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Phonak Lyric 4 User Review

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If there is interest in a review of the Phonak Lyric 4 by a new-to-hearing-aids patient, let me know. Just got them today.

First impressions: Initially very comfortable, which surprised me. I have what I expect to be the usual amazement at what I was missing and how things sound now with the aids in place. I had forgotten how noisy clothes can be, LOL.

I’m now about 5 hours since insertion. My ears occasionally feel a little achy. Not at all bad as long as it doesn’t escalate. The right ear I hardly feel the aid at all. The left ear I feel a little pressure.

Feel free to ask questions! If there is interest I will keep updating this thread.

24 people in this conversation31 min readJump to latest

Good luck with them. They are an interesting product. I used to train audiologists to fit the Lyric about 8 years ago and they have definitely changed since then You will probably love them or hate them, I hope it is the former.

I’m surprised you got them so quickly! Not having had experience with this I’m thinking you’d get used to it but if you don’t then just call your audi pronto. I mean don’t call him Pronto, call him quickly. :wink:

When I got my More 1s, I, too, was surprised at the sounds I was missing. When I take them out at night, sound has kind of a dullness to it, lacking the HFs that were amplified by them. I had them off the entire week I was away at Disney a few weeks ago, and I got used to the difference, but then when I got home and put them in again? There it was. Those HFs that I got used to not hearing.

I have to say that sometimes when you hear things you are not used to hearing, the amplified sound comes off as a little weird and takes getting used to. I say that because you mentioned the sound of clothes.

Keep us posted!

Clothes, paper, the refrigerator. I know I’m not the first or last to experience it. Funny thing, I just had cataract surgery too, so it’s a double whammy.

I think it’s very common to get fired with lyrics on the dayof the test if you’re a candidate and interested, because audiologists that carry them have to maintain a stock for their patients.

I like the audiologist a lot. She spent plenty of time with me despite knowing I was also interested in the costco units. If I fit the costco units (which would mean a problem developed with the lyrics) I would still want to use her services in programming etc. The 250 would be worth it.

Over 9 hours now. They are more comfortable than before. Fascinated to see what tomorrow brings

@kevin6 said:

Funny thing, I just had cataract surgery too, so it’s a double whammy.

Funny, I just told my wife that now that I have my new glasses and new hearing aids, I think my sense of smell has improved! :wink:

New day, new problems (I’ll get to that) but the hearing aids are pretty comfortable. If I’m not thinking about them I completely forget the right side. I feel a little pressure on the left (and the right when I think about it).
My voice sounds normal but louder, so as predicted by others here I am a good candidate in terms of my hearing loss.
I had the volume up all the way, and that worked well for me unless there was any kind of higher pitched noise, whereupon it would seem to mute some of the sound. Scooping some ice would trigger that. So today each side is down a notch to see if that improves … I didn’t like the feel of that response, even as I recognize it is protecting the hearing I still have.
Sleeping … well that didn’t work out the way I’d hoped. I’m a cpap user and while the machine is very quiet, the vent on my ‘mask’ produces a lot of white noise that I really barely heard before and now I find abnoxious. After waking up several times I caved and put the heating aids in sleep mode.
For those that don’t know, the Lyric has a mode where it passes sound through without amplifying it, that’s sleep mode. That worked well but is counter to my strategy of full time heating aids to combat tinnitus.
And that’s not the end of the problems. With the hearing aids in sleep mode I barely hear the alarm radio because I let’s the volume going to sleep.
If I can’t resolve the vent noise issue I’ll have to use sleep mode and keep the radio volume up, but my desire is to get used to the noise (and/or mute it some).
I could go in to all the things I am rediscovering but I think this is already too long.

P.S. ‘mask’ is in quotes because I don’t use a traditional cpap mask. Since this isn’t a cpap forum I won’t go in to details. But me up privately for more info on that.

Do the Lyrics sit far enough in that you can use regular earbuds and ear protection? I wear custom molded earplugs for motorcycle, shooting, etc. Can these be worn on top of the lyrics?

They do for me, yes. It may depend on how long your reader canal is, I’ve been told I have very long ear canals.

If you turn them all the way off they are very effective heating protection. I tried that because I’m the curious type. Could not hear anything. Not even slightly.

You could also put them in sleep mode which passes noise at the volume you would get without aids (approximately).

If you were to try them I’ll advise that when inserting something else in your ear canal, go slow. Your creating an area of higher pressure that will be uncomfortable.

I think in the end you’d have to ask your audiologist about whether you can do that. The manual says conflicting things, like not to use things in the ear canal, but you could use a molded plug for swimming.

Out of the blue my audiologist cakes today to see how I was doing. Who does that these days? (Yeah I see that’s a mark of a good audi. )

I told her that comfort-wise they’re working out great. More often than not I don’t notice them, especially in the first half of the day.

Hearing-wise I’m pretty happy, but I’ve noticed that certain sounds in certain environments trigger what I would call a clipping effect. It’s like the amplification partially does out. It happens very fast and is triggered by sounds at the upper end of the spectrum (hearing wise I guess upper end is 8khz, so certainly not the upper end of normal hearing). When this happens it feels odd, almost like my ear becomes blocked … and if course they are, so that makes some sense.

Long story short I’ll be seeing her again tomorrow. Hopefully we can hear that out. It’s probably the only thing between me and being fully happy with these.

One example that I discovered while driving is that road noise from another car on the left can trigger it. I turned that in to making a ‘shhhh’ nose while in the car triggers the left side. Outside of the car I can make the same noise at a much higher volume with no impact … I need to be near a reflective surface.

I’ve experienced a similar problem on the right side, again in the car, this time with my daughter talking.

I have no experience to judge this against. I do see Musician talking about a whoosh noise, but that’s definitely different.

Hard to figure out how to search for this issue because I don’t have a term with which to search (also that was a clue in to my normal modus operandi).

For those following along, the frequency of my posts on this thread are going to do down (short of answering questions).
I saw the audiologist yesterday and she tweaked the hearing curve after first playing with compression and noting it did nothing, maybe even made the clipping issue a little worse. (I used the jingling keys method of triggering the problem. ) After talking to phonak she also wanted to try pulling one out a few millimeters. That also didn’t help and introduced what I think was occlusion (my voice felt/sounded unnatural).
So as I said she tweaked the curve. She also changed the amplification so that the levels I was using (highest on both ears) are now the middle … in other words I could make them louder.
Result: much harder to trigger clipping. Much happier patient.
I no longer feel them at all. That’s awesome. Pretty sure I’ll stick with them.
Heating: the sound is amazing. My high frequency list was moderate to severe and I’m still adjusting to the impact of sounds in that space. The world sounds like the treble knob is too high. That’s slowly changing.
Did it help with the tinnitus? Hard to say. I think the tinnitus is reduced, but it goes up and down and did so before. I think the ‘up’ period are less frequent and less loud.
About the trial period: I’m sure different audiologists do this differently, but this audiologist says the trial lasts a long as the initial devices work. Once I decide to stick with it I’ll provide a credit card (everything has been without charge so far) and the subscription begins on the day I got the trials.

Great news, I’m happy for you. I hope this works out to be your answer.

WH

Not like restaurant noisy. Still avoiding…

However I can tell you that Lyric devices have zero noise reduction … they ate analog devices so no dynamic processing. Everything is based on the correction you need, nothing else.

That said, since the lyric is so far in your ear canal you get the benefit of nature’s ability to reject some noise.

I have used them in my car, which is now 12 years old and not the quietest when it comes to outside noise. I’m certainly able to correctly hear speech of my passengers.

Thanks for the ongoing review of the Lyrics kevin6- very interesting. Can you or anyone tell me whether Lyrics are suitable for severe hearing loss? (I’d previously come across a fitting guide but can’t seem to find it now on the net.)

In reply to @MickeyCee

In their faq: Lyric is designed for people with mild to moderately-severe hearing loss.

I know I’ve seen the graph of coverage, but can’t find it at the moment. Based on your own description I have my doubts. But the best answer is to find s local audiologist that fits lyrics and talk with them. You would need that relationship anyway to replace them as needed.
I see @MDB found the chart and you’d have issues with missing low end coverage, which means trouble with vowels.
Sorry for the bad news

To avoid the forum complaining, you just need to repeat the punctuation… Software will truncate. I’ll demonstrate in next post.

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