Starkey Omega AI 24 mRIC - New user

I was issued new Omega AI 24 hearing aids by the Des Moines, Iowa VA a little over three weeks ago. These are my first set of hearing aids. I was offered the mRic and the ITE versions and chose the mRIC.

The audiology exam seemed to be thorough. It took about 6 weeks from the time of the exam to when I had the aids fitted (included a REM test).

Connectivity between my IPhone 13 mini (IOS 26.3.1) and the MyStarkey app (version 6.0.1) has worked well. I was able to easily pair the aids with both my IPhone and my IPad.

I can open my IPad to watch a video and it automatically switches the stream from the IPhone to the IPad. Unfortunately when a call comes in it doesn’t mute the IPad video so they are both playing in the aids. There may be a setting that I need to figure out to stop this and make the phone primary.

It has tremendously improved my ability to hear in noisy places.

There is only one program, the “Home” program. This program seems to automatically adjust to your environment (there is a volume control for the Home program, but that is it other than the Edge option).

You can add a separate custom program that allows you to tweak the sound levels, three channel equalizer, noise reduction and wind reduction. I haven’t felt the need to add a custom program.

I can easily tell from which direction sound is coming.

I wear glasses and other than than taking them on and off, there is no spacing interference or sound issues once the glasses are on.

The Edge Mode+ gives you three options after it has done its analysis: Best Sound, Enhance Speech and Reduce Noise (you can quickly switch back and forth between the options to see which one works the best). I have used this in very noisy restaurants and it greatly reduced the background noise and made it possible to understand other people. This feature also works well in rooms with a lot of echo.

The Edge Mode+ Reduce Noise option also helped remove wind noise by quite a bit (not entirely, maybe 85% or so) when I was outside in 50 mph winds.

Sound quality: dogs are noisier, water in the faucet sounds funny, higher pitched sounds are odd, my truck doesn’t ride as quiet as I thought, etc.

I don’t know if some of this is me forgetting the ways things sound or if it is part of the electronic processing. It does appear that I am not noticing these effects as much as I did earlier, so maybe I am adjusting.

My voice seems normal (I have 7mm open comfort buds), radio in the truck sounds okay (talk radio is normal, but some music still sounds a bit off on the high frequencies that I probably wasn’t hearing before). I am not an audiophile, so I cannot speak to how faithfully music sound is processed.

My wife says that I am talking quieter now and I can understand her talking to me when we are in different rooms. Oddly enough she also says that I am walking quieter.

Cell phone sound quality streaming directly to my aids has been good on both sides of the call.

The provided charger with battery pack seems to hold several days of charge. It took four days to get down to 2 bars out of 5.

I have been wearing the aids around 10 - 12 hours and this gets me to a 60% - 70% or so charged state on the aids at the end of the day (I do little streaming, so I suspect it would be lower if I was watching videos all day). I charge the aids every night, but I can see getting close to three days out of a single charge.

There are several features on the app that track things such as time standing, steps walked, hearing aid usage, biking time, etc. There is also a fall notification feature that sends notification to another person in the event of a fall. If you enable location services it will help you find the aids if they drop off.

Three clicks on the IPhone side button brings you to a menu where you can quickly adjust the microphone level, background sounds, turn on Live Listen, see the battery charge state, etc. This is much quicker than getting to the MyStarkey app if your phone is password protected.

One nice feature for me is the ability to stream constant background sounds to the aids. There are 16 different sounds to choose from and you can adjust the volume, volume when other media is playing and how much goes to each ear. This helps mask my tinnitus.

There is a single button on the aids where you can raise (button on right aid) or lower (button on left aid) the volume by pressing. You can also place the aid in sleep mode by pressing and holding.

There are several other features available that you need to create an account for, but I haven’t explored those options.

Issues:

1. I had some itching going on after the first few days, but application of “Ear Itch MD” for a couple of days seemed to resolve the issue.

2. One ear got a bit of discomfort, but I just backed off wearing them for a couple of days and it resolved the issue.

3. Streaming from the IPhone and the IPad works well, but although I can pair the hearing aids with my computer, Linux Mint will not support streaming from the computer to the hearing aids.

My understanding is that there is no support for MFI from Linux. Perhaps I can find a dongle to bridge the gap.

This is a minor annoyance during TEAM calls as I have come to prefer having calls streamed directly to the aids. My current work around during TEAM calls is to mute the computer microphone and dial in separately with my cell phone and use it to talk and receive audio.

4. One odd thing is that I got a headache similar to eyestrain when getting new glasses and felt queasy. This went away by day three.

As these are my first set of hearing aids, I don’t know if there is something better out there, but overall I’m good with the way they are working.

Anyway, these are my rambling thoughts. I have learned quite a bit by lurking the forum and thought that perhaps I could give a bit of insight as there doesn’t seem to be much information about the Starkey Omega aids here.

Glad they’re working well for you. Nice little review. Much appreciated.