Check out how intense the noise reduction settings are. ReSound has professional training for HCP’s at Audiology Online (you can sign up for free to audit without being an HCP). In one of the webinars, a ReSound professional recommends a noise reduction setting of no more than “Considerable” for situations involving speech. The presenter recommended against using the highest setting, “Strong,” in speech settings as it cuts into low-frequency speech sounds too much and actually degrades speech recognition in noise. The STRONG setting is just intended to make one more comfortable in a noisy environment by removing repetitive droning noise per se.
Achieving directionality by some means and increasing high and mid frequency amplification while reducing or leaving unchanged low frequency amplification may also help (check out the effects of the Speech Clarity quickset settings in the ReSound Smart 3D app). Whether or not one has good low frequency hearing and an open fitting also makes a difference to people like me with good low frequency hearing. While impractical in normal everyday situations, I achieved super speech recognition in noise by wearing noise-canceling headphones over my occlusive mold fit and using a ReSound Multi Mic for directionality and more selective amplification of speech sounds. Just an experiment in a very noisy Cracker Barrel restaurant and my wife made me take off the noise-cancelling headphones in a very short while! She didn’t want to be seen dining with a nerd even in a town we were just passing through on a road trip!
P.S. On watching TV, I highly recommend the ReSound TV Streamer 2. Costco sells it as a reduced price and you can buy ReSound accessories at Costco even if you haven’t bought your HA’s there. On phone calls, whenever I’m going to have an important phone call, I use my cell phone and stream to it via the ReSound Phone Clip+ (Android phone user). Can’t remember if there is a streaming only focus for phone calls but if so that should help make a streamed phone call much clearer by ~eliminating environmental background noise - use it for media streaming to eliminate very loud chirping cricket sounds and keys clinking on belt clip during nightly walks. See various threads on forum for advantages of direct TV streaming to your HA’s - you can mix it with external mic input as much or as little as you desire.
P.P.S.: also check whether wind reduction is on. In many noisy settings, you don’t need wind reduction, e.g., inside a noisy restaurant. Wind reduction settings, at least for ReSound, can cut into low-frequency speech recognition, again based on comments made by a ReSound professional in an Audiology Online course. I’ve previously posted the link below but here it is again:
Very powerful filter/search view obtainable at Audiology Online:
https://www.audiologyonline.com/ce/resound/events/search/#/
Can substitute phonak, starkey, oticon, signia, widex for resound in link structure to get similar filtered search view for other brands of HA’s
