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Resound Preza from Costco

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You may know this but I believe the charger is included in the per unit price of the Phillips HearLink. I find it incredible that a company would price their rechargeable hearing aids to not include the charger. Kind of like selling a car with no gas tank or battery. And, $270 for a charger is ridiculous. USB chargers are under $10 everywhere. In Canada at Costco you could buy nearly 1200 batteries for $270. That is about 9 years worth of batteries.

In reply to @dancebywind

That’s useful info–expensive, but not as bad as I was expecting. I plan to get the Preza when I get back from vacation (I live in ). Can you tell me, does the app have a “Music” program setting, like the Quattro? I can’t find any info on this. Thanks

I don’t see a “music setting” per se in mine. But it does have a lot of personal settings that you can make, the tv/music program has a bass - mid - treble equalizer that lets you adjust all. Just watching tv my wife loves that I can adjust the aids to what I like and can keep the tv volume low enough that she’s yelling make the tv louder. Oh and you can save any changes you make as custom programs

Thanks for your input. The EQ sounds useful and may help. But I understand the Music setting on the Quattro flattens the frequency response that is normally shaped to boost those narrow specific speech bands. I do a bit of music production and that was one of the key features I was hoped the Preza would preserve.

Then I would suggest checking carefully before buying. I’m just an average guy not using special types of features. Being a total techie I do like playing with my tech toys, but other than the coolness of them I don’t get into the specifics that much. Too much specific overload at work building servers over the internet. Toys are for playing with

Edited

In reply to @Terence

@Terence said:

Can you tell me, does the app have a “Music” program setting, like the Quattro? I can’t find any info on this

If you go to the ReSound site for the Preza and look at the Smart 3D app brochure available under the Downloads tab, it shows a screenshot, presumably for a Preza, with a music program included on the program bar in the smartphone app, same as for the Quattro’s. http://future-resound.com/91

Whatever you get, it’s a good idea to read/skim the user guide ahead of time and advise your provider what programs you want set up in the HA’s. The programs added to the HA may vary depending upon how the provider has their default fitting scheme adjusted in the fitting software. I recall at least one previous Quattro user whose provider had just installed the All-Around program and not much more to get the user started. It is hard to find in the Costco ReSound Preza literature any specific mention of the music program but an easy way to solve this is just to call your local Costco’s hearing aid center and ask - or visit that store area the next time you’re shopping at Costco (the HA center’s hours are more limited than the overall Costco store hours).

Thanks, Jim. Believe it or not I had skimmed though most of the material on that link but missed that image…duh! But that’s encouraging. On the US Costco website, there are a bunch of self-help videos on the Preza and the one on changing programs does NOT have the Music one. For sure, I have a Costco appointment in September, so I’ll grill them on that. Maybe it’s a paid-for upgrade. It would be helpful if companies listed every feature explicitly and in detail, like when you buy any complex technology such as a mirrorless camera, but they are vague in a lot of areas - intentionally I think. Sometimes makes comparisons difficult.

In reply to @Terence

For the Quattro, the Music program is just a free option in the fitting software program and I naively presume that it’s the same for the Preza. No OEM would get very far charging for a music program. Since the Music program sounds different and usually does not aid speech recognition, I can see why a provider might want to leave it off initially especially for an older person just starting out with HA’s during a trial period where if they accidentally got switched into the Music program, the user might wonder why speech sounds different, not as good as it used to be, etc. Button presses of the wrong length can change programs instead of volume, etc.

That makes sense. I’ll update this thread once I find out for sure, should anyone have a similar question. Cheers.

In reply to @Neilk

@Neilk said:

Looked like garbage until I clicked on Reply

Perhaps if you’re writing a post on your phone you don’t get a dual screen view. On a 27-inch monitor using a browser on a Windows 10 computer, I get the raw markdown/forum code of the post in a dialog on the lower left of the screen and on the lower right, I get a preview of what the finished post might look like.

That was on my iPhone X. I have a 27" iMac at home, but the app is on my phone and I’m still at work for another 40 minutes. Although I can come here on my Windows 7 workstation when not busy, I can’t do much like uploading pictures to it. We stay with Windows 7 as it is most compatible with the various VPN clients we use to connect to our County client networks.

In reply to @Neilk

Yup! There are those little ol’ quavers. That’s great news and I appreciate you taking the time and effort to do that. I’m excited to get these for the start of next term. I teach and it’s getting difficult to hear student’s questions sometimes.

In reply to @Terence

@Terence said:

But I understand the Music setting on the Quattro flattens the frequency response that is normally shaped to boost those narrow specific speech bands. I do a bit of music production and that was one of the key features I was hoped the Preza would preserve.

I am not familiar with the Quattro and ReSound practices, but I have the feeling that these higher end hearing aids all do pretty much the same thing. I am most familiar with the KS8 (Rexton Emerald 80, or Signia 7Nx) from Costco, as I have them as well as the Connexx programming software, so I can see what they do and what options they have. I don’t have the hardware to actually program them though.

From what I see in the software is that the hearing aid gain from program to program, including the three music programs on the KS8’s remains the same. The gain vs frequency strategy comes from the prescription formula. Some are more intended for speech than others. The music programs typically only play with the other features such as noise reduction, Peak limiting, and feedback suppression speed. That said there is nothing preventing the fitter from adjusting the gain vs frequency correction for the music specific program. It is kind of a trial and error process though.

Separate from that is the streaming program. The normal programs are essentially for sound picked up by the hearing aid microphones, and what you get in your ear is a combination of the natural sound and the amplified sound. The balance between the two is determined by how open or closed your fitting is. However, when you go pure streaming, there is no natural sound. That most often leaves the ear canal short of bass which comes in through the fitting. So it is normal to have a streaming equalizer that can adjust the sound in up to 20 bands to correct for the loss of normal ambient sound. This equalization is applied on top of the equalization used in the normal programs.

The other thing you might find of interest is the anti reverb program. It is intended to null out echos that make it hard to understand speech in auditoriums with hard sound reflection surfaces.

Hope that helps more than it confuses…

I don’t have a clue about a thing that you said. All gobbledegook to me. I prefer to let the fitter who knows what he’s doing do a good job for me. My Costco fitter used to repairs aids, now is an . I’m too old to worry about learning new stuff that doesn’t interest me when I have to keep up as it is with election laws and how the program I support is constantly changing to accommodate the legal mumble jumbo. As for the Preza aids, I am really impressed and happy with them. I can hear much better than ever before. It seems counterproductive, but you turn the volume down on the noise control to allow you to hear closer voices. Go figure!

I’ll be looking forward to hearing what you think of them. My wife , my neighbor, and my boss and co-workers are all impressed by them, as am I

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