out of my hearing darkness.
Worked great initially until Lyric decided to innovate and forget about quality assurance testing.
I am moving to Starkey Soundlens next week (fitted yesterday) and look forward to the digital elimination of the background noise that you immediately noticed with your Lyric trial.
Its impossible to carry on a conversation in a restaurant or busy open location (mall, airport etc.) with Lyric.
Also missing is the rich bass from music as the earplugs allowed only the high frequencies and my family complained of the bass being way to high in my car and on TV.
Lyric is great for home and controlled environments where you are primarily interested in amplification and high frequency recovery.
Also helps if you are conveniently located to the Audi distributor for frequent office visits to get the defective units replaced that should never have left the factory.
Do not count on your Lyric battery to last more than 1 month.
My last experience with a bad Lyric run was 5 hours … and my Audi for limited Lyric distributorship in Cincinnati was 40 minutes away.
I made the 90 minute round trip 2 days in a row before deciding NEVER AGAIN… I can replace the batteries on a Soundlens and make out on pricing over the long run.