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New Phonak Virto I90-R hearing aids

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sorry to hear that.

how deep do they fit and how big are the vents in mm diameter? it sound counterintuitive but the deeper it goes, the less occlusion.

In reply to @el_pinguino

It has been about 3 weeks since they came back and while some improvements over my old hearing aid are excellent (music for one) I’m not too impressed overall. I do like a lot about the I90-R Bluetooth over my old ones. I’m questioning if these aids are worth the price.

I think the vents are the largest they can be without causing feedback problems. If I cup my hands over my ears or tilt my head a certain way with headphones on I get just a little feedback. There isn’t any feedback when music is playing. As a note, I like the sound of music played through Bose QC headphones rather than streaming the music through the hearing aids with Bluetooth.

My simple benchmarks are like how many times do I say “What?” I’d say it is 10-15% less then my old ones. I don’t feel that is enough at this price point. And, some people I think should be clear simply are not. There are plenty of people in my life where English is their second language and while some enunciate words quite well, others do not. Some of the better speakers I’m struggling to hear well at times and there are too many What?s.

In some environments like an outdoor picnic the AutoSense takes a bit of time to sort out the environment. The one restaurant I was in was just a soso experience. I’ll try another one this weekend.

I have an appointment Friday and will discuss all the notes I’ve taken so far. Maybe there are adjustments that can be made. I am thinking of replacing the volume up/down button setting with program settings and just control the volume via the phone. This way I have a clearer picture of what programs to use. I’m also going to ask for the logs to see what programs I have actually been using.

My experience was a very big improvement with Marvels and only a very small improvement with each subsequent Phonak generation. I don’t hear any better with Infinio than I did with Lumity but the form factor is slightly better. But for me, any small improvement is worth it. I always get the upgrade. Hoping the next generation is even better.

In reply to @el_pinguino

You should find another professional. obviously is useful to check occlusion (REOG/). Your obviously isn’t very motivated. Puts the fault on the manufacturer. For high end hearing aids, it’s a bad service.

In reply to @el_pinguino

What exactly is the perception that you are getting that is causing you to demand larger vents?

It’s probably going to be difficult to get the clarity that you want. Larger venting is going to leak out the lows so that soft speakers are muffled and they are also going to limit the highs to stop feedback. If I had to guess, you’re probably not getting sufficient gain at 500 Hz and not much of anything above 1500 Hz either. What’s your word recognition at a loud volume in the sound booth? Because if it’s below 60% hearing aids are going to be a challenge no matter what.

That left ear looks like a eval to me. If you’re looking for what’s going to make the biggest difference.

Edited

I asked for larger vents because of occlusion. The vents were tiny on the originals. The second mold they are huge. Just a big jump. My last pair of Phonaks had smaller vents than the second fitting, but bigger than the first fitting.

Word recognition is 88% right ear and 72% left ear.

Should I ask for a medium vent? At this point I think maybe would be helpful too. Or possibly switch to behind the ear, though there are some things I don’t like about . I’ve never had BTE either. Might be a big jump.

Vent

What perceptual experience are you calling occlusion. If you plug your ears with your fingers do you get it?

would be valuable, but a lot is going to depend on how the feedback measure is looking. Ear anatomy is very individual so it’s POSSIBLE that you still have a lot of good headroom at the high frequencies. If you do, you can proceed with , but if the feedback measure is limiting your gain at the venting that you need (if you really DO need larger venting) then yes moving to a could help.

That hearing aid vent doesn’t look as big as I was imagining, but the hearing aid itself looks REALLY shallow, which will also be a problem for feedback. Is that a limitation of the mold that was taken or of your actual ear canal being a bit small? If the latter, that might also be a reason to go to a BTE. Again, it depends on the feedback measure.

(Word recognition is much better than I would have guessed. So maybe not . Given that , Is there a conductive component to your hearing loss? If so, that’s also something that calls for more headroom and more power.)

I gave the audiologist my notes at the beginning of the appointment. We discussed several things with one being the depth in which my hearing aid goes into the ear canal. I brought my old ones for comparison. Again, he differed this to Phonak’s engineering and not his decision. I do like the shorter ones because I don’t have to change the wax trap so often.

The original vents were tiny. In the remake the vents were huge. So we put inserts into the vent to reduce the size and we increased gain in the upper frequencies. This definately changed the dynamics and time will tell if took me in the right direction.

I had a specific program added to the menu on the phone for ‘speech in noise’ so that I could chose it deliberately instead of guessing that AutoSense chose it.

Thanks to all for the discussion. I was better informed and knew what to ask or request.

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