Thank you for all those insights, and very clearly stated. Of particular interest was the observation that the prescription correction essentially remains intact, which makes sense. Then above that is an overlay of adjustments which emphasize certain frequency ranges. I’m no hearing aid expert, but do some audio mixing that includes human speech. The “presence” frequencies are a around the 5kHz region and when lifted emphasize articulation of hard consonants, which improves clarity and the perceived comprehension. Another region is around 2-3 kHz which sharpens/hardens up vowel sounds. I imagine it is these types of frequencies that are lifted in HAs to improve speech clarity (over and above the deficit correction). So I infer from what you are saying, the music mode normalizes these speech frequencies (without changing prescription correction), otherwise many musical instruments would sound harsh or unbalanced.
The strategy to deal with music may vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. I can only speak with certainty about the KS8/Signia/Rexton aids as I have the software.
To be clear they do not mess with the equalization or gain vs frequency for the music programs that are intended for listening to live or recorded music. The equalization only gets applied to correct for the vent loss when listening to streamed music.
The frequency vs gain correction along with the degree of compression gets set by the overall fitting formula or prescription. There are various open formulas used like NAL-NL1, NAL-NL2, DSL v5, and 1/3 gain. Each manufacturer also has a proprietory one that they of course claim is best! These are different approaches that are mainly intended to make gain corrections to improve the speech range (200 Hz to 6 kHz). Some of these formulas may be better than others for music appreciation. DSL v5 may be one of the better ones for music especially if you have decent higher frequency hearing. It kind of depends on your loss.
If one of your priorities is music, you may want to do some research on which prescription method may be best for you, or discuss it with your fitter. These formulas a starting point. The next step is to do real ear measurement (REM) to measure and adjust to these targets. Costco always does this. Next the gains can be adjusted manually based on what you hear.
Hope that helps some.
I think I’m more than up to speed with this now-thanks again. I have mostly mild hf loss. I will mention my requirement when I get the REM done next month.
You might find this article of interest. It is a generic guide to hearing aid fitters in how to get the best out of hearing aids used for listening to music. It does not focus on buying some magic set of hearing aids that is a cure all, but rather takes the fundamental approach of optimizing all the tools in the toolbox that most hearing aids have. I noted that they do not recommend using a different prescription formula for music compared to what is used in other programs.
That’s going to be VERY useful and an interesting read!
Was glad to find this thread. I am a current KS6 user. I’ve worn Siemens and Resound aids primarily, and have really liked these aids the last few years I’ve had them. That said, the button on one stopped working a few months back, and my speech discrimination has been declining for several years. That had me in the market for new aids, and I had been eyeing the KS8s, but waited too long and now they’re no longer available.
I went to Costco today and got a test. Not much change in my loss. I’ve been using the same fitter and like her, and she first had me try the KS9s. They were ok. She then had me try the Prezas. Since they were Resounds, they sounded better to me right off the bat. I was pretty happy with them, but didn’t pull the trigger as I wanted to do some research before ordering them (I have an appointment next Friday to go back to place an order and she offered to let me try a couple others if I wanted to). She has recommended the Prezas, and also suggested I go with the rechargeables. Finding this thread with another person who went from the KS6 to the Preza was helpful. At this point I’m leaning towards the Preza for the following reasons:
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I’ve read on this forum that the KS9 can only connect to one BT device at a time, and doesn’t use the Apple MFi protocol - it’s straight bluetooth. I currently connect to my iPhone, my iPad and I have the phone clip to use with my bluetooth phone in my office. I’m not sure I can give up the ability to connect to multiple devices without re-pairing each time.
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The fitter told me the phone clip I have could be used with the Preza, which would be nice.
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I’m a little bit nervous about the autoswitching in the KS9. I had aids before the KS6 that auto switched and could always notice it and wasn’t a fan.
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I’ve read some of the comments about the direct bluetooth connection and hearing every sound from the phone to the aids…I’ve shut that off with my KS6s and don’t want that.
So all that being said, I think I’m going to go with the Preza and see how it goes. My number one reason for wanting to upgrade is for improved speech recognition (and not just in noisy places). Reading the above I’m hopeful I’ll see some improvement. I’m 53 and still work full time managing a department with 100 people in it, and I really need to get some improvement in this area. Noisy situations have never been great with the KS6s, so if I see any improvement there that would be outstanding also. The fitter seemed to think this would be the best option for me.
I currently have the following programs in my KS6s and will probably keep something similar: 1) All Around, 2) Party, 3) Music and 4) Traffic. For anyone that drives a lot and hasn’t tried the traffic program, I can’t recommend it enough. I can hear my wife better in the car than I can in the house using this program, and hearing the radio again while driving has been outstanding (it’s also great on airplanes and anywhere where you may be experiencing a constant hissing or road-noise type of sound - think hissing air conditioning vents in an office). I use the Music program to watch TV in my home theater, and can enjoy the surround sound again!
Any thoughts from anyone who has made a similar change would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Gary
When you are comparing hearing aids did the fitter do the full REM fitting and adjustment on each one? The accuracy of first fit programs is notoriously inaccurate without a REM adjustment to target.
While you may have missed out on the KS8 I believe Costco still sells the Rexton Adore Li which is a rechargeable that I believe is very similar to the KS8.
I find my iPhone 7 works very well for phone calls with the MFi KS8. On the KS9 be sure to check the phone call quality. I believe it uses the microphones in the HA’s instead of the iPhone, and some have complained about the sound quality the listener at the other end gets at least in some of the Phonak versions.
I did just that, KS6 to Preza. WOW!!! Fantastic. I love them. I also had the phone clip. And I can go from car with Apple CarPlay to home Bluetooth streaming to office with phone clip with everything automatically falling into place seamlessly with my iPhone X. My word recognition has increased amazingly. I love the aids and the phone clip. My old phone clip broke on me, the clip breaking off. I bought a clip-on flashlight and salvaged the clip to add it to the phone clip with some epoxy. Works great. And it gives the Clip a good solid unbreakable clip mechanism. I went with the battery version as I do a lot of streaming in the office on the phone The batteries last me 7-8 days. I prefer being able to swap them out when dead and not worrying about a charger being at hand. Plus it is instant new power if they run out at work
To add on, my Costco fitter has 20+ years in the business, a lot of those as a hearing aid repair person. He works magic doing the fittings. Yes, he did the REM adjustment setting them up. I just had my 2-week followup, and we basically just talked, I had nothing that needed changing. I have been to both HIS’s ( of which he is one) and audiologists, and even an ear - nose - throat doctor and no one could match him. I went thinking the latest Costco aid, he suggested the Preza being more in line to my needs. Keep in mind he gets the same money sale or no sale, no sales pressure. He’s salaried, not commissioned, as are all Costco fitters. I trusted him, and he came through 100%.
He told me that I had a choice of battery or rechargeable and asked me my preferences. He agreed with my line of thinking as far as going battery. Battery packs are small, no weight, easy to carry in one’s pocket, or in like my iPad case which is always with me, in my pockets when it’s not.
I love the Resound iPhone app. We are in close proximity at work, open low wall cubicles, in a corner of the building with cinder block walls. When I have a fellow tech on the phone speaking loudly or on speaker phone, I just set the Smart 3D app to Streaming Focus and it quiets the background noise, even the loud speaker phones, and concentrates the input on the streaming from my Bluetooth connection. I LOVE IT!!! Even not on the phone and one of the guys being annoyingly loud, I set the app on Quite Mode and select Noise Filter and set the volume low and it quiets the loudest voice to manageable, no pain. I’ve been doing hearing aids for about 20 years now and these are by far the best I have yet experienced.
She did not do a REM fitting…she said told me that and said if I wanted to do that we could schedule a second appointment to allow for more time, but she wanted me to get a quick feel for both the KS9 and the Resound.
My reasons for likely going with the Resound aren’t so much from the fitting experience as the limitations with the Bluetooth and my desire to keep a similar arrangement to what I have. I just don’t see the KS9 working for me if I have to repair every time I want to use a different device.
OK, I was just suggesting that it is nearly impossible to compare what two hearing aids sound like unless a REM adjustment is made on each one. Here is a graph of how much the first fit output varied from the NAL-NL2 target for the top 5 hearing aid manufacturers. The differences are up to 10 dB.
In that same respect, how accurate are hearing tests? Are these all from a single test, or tests on the same subject? Do people’s actual tests match from one test to another? Close maybe, or is everyone or others like me taking the test? I think I heard a beep, or maybe I didn’t, click the button this time or not? I swear I hear like ghost pings, my tinnitus acting up maybe? That makes me question just how accurate the tests actually are. Reading an article on the NAL-NL2 formula, it looks subjective to the parameters entered by the tester as well.
I’m sure that the accuracy of a hearing threshold test is plus or minus 5 dB. Not sure that the REM used to verify NAL-NL2 is all that inaccurate. That test actually measures the sound levels in your ear. Not really a subjective thing. That said I suspect it is susceptible to fitter skill in placing the microphones in the ear canal properly.
Agreed.
REM is based on a prescription which is based on an audiogram. If the audiogram is off so is the REM.
I too feel like the Audiogram at hearing centers can be off more than we think. My reasoning is from doing my own audiogram with a hearing aid software. I honestly feel like this is the better way, at least for me. I have raging tinnitus that like many here are pushing the button at anything that sounds right when at the audiologist. But when doing the audiogram myself I know what the sound sounds like and can really dial in when I can hear that actual sound. From these results I have had better first set tuning the aids.
Keeping in mind that the Costco version does cut some features to cut the prices, and the Resound Preza is $1,000 more, I feel like you are getting what you pay for. My fitter took into account what I can afford, and suggested the Preza. I think that you are leaning towards the better choice. I had the previous KS6 which was also Resound, leaving me with the still very useful Phone Clip stepping up to a later model, the Preza’s. It definitely is a step or two up from the KS6. The KS6’s were very good while they lasted, but eventually needed repair, why I was in the market for new. I got into the repair cycle with an earlier Phonak CIC that always came back unchanged. Same problems sent in for, same serial numbers each time.
I am extremely happy and satisfied with the Resound Preza, more so than any of the 4 or 5 previous aids I’ve used over the years.
That is what I read into the article about the prescription. Yes, it is based on the reading from in the ear, but also takes into account the actual audiogram. If you are pushing that button at those tones you think you hear, and then not pushing it on some of the real tones thinking they are tinnitus ghosts … that would throw that prescription off. If the audiogram was not included in the prescription, then they would all read the same. If the audiogram is off …
By the way, an interesting article I came across by Consumer Reports ranking hearing aids by users responding to the survey …
Consumer Report Hearing aid survey based on users’ responses
It is from 2018, so is a year old, but the read is still valid. Yay for Costco, 6 out of 10 rate them best.
So I’ll resurrect this thread. I picked up my Prezas just over two weeks ago. As noted earlier, these were to replace my KS6s. So far I am incredibly happy with these aids. Speech discrimination for me is much improved - especially at work (my wife, on the other hand, is still a challenge, as I just can’t get her to enunciate clearly when she speaks).
I opted for the version that uses the 13 size battery. The fitter told me with my hearing loss I would probably get about 18 hours out of the rechargeables. That just wasn’t enough to swing me to pay for those. My first set of batteries lasted just over 10 days, and that included a LOT of streaming with the phone and the TV Streamer. Compared to the 4 days I was getting from the KS6s, that’s a significant improvement.
Also, these aids connect to my iPhone MUCH more quickly than the KS6s ever did, and the connection is much more stable. The Resound 3D app has many more adjustments that I can make, and I’ve been playing around with those to see what works for me. The “Traffic” program has been removed by Resound, which initially had me a little alarmed. But honestly, the Restaurant program has been outstanding when driving in the car. She set up a “Traffic” program for me using instructions from another thread here on the forum, but thus far I’ve liked the restaurant one better and will likely make a trip in to hav the 4th program removed and just run with three (All Around, Restaurant & Music).
All in all, I’m very happy. I also got to recycle my Phone Clip, which I used in my office to connect to my Bluetooth office phone, so that was also a win.
Thanks,
Gary
NeilK,
Thank you so much for all your very helpful posts on this thread.
I went to Costco this week with my dad to help him get new hearing aids.
Like you, he was thinking of getting the KS9’s but with his profound hearing loss, the specialist recommended the Prezas instead and he is picking them up next week. I hope that he likes them as well as you do.
Now to my question:
Do your Prezas have a telecoil?
I have seen some information online that indicates the battery model Preza does but Costco says no. Can you please confirm?
Again, thank you so much.
I have the Quattro’s, not the Preza’s, but according to the following review of Costco HA offerings, the zinc-air battery version but not the rechargeable version of the Preza’s comes with a telecoil (but see additional research further below).
Traditional Zinc Air Powered
The LT-62 is a traditional zinc-air powered Made For iPhone device that takes a size 13 battery. It has a telecoil on-board and offers a multi-functional button which acts as volume control and programme button. The device is water resistant. This might be the device for you if you want an on-board telecoil receiver.
We know very little about the feature set available on the Preza to be honest with you…
I know the Multi Mic would add telecoil functionality to the rechargeables but it’s an extra expense, something extra to carry, charge, and worry about losing. I have it as a remote microphone for my Quattro’s, don’t use it that much but when I do, I really like it. Best to confirm all this info with Costco.
Looks like Geoff Cooling’s review might have been premature, though. If one downloads the actual Costco user guide for the battery-powered Preza’s, it says NOTHING about them having a telecoil. https://virtualservice.gnresound.com/-/media/REFRESH/US/00-DOWNLOADS/costco/product-information/preza/401057011USCA-ug-preza-rie-hearingaid-userguide.ashx
If you go to the external link provided by Costco for its ReSound product offerings, though, and look up the Multi Mic user guide (under the Downloads tab), you’ll find it does provide the telecoil functionality I describe. http://future-resound.com/