Without the speech-in-noise, the aids work similar to the Supero’s. I didn’t like the feeling of “muddiness” I got each time the program kicked in.
I’m not exactly sure where it’s at in the programming, but you can choose a “compression” algorithm or a “linear” algorithm. It tells the ha how to process the inputs. Linear is what you’re used to with previous ha’s.
By turning down the gain on the high/low frequencies, I still have the feeling of volume, but what I hear is similar to what I’m used to…True, I don’t get to enjoy the “advances” in technology that the Naida can do, such as hearing someone breathe across the room, or my dog licking water from her bowl 30 feet away…but turning them down makes it so the high-end doesn’t overwhelm me - just taking dishes out of the dishwasher made me cringe. I admit it was fun to hear the things I never could before (hi freq), but it got to be too much.
The frequency shift is related to the input algorithm. You do lose that by shifting to linear, but the problem I had with the shifts, is that it sometimes made normal noises sound strange - some speech or music, for example.
I do use the telecoil a bit because I have the phones around the house and at work…but am finding that I tend to use the Icom more and more with my cell phone, since I get the “stereo” sound with the Icom. I can use my ha with the telecoil/cell phone pretty decently though. (if the background electrical interference is minimal)
The telecoil and FM modes do come with the microphone input (so you hear normal sounds in addition to the telecoil/FM) - I don’t like this since I’m used to shutting out all other noises when on the phone. (like the Supero). You can’t turn it off BUT you can get around this by having the microphone attenuation turned WAY down so it’s almost as good as having no mic volume (I think its something like -60 in the settings)