Resound Omnia vs Phonak Lumity

It’s certainly plausible that a fully occluded mould would increase the risk of infection. Do your moulds have a vent? Looking at your audiogram, I’d recommend at least a 2mm vent. There’s no way you should be fully occluded. If you are, perhaps the regular use of some dry-ear spray to evaporate any moisture in the ear could minimise the risk of infection??

Thanks for the suggestion about a dry-ear spray. A review article posted by MDB in 2017 led me to read a 2006 Widex white paper on venting and its pros and cons. I agree with the 2006 Widex paper that for the “naturalness” of hearing with a vent, you can lose a bunch of speech clarity, depending on the acoustics of your ear canal, the timing of your HA’s in processing, etc. I do a lot of noisy stuff, so I particularly like keeping the noise out. That’s why Phonak invented Activents in the first place. There are certain situations where open venting just doesn’t cut it. According to Phonak, that’s places like noisy restaurants and when streaming, where you might not want the streamed bass escaping your ear canals (what goes in easily can come out easily, too!).

Thread started by MDB in 2017 (it’s on a review paper): Article on open fit vs closed fit

2006 Widex white paper on venting mentioned in review cited by MDB: Article on open fit vs closed fit - #12 by jim_lewis

Widex pulled its original posting of the white paper, perhaps because the paper was from 16 years ago or maybe something to do with Widex’s acquisition by WS Audiology. So, there are several posts by me in the same thread trying to find a viable link for other forum members to download the paper in its original form to read.

Edit_Update: Actually, the Widex Pro site now has an archive of older “evidence” papers that go all the way back to 2000 or so.https://www.widexpro.com/en/business-support/evidence/#archive1 Many of the papers include Kuk as the lead author, as he was for the 2006 white paper. So, for whatever reasons, Kuk’s 2006 paper has been tossed from the Widex Pro archives but it’s hearingreview.com version is still available to read (Fitting Tips: How Do Vents Affect Hearing Aid Performance? | The Hearing Review5).

Here’s a 2005 paper by Kuk, still in the Widex Pro archives and available to read on the web at hearingreview.com without having to download a PDF that reaches similar conclusions as the 2006 paper, which was more in detail. From the 2nd paragraph of the concluding Discussion:

The current study results were obtained with an ear-set that offers minimal occlusion of the ear canal. The advantage is clearly seen in the elimination of the occlusion effect. The disadvantage, however, is seen in the magnitude of the SNR improvement offered by the adaptive directional microphone. In this study, an average improvement of 1.8 dB SNR was observed between the adaptive directional microphone and the omnidirectional microphone. The same adaptive directional microphone, when evaluated in other studies where the vent diameter was typically less than 2.0-2.5 mm, showed a directional benefit that varied from 4 dB12 to 4-6 dB.13 In another study19 where the Diva adaptive directional microphone was fit on individuals with a more severe hearing loss (and consequently no venting was used), an even higher directional benefit of 6-8 dB was reported.

Efficacy of an Open-Fitting Hearing Aid | The Hearing Review5

Thank you for your report Jordan–It is the only way we can actually know about these new devices or upgrades. Please keep it up. Sadly, in some cases, like mine–the only way to find out about them is by buying them and using them. We have no option to do a comparison before purchasing.

Yeah definitely, it’s extremely rare for there to be a “wow” factor when these new platforms are released for most people, ReSound claimed a 150 % increase in what… There’s no enjoyment when i read posts from people who say, i have Marvel/ Paradise and “can’t wait” to get the new Lumity( or what ever other brand) the manufacturer’s are pretty good with the “blurb” and marketing hype, but real world experience is offen quite different.

I, too, am disappointed that the Charger Case Ease for the Lumity doesn’t have a battery for on-the-go charging. I purchased the optional power pack for my Phonak Marvel charger case and was hoping a power pack would be available for the Lumity’s Charger Case Ease.

" Maybe Resound designed the hearing aids like this by choice to accommodate OLDER USERS who don’t like all the environmental clatter "

I TAKE UMBRAGE ! Ha Ha Ha…
great post Jordan please keep them coming. I recently trialed More and like my Opn I find them difficult in noise likley due to the severity of my loss. Next week I trial Lumity and after that who knows maybe Omni.

Thanks,
Tony

@JordanK said:

I might try having the audiologist refit Omnia with a different first fit algorithm and see how that goes.

Did they complete real-ear measures? If yes, can’t you just have them match the gain output of the two hearing aids?

I think it’s quite possible that Phonak does make the best hearing aids. I would think the best reviews would come from audiologists who have the equipment, the knowledge, and a variety of patients to test the performance of various hearing aids on. The best subjects to test on, though, might be normal hearing folks, as they can tell what all the sounds sound like to their unaided ears vs., say, solely through their HA’s with occlusive molds.

One problem that I find with reviewers like Dr. Cliff and Matthew Allsop (now the official Hearing Tracker YouTuber) is that they pull their punches. They rarely make direct comparisons between different brand aids. Perhaps because they don’t want to offend and lose followers who are enthusiastic about a particular brand that they would not rate as the very best or perhaps they don’t want to sour OEM connections from which they get equipment to test and do their YouTube shows, etc.

Dr. Cliff has serious hearing problems in one ear, but Matthew Allsop says that he has normal hearing. So possibly in his reviews, he could speak directly to what reproducible sound sounds like unaided vs. listened through the HA’s with the HA electronics set entirely to reproduce all the sound he hears in quiet vs. noisy situations.

Another concern of reviews is related to, “Do we all see the same color red?” And perhaps extending from that, do we prefer Beats audio to regular music? Or when we take digital photos, do we think the prettiest pictures have lots of saturation in them that really isn’t in the real-life scene. Almost every digital camera adds color saturation to a photo, and we like the effect - so that’s why it’s typically done. Is there that sort of thing going on in HA sound reproduction, too?

So in the absence of all of the above more diligent comparisons and knowing exactly what’s going on with reproduced sound vs. sound heard directly by normal hearing ears, I’d say the best thing that we all have to go on is trial several hearing aids and see what works best for you. Because the color of red you like best may be different that a bunch of other people prefer.

But given the general enthusiasm on the forum for Phonak HA’s, I’d say it’s likely they are close to the very best, if not the absolute best in sound reproduction, and then you have to weigh in other factors that might matter to you, such as do you like MFi hearing devices, long rechargeable battery life, the ability to control your HA’s from a smartwatch rather than having to grab your phone, etc.

I’d say for ReSound that the financial considerations that MDB has brought to light might be a bit of a worry down the line, too. Apple and the MFi OEMs really need to come up with a very good reason to prefer that sort of functionality over all Phonak has to offer in the classic BT arena. It looks like BT LE Audio currently is not going to be the cavalry riding over the hill any time soon to rescue MFi OEMs who’ve gone to the trouble of implementing BT 5.3 in their HA’s. But time will tell.

Well I am a believer in that only the person with the hearing loss can say what is the best hearing aids for that person’s needs. So all of the hearing aid companies make the best aids for the people that prefer that companies aids. To my while I have friends that wear phonak aids and really like them, I personally don’t like the sound of the phonak aids. Way back in my early hearing aid days I really liked the Siemens hearing aids. I have tried the Resound aids also as my audiologist said I might like them and I didn’t like the overall sound. And my audiologist had a hard time adjusting them to my difficult hearing loss.
I am sure with time and patience I could adapt to a different brand of aids but why should I as long as the company I like makes aids that fit my needs.

I chose resound because I invested almost $50k for my CI ( insurance paid 90%) and would like to have streaming bimodal feature because they are using resound/cochlear streaming protocol

My ultimate plan is to get rid of resound and go with a bluetooth 5.2 (or higher) protocol hearing aid because you can pair left and right independently with synchronization (I think). this require replacing every equipment i use to stream with such as computers, tv, and phone

The real answer is what the user prefers.

Another short update for all the musicians on this forum…

I was feeling a little grumpy this afternoon so pulled my favourite acoustic guitar out of the case and starting playing a few tunes. I used to play the guitar quite a bit for relaxation before my hearing loss got worse but I sorta gave it up over the last 6-8 years because the guitar just sounded so crappy through my hearing aids. At the time, I worked with my audiologist to turn off as much sound processing as possible in the various Music programs that came with my different hearing aids but nothing really ever sounded all that great. I would say that the guitar often sounded tinny or even out of tune even though I knew it was perfectly in tune. I’m embarrassed to say that I basically gave up and resigned myself to the fact that maybe my guitar days were over. So…today’s test was to see if the Phonak Lumity hearing aids provided any improvement vs Resound Quattro and any of the older hearing aids that I have owned.

All I can say is WOW! Everything was in tune. Everything was loud and the notes just sang out of the guitar in a way I haven’t heard it in many years. Maybe not as good as I remember before my hearing loss but that big, full, woody guitar sound just rang out and filled up my home office. This was on the automatic program. I then switched to Lumity’s Music program and I’m now in shock. I have no idea what Lumity is doing but this is a huge improvement. Might just be the processing and RIC’s have improved. Not sure.

Would be interested in hearing if anyone else can confirm this on a guitar or with any other instrument.

Jordan

I also noticed the same improvements for my acoustic guitar when I got Phonak P90 over 18 months ago. Since there is not really much new (if anything) in the Lumity for this particular application, I suspect we are experiencing the same improvement? - unless anyone knows if there have been enhancements other than Speech in Noise that the Lumity has better than the Paradise that would affect this?