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Dr. Cliff and Audigy

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In reply to @Neville

The majority of hearing professionals I have encountered over 3 locations are Hearing Instrument Specialists. I my experience they serviced me better than the audiologists.

I am sure there is no oversight based upon my worst experience in 20 years from a . Just a quick tonal test with a scribbled . Program the aids to that and call it done. No measurement for wire length. In fact, at one point I had a 0 wire in one ear and 3 in the other. I think 2 was the correct size. Those aids got returned!!

The #1 largest problem with the hearing aid industry is that the hearing aid manufacturers have been absolutely horrible at providing the public with detailed technical information on how their hearing aids work. Their consumer websites are purposefully vague and they have relied almost exclusively on the audiologist community to provide detailed information to consumers. This makes it really difficult (and very stressful) for someone who is suffering from hearing loss to understand what works best for them. Further complicating this situation is the hit and miss skill levels of the audiologist community combined with a wave of mass market retailers getting into the action (i.e. Costco) with over the counter products and services. You lose your hearing. You are told you need hearing aids. You are told you need to roll the dice on $5K+ to fix your hearing and there is almost no good information to help you make a good decision on what is best for you.

That is why I really applaud Dr. Cliff, his YouTube videos and the Hearing Tracker website and forum. He has been an incredible source of information in an industry that is devoid of information. He has helped me with my hearing loss and I suspect there are thousands of others like me who have watched his videos and spend hours pouring over the posts on this forum. Does he run a business? Yes. Does the do this for money? Yes. Is he a charity? No. That being said, he is a really nice guy and I would go to his clinic if I lived in his area. He has also put his name and reputation out there on social media for the benefit of his business and the general public and that is more than most people can lay claim to.

Looking forward to having a beer with Dr. Cliff one day when I am in Phoenix.

Jordan

In reply to @JordanK

Although I would agree that hearing aid manufacturers are not good at providing technical information that allows the consumer to differentiate the products, I think that’s a relatively minor issue for most people. I’d also agree that Dr. Cliff provides a lot of good information. However, at times he seems blind to the conflicts of interest he has.

In reply to @prodigyplace

@prodigyplace said:

I am sure there is no oversight based upon my worst experience in 20 years from a HIS.

Our aren’t regulated here, either. We have some pretty strong schools (seems more variable in the states) and I have met a lot of great HISs, but technically they can do or say whatever they want aside from using protected titles with no oversight and not much patient recourse should a problem arise. At least with audiologists here patients can trust that if something goes wrong they can complain to the college and the college will investigate and discipline where indicated, up to and including removing a professional’s license.

@JordanK said:

Their consumer websites are purposefully vague and they have relied almost exclusively on the audiologist community to provide detailed information to consumers.

Honestly, it’s getting harder and harder to talk to someone who understands how the hearing aids are actually working the more complicated they get. Clinicians used to get very specific training from manufacturers on exactly how, for example, the directional mics were working. Now most of the training offered is style review and marketing pitches and you have to push a lot harder to get what you want. But even then, when it comes to things like ‘deep neural networks’ most of the manufacturer trainers don’t actually understand how they work and lately I’ve had to push questions way up the chain to the european engineers. Even then I’ve gotten some pretty unsatisfying “trust us” answers.

In reply to @MDB

Agreed @MDB, most of the manufacturers are also excellent at being “Vague/Noncommittal”, their advertising looks good on paper/web pages, but with very little substance to back up their claims, being honest, and upfront appears to be alien to their whole concept? Mind you, their sales might take an initial dip, if they where to be more forthright & trustworthy? At the end of the day, influencers like Dr Cliff (Whom I believe frequents this forum) I am sure he makes a very good living from his videos, and hearing aid sales, but more power to his elbow, he is also trying to keep hearing aid user’s updated on the latest & greatest hearing aid developments, which in my book, Dr Cliff is a helpful asset, and good information is a powerful tool! Usually, the better informed end user, make the more logical choices, it is a big chunk out of their hard earned cash, and most folks can’t afford to make a bad mistake/choice… Cheers Kev :wink:

In reply to @kevels55

I actually think that “how their product works” is in many cases less important than the clinically-relevant functional outcomes. To that effect, I think that Abram is doing something cool with the kemar recordings of different soundscapes with different hearing aids. But at the end of the day, I still think that the outcome will be that differences between manufacturers are generally a lot smaller than people would hope in terms of how to make an informed decision of what to get. That is, no slam dunks of “XXX’s hearing aid gives obviously better speech in noise performance than YYY’s hearing aid” and a lot more differences that are more along the lines of the android phone interface just giving me more undefinable joy than the apple phone interface. Though, I would also be interested in him presenting the speech in noise recordings at each tech level.

Has anyone mentioned here Matthew Allsop, who records videos (about hearing solutions) right here for Hearing Tracker that are similar (but different) to Dr Cliff? (Posted to YouTube.) More readers might want to check him out. . . . https://youtu.be/YhW_KoISRkk27 He also writes review articles of new hearing products here on Hearing Tracker.

Hello @mystuart, thank you for your kind comments on an earlier post :grin: Yeah, I have seen Mathew on a few videos on uTube, he sounds British, but that might be my interpretation of his accent? Which might differ from where he is actually from… I have enjoyed his videos. There is also an Aussie Lass, whom is very good, she is an audiologist down under, to me she sounds very Irish? Cheers Kev :wink:

Yes, Kev, he has a practice on Harley Street, apparently, so, yes, definitely a Brit!

I found Dr Cliff’s videos useful when I was first investigating buying .
I subscribed to his YouTube channel but now I find I am being bombarded constantly with his videos so I am dropping my sub.
His earlier videos 2019 to 2021 are useful but later videos are Too Much Information that do not add much value to his messaging.

In reply to @hass5744

@hass5744 said:

then something is rotten in Denmark.

Hey! Oticon, WS Audiology, and ReSound are headquartered in Denmark. Sonova (Phonak) in Switzerland, Starkey in the U.S. So, to be fair, let’s say “something is rotten in Denmark, Switzerland, and the U.S.A.!”

@hass5744 said:

It’s just an expression and a coincidence

Obviously! I hope you can tell I’m joking. I should have put a smiley face in my previous post! :grinning:

No problems Jim. I got it. But it wouldn’t be the first time someone on this forum misunderstood something was made in jest. I’ve been guilty of that myself.

In reply to @hass5744

Really? technology has gotten vastly better and more sophisticated over the last 20 years, and even over the last decade. Bluetooth, streaming, hands free phones, better sound quality. To me what’s remarkable is how many different functions and capacities HAs can perform. Rotten? Wanna go back 20 years? All of the new developments require engineers, research, development, and all the rest. It was easy for me to get interest free financing for a year in order to pay for my expensive aids. I’m on a limited budget so that helped. True, the aids cost nearly as much as my used Honda Fit. Still, the providers that I see aren’t getting rich in their very active practice.
There’s a tendency to presume that there are unseen billionaires in the background of corporations, forcing up prices strictly to finance their own lifestyle. Yeah, there’s some of this going on. We often don’t see the background expenses like rent and manufacturing costs and insurance and payroll that go into running a business. If we don’t factor any of that in, HA prices seem outrageous. But those costs are real.

Dr. Cliff posted a good vlog today on YouTube explaining his Audigy relationship. He made a good point. The new partnership isn’t about making money. It’s about improving the way the audiologist community delivers patient care. He then goes on to say he could make way more money investing the 10 hours a week he spends on this project doing something else.

Dr. Cliff is certainly very passionate about this industry and has done so much to spread awareness.

We need more Dr. Cliffs…

Jordan

In reply to @jeffrey

My extreme apologies @Jeffrey I am about to rant… Of course its rotten, and rotten to the core… And anyone saying otherwise is perhaps deluding themselves, the whole hearing aid system stinks, they could easily sell top tier aids for $200 a pair, and still make a decent profit… The problem is too many fingers in the pie, bleeding the end user dry, all this crap about different tiers of aids is pure B/S, they are the ones whom are purposefully downgrading the aids to eek out a more substantial profit, by forcing users into buying better features, by buying a better tier of aid, because that’s what we are all after, better hearing…In each category of hearing aids, tier 1 or tier 4, its the same aid, we have the same chip, same software, same O/S, same battery, the manufacturers disable the features in the lower tier aids… FFS, if that’s not manipulation I don’t know what is, and its manipulation against disabled folks… Apologies again, rant over. By way of example, my wife is a retired Social Worker for the Deaf, she has a very mild hearing loss caused by Chemotherapy perhaps? But, she likes listening to Podcasts while she does her artwork, anyway she wanted a set of EarPods, but didn’t want the expensive apple version, so I thought I would pay £100 or so from Amazon, I got a set for £25,with absolutely excellent reviews, 40+ hours runtime allegedly, noise cancelling, Bluetooth 5.3, pickup mic for cell phone calls, the case can be charged up, as a backup charger on the go, she states the clarity is pristine, she asked for another set as back ups, the same ones, the price had dropped to £19.99, and for the price, unbelievable value! Now, I am acutely aware these ain’t hearing aids, but the components will not be too dissimilar, Amazon has made a profit, I assume the manufacturers make one, by bulk selling, so by my reckoning £50 tops per aid manufacturing costs, and that’s probably fairly conservative? As always YMMV… Cheers Kev :wink:

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