Resound Omnia vs Phonak Lumity

@jonifoz Hi well I wore the Lumity 90s during the holidays and restaurants. I was not hearing things well at all. Standing at the cashiers to pay, during a not too busy time - I didn’t hear everything, my brain was having to put word & sentences together to follow the conversations. I was terribly frustrated. Beside HURTING my ears something terrible. (I know, new hearing aids take time to break our ears in ) Anyway, I went back to my 2 year old paradise hearing aids. Just like putting on old slippers. I can hear fine with these, the only reason I wanted to get Lumity was for the speech clarity that they, Phonak, boasted about. My audiologist is not a good one. He did not even know there was a “Life” model. I mentioned about Speech Enhancer and asked what mine was set to , he said that is is turned on by the manufacturer and the computer sets it based on my audiogram. He could not tell me what that setting was. I told him that the music streaming was good and that I could hear the TV pretty good without the TV connector. The phone calls were ok without BT. Those are nice to haves, but I was looking for a bump up in my hearing out in the real world. I returned them. I feel good about the return, because until I get an Audiologist that knows how to adjust hearing aids and will work with me, I’m not going to settle. If I buy them from him. I will have to pay $350+ to have another audiologist take care of me, if I bought from him and then changed, so I’ll wait and find an audiologist. Thank you all @jim_lewis @JordanK @jonifoz and all other posts.

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@Jody: Happy New Year, Jody. I can’t find his post ATM, but I believe that :fire_extinguisher:@tencan :fire_extinguisher:hit the nail on the head when he aired his suspicion that a couple of active pro-Lumity shills were inflating Lumity’s glowing reputation with their tram/spoll (combo of spam + troll) padding.

In the 2 years Ive been active in the Forum, not much of this has fone on under @rasmus_braun 's watchful eye, but it does happen, on occasion.

Caveat lector

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It would be helpful if you posted your audiogram, but my suspicion is that you would do better with custom molds. That should allow meeting REM targets without generating feedback.

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My audiologist told me that her Phonak patients who’ve tried Lumity have found it to be a big improvement over their previous Phonaks.

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@MDB. My audiogram is there. Can you not see it? I see the link under my own name; did I somehow make it private?

I suspect you’re right about the custom molds, but I didn’t want to spend to get custom molds while I’m still deciding among hearing aids.

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I don’t want to wade in and argue but I think, with respect, your comments and reasoning are off base. I have been on the forum long enough to remember Jordan, who went with Resound aids a few years back because of the MFI integration. His review was pretty objective to me. Just as Jody’s review just now.

Nobody is trumpeting Lumity one way or another in a fanboy kind of fashion. The reports I see have been positive and negative - of which there have been 3 who have rejected or who are on the verge of rejecting the aids. In my view Phonak have messed up really badly by not improving the rechargeability daytime life of the aids - a common complaint.

I think the other point is that whilst there are successes and failures, I think more emphasis should be more put on the audiologist and their role in the proceedings. I am not an audiologist but I would question why Jody has been fitted with a RIC in the first place. If the aids can’t be matched to REM that to me is an indication that they are not fit for purpose and should not be prescribed.

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Now I see it. Yeah, I do think you’d benefit from custom molds. What kind of domes are you using? You should be able to get a decent seal with their Power Domes (they’re a double dome), but custom molds would likely be better. If you can’t get a good seal in the ear to meet targets, you’re really not giving them a decent trial. I understand not wanting to spend an extra $200, but considering you’re talking what, a $6000 plus pruchase? It might make the most sense.
I think Glucas is right, a BTE might be more appropriate, especially for the right ear. What are your word recognition scores like? A Cochlear implant eval might be a decent idea if they’re low.

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@glucas: I have, also, and I was not insinuating that it was he making “fanboy” claims. In fact, I don’t see any genuine Lumity “fanboys” (god, how I despise that term!) operating.

I do however, detect one or two relative strangers (to me, anyway ) posting outlandish, trollish claims of Lumity’s great superiority at separating speech from noise.

I also see a couple of other Members seemingly accepting claims that - as I believe @tencan was suggesting, are simply “too good to be true”.

But please don’t confuse my comments with an attempt to smear any bona fide member, because “it just ain’t so”.

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OK. Fair enough if there are other people wading in with unsubstantiated nonsense! But Jordan’s comments were pretty clear and honest to me.

I am happy to see any reports of progress with any aids. Of course, we can’t get too carried away as that spreads false hope and we know that people have difficult losses to fit.

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I’m not a Phonak shill. I’m a 59 year Exec in the IT industry. I personally think that the people who have experienced poor results with Lumity are just victims of poor and/or lazy audiologists who just don’t know what they are doing. The only legitimate complaint about Lumity is battery life with heavy streaming but I’m willing to live with it because they are incredible hearing aids when setup properly.

Jordan

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@glucas: Yes, and I would appreciate it if I were cleared of making any such pointed (and patently false) accusations. I did nothing of the sort.

My interest is purely in weeding out those who, for some reason or other, want to falsely inflate Lumity’s superiority over all other devices.

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Of course. I did jump to the conclusion that you were referring to Jordan as he was the OP and the individual who Tenkan took issue with.

Apologies for that assumption.

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Me too. I rejected all rechargeable hearing aids on my last annual hearing exam/fitting for new aids. There was only one rechargable hearing aid that I would have considered…one Signia hearing aid is saying up to 60 hours per charge. Anyway, I stuck to my guns and VA issued me Phonak disposable battery aids, The batteries (675) last about 12 to 13 days. The hearing aids are amazing! Glad I insisted on disposable battery aids. I think this is the number 2 requirement of a lot of HOH folks, right after hearing well.
Dan

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Yes. I absolutely agree. A lot of people watch TV or stream for over 3 hours a day. To be worrying about battery life if you are going out socially or flying somewhere is an inconvenience that did not exist before.

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@MDB and @glucas - thanks for your helpful comments. No one has suggested having an evaluation for CI, but I did have one audiologist suggest biCROS. After some discussion, I decided against that solution because of the possibility of brain atrophy without any stimulation coming from the bad ear.

My speech discrim is pretty bad - strangely enough, it seems to improve in my R, bad, ear as volume is lowered (8% at 90 dB, 20% at 80 dB, 28% at 75 dB). Also, my binaural discrim is less than my L ear alone discrim.

I do use power domes. I wore CIC hearing aids for many years; I have resisted getting custom molds because with the CIC’s there were constant issues with discomfort and problems with occlusion. This was true over many different brands and several different audis.

This is such a helpful forum, and I appreciate your comments.

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Hi, Jordan. I’m not sure what buying molds and having REM done would do to create a further difference in what I already described for the Lumity vs. the Omnia. And just to clarify where I stand relative to the more recent discussion of some folks (Sequoia Woman and Jody) on not getting the results they expected, I think the Lumitys are great and have suggested the sound is probably even better than the Omnias, which I found “quite good” but not as elite in sound as the Lumitys. I’ve had no problem understanding my soft-spoken wife with the Lumitys in noisy supermarkets with noise and other conversations nearby even without wearing custom molds. I almost feel like I have normal hearing when wearing the Lumitys. But I certainly didn’t find the Lumitys are an order of magnitude better than the Omnias and that there’s no comparison between the two. If the Lumitys had a better battery runtime, if the myPhonak app was better, faster, and had as straightforward a graphical interface as the ReSound Smart 3D app - and also, if I could run the myPhonak app on my Apple Watch, something important to me as I don’t want to be tied to pulling out my phone to make an adjustment, and if the Lumitys were available in a disposable battery option, I’d probably be getting the Lumitys instead of the Omnia 962s with a size 13 disposable battery (and a telecoil). I can’t see how getting molds or REM is going to change those decision points. Some of the other factors, such as the relative aggressiveness of AutoSense 5.0 in insuring “comfort” (processing environmental sounds out) play a factor but molds and REM are not going to affect that, either.

I thought Speech Enhancer with the Lumitys would be the deciding factor for being able to selectively enhance the speech of my soft-spoken wife in quiet environments. But I can hear her very well with my Omnias although perhaps not as clearly over as great a distance as I can with the Lumitys. The Quattros weren’t great at picking up my wife’s very soft voice but the Lumitys and the Omnias both are.

In your own review, you allowed that you had to recharge your aids 20 to 30 minutes extra to get through your day, you didn’t use the myPhonak app much at all but could rely on AutoSense and the Automatic program, etc. So, in a way, you at least acknowledge several of the items that were important to me.

A major light bulb that went off in my head was in going to a neighborhood social event several months ago where an older woman remarked she’d been wearing Costco HA’s since 2014 and she really liked them. Obviously, powered by disposable batteries. And she’d been wearing the same HA’s EIGHT YEARS. So, DING, my brain told me right then here I am wearing rechargeables, doomed to a 5- or 6-year lifespan before the nonreplaceable batteries wear out. So, a good part of this purchase is just to buy a set of disposable battery-powered HA’s that is “good enough” that it will always be available as a backup years from now (my Quattros are rechargeable and already in a downward battery spiral).

Here’s a test. With both the Lumitys and the Omnias, I can make out just about every word in this noisy lunchtime restaurant conversation. The noise level is at the same decibel level as the male and female guests and the waitress. I consider this a great performance by both hearing aid brands. The file is on my personal Microsoft 365 business account, and it should only be playable, not downloadable (it’s a .WMA audio format). I invite anyone else with a different brand of HA other than Lumity or Omnia to also give the restaurant conversation a try and see how you make out. When both HA brands already give a stupendous performance with this difficult noise situation, I don’t see how further refinement is really going to make one an order of magnitude better than the other. The Omnia is quite good enough for me, even though the Lumity might be modestly better in sound quality, but that’s not all there is to a hearing aid and its ecosystem. The Roger On could be a decisive factor for the Lumity, but for the amount of use I’d put it to, it’s not worth spending all that moola… My living environment is much quieter and simpler than most folks.

Not sure the link will work on the HT forum. Streaming to your HA’s directly will work best unless your computer sound system is very good. The audio in stereo and the female guest voice is pretty hard to make out over the noise.

https://xml-my.sharepoint.com/:u:/g/personal/jimlewis_xml_onmicrosoft_com/EYxVGif264xGmxjDsjx0MAYBwFA7VMmC5ovxlqH8uOY0ag?e=3gOq2D

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@glucas: :joy: Apologies may be premature: I reread my post and I see how you could have assumed that I was concurring with :fire_extinguisher: @tenkan :fire_extinguisher:on everything. That simply isn’t the case - it’s a misunderstanding.

That said, there was one party in particular whose comments I found to be “over the top”, and misleadingly optimistic. There were another couple of posters that I felt were making outlandish claims that might confuse some readers, also …

Suffice it to say, for the last time, that it was never my intention to target @JordanK . Perhaps that was others’ intention, but it wasn’t mine.

Anyway, no apologies are necessary. It was just an honest misunderstanding.

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Well - I am not sure how helpful my comments were. After looking at your audiogram and seeing your remarks about occlusion I can see that you have a difficult loss to fit.

I am really unqualified to comment as to what should be fitted with your kind of loss.

In your situation I would personally go back to the audiologist and ask if he/she can approach Phonak directly. Firstly to confirm if the Lumity is still a fit for your loss - despite the lack of meeting the REM target and if so - what kind of program adjustments to Target would they recommend. They must have consultants who liaise on this sort of stuff with audiologists.

Secondly - if Lumity is not a fit then to ask what aids would be. I think using Genie or Noah they should be able to get a report of what hearing aids would fit your loss. I may be mistaken - but I know you can do this with Target - but that is just restricted to Phonak.

If the audiologist can’t do that then maybe stick to what you know and get the latest Signia. I would have thought these aids will be as good as Phonak or Oticon. I think there was a recent merger with Widex, but they were good enough before that.

Good luck.

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I don’t think the Lumity were a good choice for your level of loss,plus you should have custom molds made with vents (you’ll need to work out the size with your audiologist) to stop the occlusion effect, domes just won’t cut it especially on the right side, Phonak P90 UP would of been my first choice to trial if you have to have Phonak, nothing wrong with a bit more “grunt/power” with the right molds- earhook and tubing, these could be set up without worrying about feedback and occlusion, it seems you suffer from a little “recruitment” if your unable to “handle” the power output after REM, this is not uncommon, there’s a few ways to handle this, one could be to use the auto acclimatization (increase volume over time) or just set the gain level to 80 or 90% you won’t have much “clipping” issues ether with these ( you called it knocking?)
When you listen to music you should use a dedicated program for this, using these will also eliminate your battery issue on Phonak models,no rechargeables for UP, just good old fashioned disposable batteries, and if you don’t want the Phonak, then definitely give the Motion C&G SP BTE a trial, much smaller then the BTE UP from Phonak, Signia is one of my favourites and as you’ve used Signia before is a bonus, plus they do have a much better App, if your with the Apple ecosystem they are MFi,and as you know, the rechargeable technology is up to 60 hours from Signia, depending on how much streaming you do.

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@JordanK you are very correct about audiologists not fitting the Lumity HAs correctly. I just, today, turned my Lumity 90s back in, as the Audi did not program them correctly. He was unwilling to perform REM. He said,when I asked about him doing REM, oh it’s just easier for the computer to get proper measurement and it saves me time. They were not adjusted properly and they had too much gain. Everyone including my own voice had a lisp. He did not even know there was a Life version of Lumity.
The Lumity made streaming music awesome. Sounded really good. I could hear the TV and phone calls just with the Lumity and not use Bluetooth. I believe IF I can find a good audiologist, that knows how to properly adjust/program the Lumity, they will be a great HA for me. I’m wanting improved speech clarity.

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