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Resound Omnia vs Phonak Lumity

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Lumity update… I’ve been trialing the Lumitys now for about a month off and on because of problems with reciever wires… I have tried both normal and the AV wires and for the past week had both sets of wires and would interchange them to see if there was a significant difference between them… I honestly didn’t see much difference … I tried them playing multiple sports Pickleball, Softball and Golf and also indoors at my home… I would wear each set of wires for about a 1/2 hr and then change them up… The last few days I decided to just wear the AV wires and I also brought with me my Resound 1"S and did the same above activities… what I did notice was to get practically the same hearing ability with my Resounds I boosted my volume up a couple decibels and added a little more treble to my ALL-Around program on the 1’s using my app … also last week my audi gave me a set of the Phonak titanium molds to try instead of my normal silicone molds… He did have to change up my program for them but I still didn’t see much of a difference in speech comprehension and I didn’t care for the titaium mold becasue it would shift a little in my left ear and cause some occlusion until I shifted it back… the construction of the mold also seemed to make the tip of the wire a wax magnet because it would actually sit right on the tip of the mold when seated properly … in my silicone molds my wires sit back about 1/16" from the tip… that to me would be a nightmare for upkeep especially since the AV’s are suppose to only last about 6 months and per Phonak should be changed out for new ones that I would have to buy…
2 other things that I prefer with Resound is streaming TV and the app… when streaming with Phonak everytime I get a phone call or was texting with someone my stream would stop and several times I would have to stick the ’s back in charger because the Microphone/TV streamer disappeared from app or get up and walk over to TV streamer and push the button on back of Tv streamer to hook back up… The Resound app is far more superior than the Phonak app in fact in all the reviews I have ever read NO ONE likes it… and last but not least is battery life… my resound 1’s are nearly 2 yrs old and I wear them 15/16 hrs a day and even on a heavy weekend of streaming sports for about 9/10 hrs I still have 60% battery life left… Phonak battery life is a joke, with a brand new set of HA’s to get thru a noraml day I’d wear them in morning for about 4 hrs and then stick them back in charger for 1 hr. and then at night I’d have about 35% left… I will admit that the lumitys did give me a little better comprehension in converstaions with many people around but I can’t justify that as being signifiacnt enough to purchase them with so many other negatives
When I turned them back in today to my audi he called me on the phone a couple hrs. later and said the phonak rep would like to meet with me and if possible the rep would do a whole new fitting from scratch and try them again because I definitely should have had a better experience with them… but it won’t be able to happen til after the holidays… we’ll see

@Ureout said:

I will admit that the lumitys did give me a little better comprehension in converstaions with many people around but I can’t justify that as being signifiacnt enough to purchase them with so many other negatives

Interesting that better hearing comprehension in conversations with many people around isn’t the most important thing for you. IMHO, this is the most important thing you have listed and it’s the one thing that makes Lumity superior to Resound. This is the main reason I bought Lumity.

I do agree that with Lumity the battery life is much less than Resound. That being said, the bluetooth connection is far more reliable and I have yet to experience any connection issues.

I will also say that it’s easy to top up the battery on Lumity by simply popping them back into the charger when you take a shower, read a book or take a nap, etc. 15-20 min in the charger gives you hours of extra time and easily gets you through a whole day.

As far as the app goes, yes…the Resound app is a little simpler and easier to use. That being said, I also never go into the app anyone because Autosense 5.0 is so good that there is rarely any value in forcing the Lumity hearing aids into a specific program.

I would let Phonak do another fitting before giving up on Lumity. Your audiologist may have messed up the initial fit.

Jordan

Edited

Jordan, I agree with you on hearing comprehension in conversations being important 100% … but the difference between my resounds and the phonaks i was trialing were not that much different maybe 10% … In my earliest posts when I initally got the lumitys I posted a that I saw a signficant improvement in comprehension and I really enjoyed wearing them…that lasted 1 week and I had an issue with the R … I could hear with it but no adjustments could be made it was froze up and no reset by the audi did anything, the following week I was given another new set of trial lumitys and supposedly the same set up… but the experience I had with the 1st set was no where near the 1st set … hopefully the phonak rep after the holidays comes through with her promise… but if it ends up being the same result then NO 10% better is not good enough with all the other down sides to them… do me a favor when you are streaming TV have your wife call and then have her try texting you and let me know if after you hang up and finish texting back to her and then close your phone and see if your tv stream starts back up by itself… thx

@Ureout , @JordanK . Your comments are great stuff and extremely helpful to me as a soon-to-be new buyer. Maybe if I researched back through the thread, I could find if you’re both iPhone users. I think it helps to reminder readers in a new segment of a thread what phone, even the model, that you’re using. Ureout, you don’t show your . Maybe privacy reasons? And although everybody’s hearing and preferences are different, I think comments about hearing loss, or an audiogram at least helps a reader feel that whether they might be even in the same ballpark as the poster. I’d be all for an occasional reminder of what your word recognition scores, speech-in-noise scores are. I’m going for my first thorough hearing test in four years tomorrow, so I hope to have the “goods” on my hearing loss to put any future comments on trialing hearing aids in context.

I do agree with Ureout that there are other considerations besides speech comprehension in noisy situations. I’ve been retired for quite a few years and participating in a noisy group gathering is a very rare event for me. A more common situation is the wife trying to tell me something with some noise like a microwave, a stove exhaust fan, refrigerator, or noise competing at the same time. So directional focusing on speech coming from any old direction is likely to be important for me but in most cases, I’d be able to remove the noise or tell the person I’m conversing with that we need to make some adjustment. So, giving up the various advantages of hearing aids and my Apple Watch is something I’m going to think a lot about. TV streaming is the only application I really need special connectivity and the ReSound TV streamer works well for me. For anything else, I can put on my noise cancelling headphones over my HA’s, e.g., streaming from my computer, and that works great.

I’m actually considering going for disposable battery-powered HA’s, too, as I don’t like the idea of frying my rechargeable batteries or at least decreasing their lifespan by wearing my HA’s outside when it’s over 100 deg F in Texas summer heat. I really like rechargeables, but I don’t like the finite lifespan implicitly built into them when one’s warranty period expires. So, that might be a plus on the Omnia side of the ledger. We’ll see…

In terms of “what is the best hearing aid for …,” I really like a vlog Dr. Cliff did last week and I’ll post it up for discussion and put a link to the thread on his commentary in this post.

https://forum.hearingtracker.com/t/the-best-hearing-aid-for-speech-music-occlusion-effect-drcliffaud-vlog-148/72735?u=jim_lewis (member archive)

Edited

So, I started trialing the Lumity L90-R today. My audi just used my old and did not do . I’m fitted with a minimally vented . The domes look something like the following (not sure it’s the exact same, though).

image

When I went to get my ears cleaned on 11/18, I had a mild infection in one ear, so I haven’t worn ’s in 3 1/2 weeks while I treated my ears with 2% acetic acid otic solution (in a PEG base). So, it’s hard to tell if my impressions of the Lumity are based on wearing no HA’s for the past few weeks or my memory of wearing ReSound Quattros.

I would say that the sound is decidedly better than the Quattros and there is decidedly more bass in listening to external sounds and in streaming. Of particular note, in listening to a favorite podcast where the host speaks pretty rapidly, not really pausing for breath, I can hear him quickly inhaling between words(!), whereas I never noticed that before with the Quattros (but then I am usually out walking with lots of ambient noise when streaming, not sitting at my kitchen table). If you want to try the audio with your own HA’s, here the podcast (it’s one of Melvyn Bragg’s best shows):

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Electron3

The Lumity Music program is quite good. And relative to the Automatic program, I would say any Oticon More/Opn user coming to Phonak who wants to hear everything might want to use the Music program as their daily driver. In switching between Automatic and Music, I noticed all sorts of background sounds are being suppressed in Automatic and one is much more aware of one’s environment in Music. Everything, including music and voices, sounds louder to me in Music than in Automatic. For the Quattros, the Music program is definitely less processed, just like the Phonak Music program, but not amplified as much as the ReSound All-Around program - so the Quattro music program sounds quieter than the equivalent ReSound “automatic” program. Since I’ve only had the Lumitys a few hours, a verdict is probably premature, but I’d say the relative perception of music in the car vs. road noise when using the Music program is definitely an improvement over the ReSound Quattros. I’d turned up my car audio bass to help the Quattros, and the bass is almost too thumpingly loud for comfort with the Lumitys! :+1: :smile:

It will take some time to get used to the myPhonak program. It’s definitely less intuitive and more complicated than the excellent ReSound Smart 3D program. I have an iPhone 14 Pro Max and I scarcely wait for anything when launching the ReSound Smart 3D app. But there does seem to be an annoyingly long pause before the myPhonak app chimes and says, “CONNECTED” to the Lumitys. Since I’ve turned off background refresh for all apps. maybe I need to allow it specifically for the myPhonak app to speed things up?

The ReSound Smart 3D app is mostly about volume adjustment and relative amplification of bass, midtones, and treble with some cut-and-dried choices for directional focusing, noise and wind reduction, etc., in specific programs. With myPhonak, it takes more hunting to get to bass, treble, and midtone adjustment. But on first glance, it seems all the sound processing adjustments are available in any program. If I open Music program adjustments, directionality adjustment seems to be available in myPhonak but it’s not in the ReSound Smart 3D Music program. The label on the Phonak adjustment is Speech Focus, so maybe an experienced Phonak user could tell me if that focus adjustment is only going to work when the Lumity thinks speech is heard or whether I’m going to be able to focus on any sounds that are in front of me if I apply that adjustment in the Music program???

Another nice adjustment available in the myPhonak app but not in the ReSound Smart 3D app is Dynamic Range Adjustment. I can decrease the volume of loud sounds or increase the volume of soft sounds, which might come in very handy with my soft-spoken wife.

So far, after just a few hours of use, I really like the Lumitys. I am having custom molds made to try the Omnia M& receivers and try the greater high frequency amplification with the Omnias that one gets by using the fitting algorithm. Right now, I’ve done next to no streaming with the Lumitys and my battery is dropping about 12% in two hours - so I’d predict if I do my usual 1 to 1 1/2 hours of streaming a day, I’m only going to get about 16 to 18 hours wearing time out of a full charge (about what Phonak says to expect). I have all iPhone notifications sent to my HA’s so I don’t have to be around my iPhone or try to hear the much fainter chime of my Apple Watch. Perhaps getting a fair number of classic notifications in one’s HA’s is more of an HA battery drain with Phonak than ReSound and that may be part of why the charge is going down 12% per 2 hours?

I think if the Lumity had a better rechargeable runtime (or offered a disposable battery option) and also could be used as a HA (if one wanted) and the myPhonak app worked on my Apple Watch, going with the Lumity might be a no-brainer. So, I want to see how the Omnia performs given its best chance to show its stuff before I make any hasty decisions.

Perhaps it’s a stupid thought but it’s too bad that with an HA you have to choose between classic BT and MFi. Maybe if BT ever truly goes mainstream and Apple and Phonak both fully implement the spec, the classic BT/BT LE dichotomy will vanish and one can have one’s cake and eat it, too. I probably won’t live long enough to see that happen…

Edit_Update: Have to say, though, the domes I’m using with the Lumitys are relatively ineffectual at controlling noise entering my ear canals. I can get considerable active noise cancellation by cranking noise suppression all the way up in the myPhonak app, but I can’t approach the noise suppression level I can get with the Quattros when wearing occlusive custom-made silicone molds with either no vent or a 1 mm vent. So, if I go for the Lumitys in the end, I will be definitely opting for custom molds. I would recommend those to anyone if you really want the best speech-in-noise listening experience!

Wind noise suppression with the Lumitys on Automatic seems to be excellent but the wind today has only been relatively mild - maybe I need to get the wife to blast me with her hair dryer (on the Cool Air setting!).

Keep posting your ongoing impressions as you get more use. I will say one thing about Lumity. The automatic program (Autosense 5.0) is so good that I almost never use the app now that I have been wearing them for 8-10 weeks. I would also recommend that your audiologist do a proper test as this will fine tune the hearing aids quite a bit more and will definitely provide you with a much better fit. As an example, my audiologist was able to use the REM test to provide me with much better lower end frequency response. I kinda feel like you are missing out without a REM test and the associated fine tuning process you get with REM.

Jordan

I agree about the . But since I will be buying whatever I get through TruHearing and not getting the full-service audi package, she’s giving me the free trial for nothing using trial versions of the HA that she has obtained for her regular practice. So, I think I’m suffering from “you get what you pay for…” I will ask her about REM when I return to get fitted with the Omnias.

I think my fit with the Lumitys is very good as I can make out just about every word in the following Smart Fit test audio file: _ENmd+0lunch.wma. The file can be found in the SmartFit ReSound/Common/MediaSoundFiles folder. Unfortunately, the audio files are probably copyrighted by ReSound so they are not publicly shareable. But the 0, +5, +10 versions refer to the level of speech in the audio compared to background noise. At “0,” the speech level is probably close to that you’d find in real life difficult background noise situations. I’d recommend anyone who has access to Smart Fit give it a try.

In reply to @jim_lewis

@jim_lewis said:

But there does seem to be an annoyingly long pause before the myPhonak app chimes and says, “CONNECTED” to the Lumitys.

The connection delay seems to be because I am running my iPhone deliberately in Low Power Mode so I use as little battery as possible and only refresh an app’s data when I open it. (I also don’t have to turn off Background App Refresh for 10 zillion apps that I, for sure, don’t want to have burning battery in the background). If I turn off Low Power mode (Settings>Battery) and make sure Background Refresh is on for the myPhonak app, then my Lumitys usually show as connected as soon as I launch the myPhonak app.

Launching a Voice Assistant like Siri by a double tap on an body also appears to depend on always having the myPhonak app running with Background Refresh ON. The double tap for Siri doesn’t work in the iPhone Low Power mode and doesn’t work very well even when Low Power mode is off and the myPhonak app is supposedly always connected. It’s much easier to call up Siri on my Apple Watch (there’s even a watch face where Siri is front and center and a single tap will launch her much more discretely than double tapping your ear in public! :rofl:).

Don’t know whether it’s connectivity that makes the ReSound Smart 3D app so much nimbler on launching. But I don’t really need the always-on app connectivity. I can wait (… and wait!). :slightly_smiling_face:

In reply to @jim_lewis

@jim_lewis said:

One thing that was not so good with a remote mic, though, was the range of voices I had to deal with. The wife has a very soft voice. So, I wanted the volume and the treble up in my sound profile to hear her. The 3 1/2 year old grandson was “yelling” half the time, blasting my ears on the settings that worked well for my wife.

So, as I was “suffering” through my grandson’s boisterousness, I was wondering if there’re any hearing devices, especially the Lumity, the Roger On, or anything from any other HA OEM that can automatically equalize voice volume in multi-speaker conversations.

The Lumitys might have the answer to my listening-to-loud-and-soft-voices-at-the-same-time problem. In the program adjustments, there’s a setting called DYNAMIC. With a slider, one can decrease loud sounds or increase soft sounds selectively (either/or choice). So, that adjustment, which is available in the myPhonak app but not in the Smart 3D app for the Omnia, AFAIK, might be the answer to my prayers! But I might have to go back to London, Ontario to visit the grandson with the overly loud voice to thoroughly test out that supposition!

Jim, the molds you were given for the lumitys look similar to the ones I used… do the tips of the receiver wires come right out at the top of mold?? If so keep an eye out for wax deposits inside tip of wire … I was cosnstantly brushing wax from inside my tip

@JordanK said:

As many of you know, I’ve spent the last two weeks testing the new Phonak Lumity Audeo L90-RT hearing aids and I’ve posted my ongoing comments in another thread.

JordalK, I am looking for that thread. Do you recall how it was titled?

In reply to @MDB

My fit has changed little if at all in the past 12 years. I didn’t ask her why she didn’t do an and perhaps she felt that I could appreciate the difference between Lumity and Omnia just using my last fit (January 2020). I’d say for me the “killer” features of the Lumity is Speech Sense and Dynamic Range adjustment. I don’t think ReSound has those features and I don’t need a perfect fit to appreciate the features. The Speech Sense amplification of soft speech makes my wife’s soft voice quite loud - I even asked her if she were raising her voice! And I imagine, as I proposed above, that the Dynamic Range adjustment will allow me to better cope with a mixture of loud and soft speakers, e.g., a boisterous grandson and my wife both present in the same conversation. But as I noted above, just going with my old fit, the Lumitys are performing extremely well. It’s just disappointing to see the battery charge relatively rapidly disappearing and know if I go with these expensive aids that there’s probably going to be no for me for the next four or five years until I feel like blowing another wad of money.

Edited

In reply to @Ureout

Thanks for the alert, @Ureout. I’m wearing domes with the Lumity. The dome covers the receiver like an umbrella and the wire comes out of the base of the receiver at the bottom of the umbrella opening. It’s as if the receiver body were the umbrella handle and the wire is attached to the receiver at the point you’d be holding the umbrella handle.

quote=“jim_lewis, post:215, topic:71341”]

image
[/quote]

You’re certainly right about what a pain such domes are to clean. Reminds me of why I switched to molds in the first place. Wax gets inside the umbrella underside as you say. One advantage of domes compared to molds is the domes that I have now is to allow my receivers to be inserted much farther up my ear canal than with the molds I wear with my Quattros. So, the Lumity sound is being delivered much more directly to my ear drums. However, plowing the domes so far up my ear canals helps get wax into the vents and even into the receiver openings at the tiptop of the dome. If I want to control depth-of-discharge of the Lumity rechargeable batteries, say 80% to 20% to prolong the lifespan of the irreplaceable(?) Li-ion batteries, I have to remove the Lumitys once or twice a day to charge them up again to 80%. I’ve noticed the wax in the vent holes and receiver openings every time I’ve done that. Whatever ’s I go with in the future, I’ll definitely want molds just for the ease of cleaning and the fact that very little wax ever got into the receiver openings of my Quattros.

P.S. I either turn the dome inside out on the receiver or remove it from the receiver entirely if I want to thoroughly clean it. It’s my vague recollection in doing so with similar domes in the past on my Quattros that I eventually end up wearing out the dome material and ripping it, needing a replacement. Another advantage of molds! They’re pretty durable.

@MDB said:

Still seems flaky to me not to another audiogram after almost 3 years.

One thought related to this then is, isn’t it “flaky” then for apps to give you the ability to deviate from your “best” fit by altering the amounts of bass, midtones, and treble with sliders? When one does so, one is undoubtedly deviating from “natural” sound and altering the fit. With my Quattros for speech clarity in difficult listening situations, I will typically increase treble (whatever that is) by 5 or 6 units in the 3D app (whatever those units are, decibels?), midtones by 3 or 4, and decrease bass by -1 to -2 units or decibels (to minimize noise), as well as possibly applying noise reduction processing.

I’m glad to see the number of fit adjustments allowed by the myPhonak app, particularly not just in relative frequency amplification but also in sound processing. Relative to that, the automatic reversion to the Automatic settings has its pluses and minuses. I vaguely remember a discussion(s) somewhere in the forum on having the create new Automatic settings (or ).

If I were ambitious, I could always check out my fit by doing an in situ . But especially since Phonak might be collecting data on user behavior from a trial set of HA’s, I don’t want screw things up for my audi by mucking around with HA’s that aren’t my own. If I DIY with my Quattros, in the past I’ve immediately dropped off the remote assistance horizon because I couldn’t connect up with ReSound’s servers during the fitting process.

Comment was not about you, but about audiologist. Was thinking if the big plus of the Lumitys is the soft speech, I think it’s likely that Resound should be able to adjust the 35dB level on the Omnias to get louder soft speech. If you’re not tied into TrueHearing somehow, Costco’s Jabra should get you something close to Omnia with possibility of and for a lot less money. If LE audio doesn’t come to it, or if aids advance notably in a couple of years, you’d have less than $2k sunk into the aids. Pretty should they should work with your Resound accessories too.

In reply to @raylock1

@raylock1 said:

JordalK, I am looking for that thread. Do you recall how it was titled?

Phonak unveils Lumity hearing aid platform
Phonak unveils Lumity, the new hearing aid platform for fully immersive conversations in virtually any situation With Phonak SmartSpeech™ Technology, Lumity improves speech understanding in background noise Stäfa, Switzerland, August 23, 2022 – Phonak, a leading global provider of life-changing hearing solutions, today announces that its next generation of hearing aids will be powered by its latest Lumity platform. Beginning with the Audéo Lumity models, Lumity features the Phonak proprietary …

Jordan

Edited

In reply to @MDB

I’m not 100% sure but I think the Phonak Speech Sense enhancement specifically amplifies soft speech. The enhancement for ReSound aids that you mention probably just enhances all soft sounds. I’ll ask my audi about that. Before I went back to my audi, I thought about going to Costco as you suggest. But Costco didn’t have the Lumity equivalent and the Jabras are not the Omnia equivalent. By ReSound’s very own admission/bragging, the Omnias are vastly improved in speech-in-noise beam forming vs. the Ones/Jabras. In using up my insurance for three years, I’d rather get “the best there is” rather than make do with something while in a holding pattern hoping for something better (like sticking with the Quattros while awaiting the Holy Grail ! :smile:).

I didn’t think in your flaky remark that you were referring to me manipulating my settings. Just pointing out that such a big deal is made of the perfect fit. But then folks come back to the and tell the fitter that they want more or less treble, bass, or whatever or they fiddle with the app and do it themselves and find settings that they subjectively like, no matter what the HCP adjusting the prescribed fit to within a few decibels at each frequency channel means. Even different algorithms give you different fits. And in real life, the ’s are constantly doing things like noise reduction or relative frequency amplification changes (compression) that eat into real, true-to-life sound reproduction. My subjective test in the end is that if I have excellent speech compression, I am close to a good fit. Perhaps my audi, too, after conducting an extensive conversation with me wearing not hearing aids at all, as I’ve lived for the past 3 weeks or so, felt “Adjustment means very little for this guy. He already hears pretty well without any hearing aids at all, and he hasn’t complained about his previous fit.”

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