I am really struggling with the entire experience I have had with the company, Hearing Life, and the Oticon over the ear model I was sold. After being diagnosed with mild/moderate hearing loss about a year ago at a Hearing Life office, I was presented with one style of hearing aid and highly encouraged to purchase them. Long story short and many many many visits back and forth to try and make adjustments, the devices do not seem to work for me. Something is always off or wrong about the sound quality. It hurts to wear my glasses with them and they end up hindering my experience more than they help. I worry that I have made a horrible mistake as they were costly and there does not seem to be a solution in sight. Does anyone else have this kind of experience, and how did you go about solving it?
I have been wearing aids gor 20 years, and Oticon aids for 15 years. Your hearing loss is a hard issue to deal with wearing aids because you have a lot of your hearing left. I started wearing aids that were In The Ear aids. I had moderate hearing loss to moderately severe hearing loss. I now have severe hearing loss at the mid range frequencies. I wear MiniRite aids that have a behind the ear part to them. I wear wire rim glasses that have really minimal ear pieces. It is going to be really hard for you to get use to wearing aids as you fo have a good bit of your hearing left. But more likely you struggle with word recognition. My recommendation is if you can still return the aids to possibly do so and ask for aids.
Did they do any kind of verification of the function of the aids? The gold standard for hearing aid fittings is completing on-ear verification using a machine such as Verifit, which allows the audiologist/fitter to see exactly what the output of the aids is while you are wearing them. If they did not do this, they are not using best practices. My understanding (from what I heard from an audiologist who used to work there) is that the goal at Hearing Life is to sell hearing aids, not fit them properly.
@Kkokas Could you tell us which model of Oticon aids you purchased from Hearing Life? Also, if it’s okay for you to enter your data in your profile, it gives us a bit more of an idea what the situation is you are dealing with.
I guess the hassle of wearing an aid has less benefit to those who only have mild loss. If you have severe loss the benefit is tremendous. Understand nothing or understand quite a lot.
I sure did because I already could hear okay in my own mind. I couldn’t stand a lot of the sounds I was hearing. My hearing loss is also not your normal hearing loss. I had and still have very good low frequencies and high frequencies, my hearing loss is from 2000 to 4000 hz frequencies, speech understanding,.
Keep in mind that HearingLife is the retail outlet for Demant/Oticon so they will be pushing Oticon. I had a very brief experience with HearingLife. The audiologist was 2 months out of school and although she put probes in my ears I am not convinced that she made any use of them in the 30 seconds it took to look at her screen. When I returned the aids during the 30 day return period, she had already moved on to another store. I have no idea if this is typical of HearingLife. Having said that, your hearing aids should not be painful with glasses. Maybe the wires are not the correct length but as noted above, really need more information to make any useful suggestions.
I wear oticon hearing aids and they are hands down the best aids I have ever worn.
problem with glasses
You may just need longer tube cables. Sometimes if they are too short, they pinch your ears.
Your audiologist
I also had a similar problem to yourself with my previous aids. The mistake we both made is using a high street chain to get our hearing aids. These places are hearing aid dispensers - Their job is to sell hearing aids.
My experience with this high street chain is a bit like yours. It took many visits over many months just to get the hearing aids functional. Frankly, they didn’t know what they are doing to be honest. My new hearing aids, with my new audiologist was setup far better than my old ones - within the space of two visits.
Find an audiologist that is not part of a chain. Small, personal company. Check their reviews. Also look for one that offers and (if possible) Word speech recognition.
Sound Quality
You don’t say what the problem is with the sound quality. It probably is because they have not set it up properly, but also equally likely that you are not used to hearing high frequencies again and everything sounds harsher and more bright and trebly. When you have not been hearing certain frequencies for some years, and you get hearing aids for the first time, they do sound off as your brain has to relearn to hear properly. It can take some time to get used to hearing sounds that you have not heard for some years.
Having said that, I suspect the bigger issue is that they have not setup the hearing aids properly and this is an extremely common complaint with high street chains. Avoid them like the plague. There is nothing wrong with Oticon - many people (myself included) are very happy wearing them and they are consistently voted the number one hearing product by many audiologists for their ability to hear speech in noisy backgrounds as Oticon focus more on clarity of speech.
Trade off
There is a trade off wearing hearing aids. You can either aim for maximum hearing comfort, in which case go for Resound, Widex etc or you can aim for maximum speech clarity in which case go with Oticon.
Maximum hearing comfort means that the sound is natural, but results in a situation where speech clarity is slightly compromised (as in muddy) as it’s not as crisp as it could be and it is much harder to hear in noisy environments.
Maximum Speech clarity means the sound is slightly more metallic, where you can hear the “s”, “f”, “sh” and other fricatives a lot more and you understand speech a lot better - even in noisy environments. Some people find the sound too harsh even with the default VAC+ sound profile that Oticon provides.
I find for me, that maximum hearing comfort doesn’t work for me, because everything is too loud and I still can’t hear what I am trying to hear. Even with Oticon’s hearing aids - using their default VAC+ sound profile, I struggle to understand speech in certain environments like the car (front to back passengers) for example. But when I wear the Oticon hearing aids using (another sound profile), I can hear and understand what people are saying in the car. The cost though, is that while speech is more crisp and more clear, it does sound less natural (until you get used to it).
Some people prefer natural sound and it also depends on their hearing loss. I hate it, because everything is too loud, speech is muddy and indistinct. Some people like me prefer speech clarity over natural sounds and it works because I can hear in those difficult to hear environments.
In short, you need to decide what trade off you are willing to accept in terms of what sound profile you want. There is always going to be a trade off.
Conclusion
Get a new audiologists to program your Oticon hearing aids properly and don’t be afraid to ask for REM, WSR and try out different sound profiles and see what you like. Bear in mind, the vast majority of Audiologists do not offer REM - you really do need to research to find one that does. REM is not a magic panacea, but it is the only reliable way to verify the fit as everyone’s ears are different.
All your problems would be solved by finding an audiologist that is not part of a high street chain. These small outfits are usually far better at their job. Look at their reviews!
@ed243 . I inherited a set of Oticon Real 1s. I tried using just one for a while, but it felt very lopsided. Streaming is not very important to me, but triangulation. I spend a lot of time in very complex acoustic environments (lots of people chatting and clattering). Would I buy two if I had to pay for them (will I buy a pair once my Real 1s wear out)? I think so. I can’t see your , but how did you go, monaural or binaural? What’s your experience?
I often thought using a Real 1 in one ear and a Real 3 in my good ear would be good enough for triangulation, but I don’t think that’s supported.
My loss is similar. Left is within normal limits, right is moderate HF loss–a sudden onset after a viral infection 2 years ago. I’ve tried just about all major brands. Settled on monaural right now. Basically feel that the left aid would not be doing much in terms of amplification. Biggest challenge as you stated is noisy/complex environments. My current experiment is to switch to a more closed fit (been using open domes) to see if cutting out the ambinet noise would help. What kind of coupling did you settle on?
As you can see my right is moderate to severe. I do open for left and have by now arrived at a single vented bass dome right. Would not go back to more open. Neville recommended vented grip tips, which I am tempted to try for right.
Yes, I have an Oticon Own Si (). Same story–good in quiet, not so good in noise. Single mic so no directionality. I am now ordering acrylic custom tips (Slim tips) for Phonak Spheres to try a more occluded fit. This should be about as good as modern technology can do for speech in noise.
I always wondered how much directionality the pinna effect has if you are wearing or aids, and whether it’s comparable to aids for moderate-to-severe . What’s your experience?
In my experience, the pinna + is not enough for a compromised ear. The internal filters are just not good enough anymore so you need to clean up the input before it enters the ear. Yes, I do my own fitting and even
I picked up an older Verifit system on eBay. It’s a standalone system vs modern ones that integrate with computers, but still works fine for what it needs to do.
Hot Springs Village, Arkansas
