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TOTALLY RANDOM POST II

tobedetermined

Well-known member
Premium user
ICMag Donor
As I continue to research hearing aids, I guess I should share some of the kernels of wisdom. Unless your aid is paid for go to Costco. I really hate to recommend that hideous store but you can save huge dollars if their product works and if your local Costco has a good hearing specialist on staff. Three manufacturers sell brands to Costco and each of these brands shares the tech with a much more expensive brand. The Jabra is very similar to ReSound. The Phillips 9050 is like the Oticon Intent. And the Rexton Reach is a mirror of the Signia ix 7. All three are around $1500 USD - which is crazy cheap for an HA.

And if those don’t work you jump into the shark pool. Phonak is on top of the tech curve at the moment, followed closely by Oticon. And the pricing? Obscene.

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Yes, if you budgeted properly, you could fly to Paris, buy a top of the line Phonak HA, stay for a few days in a cheap hotel and fly back and still have a few dollars left over . . .
 

armedoldhippy

Well-known member
Veteran
As I continue to research hearing aids
forget Beltone. over $2500 for their "lower level" aids, and i had some aids meant for hunting that cost about $75 per ear that were just as good if not better. near as i've been able to determine myself, NONE of them can differentiate between human speech and background sound and then only amplify speech over all other noise. :(
 

moose eater

Well-known member
As I continue to research hearing aids, I guess I should share some of the kernels of wisdom. Unless your aid is paid for go to Costco. I really hate to recommend that hideous store but you can save huge dollars if their product works and if your local Costco has a good hearing specialist on staff. Three manufacturers sell brands to Costco and each of these brands shares the tech with a much more expensive brand. The Jabra is very similar to ReSound. The Phillips 9050 is like the Oticon Intent. And the Rexton Reach is a mirror of the Signia ix 7. All three are around $1500 USD - which is crazy cheap for an HA.

And if those don’t work you jump into the shark pool. Phonak is on top of the tech curve at the moment, followed closely by Oticon. And the pricing? Obscene.

View attachment 19073225

Yes, if you budgeted properly, you could fly to Paris, buy a top of the line Phonak HA, stay for a few days in a cheap hotel and fly back and still have a few dollars left over . . .
Thank you.

I hold Costco in higher esteem by far than I do the likes of Walmart and Sam's Club, though I know in smaller economies, like Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, as an example, where Costco has dibs on a piece of land out near McCrae's, locals are frightened a bit (some of those who are aware, anyway) that it'll be un-survivable competition for the 3 or so local grocery stores they already have, including what is their discount, anything-and-everything store, the Real Canadian Super Store. (where I often/sometimes buy my wild-caught whitefish for human consumption to use as bait, as it's cheaper/lb. than the subsistence-caught whitefish we can buy in Alaska for actual bait whitefish).
 

tobedetermined

Well-known member
Premium user
ICMag Donor
NONE of them can differentiate between human speech and background sound and then only amplify speech over all other noise.

That is the holy grail of hearing aids. The Phonak I tried seemed to do it reasonably well when we out to a busy resto one night. I could hear the 3 people at our table - but they only sounded slightly weird - and the background hubbub was quite muted. But that was only one night. The HA forum I have found has a lot of users getting mixed results from the same crazy expensive HA. It would seem that there is no magic solution. It is trial and error and a lot of the success or failure rests with the audiologist or the 'his' person where you buy. They are supposed to know what they are doing (!?!) when they dial it in to match your hearing loss but . . . well . . . y'know . . . :rolleyes: Some users actually program their own as it is not that hard once you buy some hdwe ($200) and locate the tuning software - most of which is available somewhere on line. But I don't know . . .
 

moose eater

Well-known member
That is the holy grail of hearing aids. The Phonak I tried seemed to do it reasonably well when we out to a busy resto one night. I could hear the 3 people at our table - but they only sounded slightly weird - and the background hubbub was quite muted. But that was only one night. The HA forum I have found has a lot of users getting mixed results from the same crazy expensive HA. It would seem that there is no magic solution. It is trial and error and a lot of the success or failure rests with the audiologist or the 'his' person where you buy. They are supposed to know what they are doing (!?!) when they dial it in to match your hearing loss but . . . well . . . y'know . . . :rolleyes: Some users actually program their own as it is not that hard once you buy some hdwe ($200) and locate the tuning software - most of which is available somewhere on line. But I don't know . . .
My hearing loss, which was identified over 30 years prior, presumably due to a wide variety of activities I should've been wearing hearing protection for had I not been 10-ft. tall and bulletproof (straight-piped motorcycles, helicopters, machineguns, chainsaws, other firearms, rock concerts, good quality HEADPHONES in the 1970s, etc. etc.) was said to be in specific tone ranges, which is fairly common.

I don't know if Medicare would pay for the implants now that run wires or similar into the ear's nerves, but my concern is and has been (primarily) being potentially subjected to something that can't be removed easily by ME if it malfunctions, and which will light up TSA scanners, as well as potentially being a complication in MRI scans, etc.

But last night I had a more difficult time hearing my wife (who has an intermittent habit of talking to the project she's working on which is often pointed away from me), and this morning in the hygienist's chair at the dentist while the hypersonic deep-scaling device was running and the poor hygienist was likely talking at the same tone or volume she might to anyone else, I couldn't hear half of what she was saying.

Though I'm sure that much of the hygienist's conversation was not significantly important, I found myself doing what I assume a lot of people do, and that was to sometimes pretend to hear things I absolutely couldn't hear, or could only hear a single word here and there, and simply agree.... hoping she didn't ask me anything seriously important.

I'm probably headed for something along the lines of a cheaper amplification device in the end. Hopefully one of minimal size. But I haven't looked into it too deeply yet.

My wife will be elated if/when I do, I'm sure.
 

moose eater

Well-known member
I'm breaking both my 'no nitrites/nitrates' ban in my diet and my 'no particulate/fibrous meat products after a serious deep periodontal scaling' rule and preparing to eat some smoked turkey wings. They were out of smoked turkey drumsticks.
 

moose eater

Well-known member
This describes us too. And we have a back split so she is usually on a different level as well. :rolleyes:
We have passive venting in the house from when we built with what was originally a non-conventional heating system, so we sometimes use the vents between the floors as conduits for voice, but it still involves yelling.

I had a clerk in a hotel accuse me of yelling at her this last spring, and I tried to tell her that I am hard of hearing, plus I feel the need to raise my voice to get over the P100 mask I wear, and she rudely said, "OK, if you say so..."

People who are hard of hearing often talk more loudly, as they can't really hear how loud they are. Add a mask, and the volume inherently often rises.
 
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