Oticon Real 1 vs Philips Hearlink 9040 (huge price difference)

I stopped by a local hearing store to enquire about the Reals. She proceeded to tell me how much better the Reals were than the Philips I am trialing. I asked for a price and she said the lowest was $6.5k/pair, they usually sell them for $7k/pair.
She said the Reals had 10db of noise reduction, 24 million different scene situations built in, and tinnitus support, all that the 9040s didn’t have. She said she had a comparison sheet but couldn’t find it.
She said she wears the Reals and had the More’s before and the Reals were significantly better.
I said so you’ve tried wearing the 9040s and compared them to the Reals?
The answer was no, I don’t have time for that, but don’t you want to hear better?

Thats why I like this forum; you get subjective opinions of people who have really tried different aids, but you also get unbiased technical information.

Oh, I also told her the 9040s had tinnitus support, but CC doesn’t activate it.

I love the line about having a comparison sheet but not being able to find it. There’s no way anybody can accurately claim that a pair of hearing aids will help you hear better than another pair. Differently yes, but not necessarily better.

Not sure where the 24 million sound scenes came from. Oticon mentioned only 12 million sound scenes trained on the More, and I haven’t heard them say they retrained the Real for even more sound scenes from that. As far as I can tell, the main (and probably only differences) between the More and the Real are the additions of the Sudden Sound Stabilizer, and the Wind & Handling Stabilizer.

Not that it really matters, 12 or 24 million. But if an HCP makes it a point to quote numbers like that, then they should know the correct numbers if they’re going to quote it at all. It gives some discreditable doubt to their competence when they give wrong quote, and especially if they talk down on the Philips when they haven’t even tried wearing it or fit customers with it.

Usually $7K for a pair of HAs is “boutique” pricing in a high cost of living area. When I was buying my OPN 1 from an HCP (back when it was released only for 6 months), she also told me she sold them between $6.5K to $7K a pair as well. But as soon as she found out I had insurance for HAs, and my co-pay was only 5% if I went in-network, she asked me to pay $330 (my 5% of her $6600 price), and she’ll bill and negotiated the rest with my insurance. She ended up with only $3400 from my insurance company, for a net total of $3730 in the end only. But she probably knew this up front (how much the insurance will pay her), and I’m sure she still makes decent money from it. Just not making a killing for $7K/pair, that’s all.

There’s another place in town quoted me $7K. I don’t have insurance that will pay for aids. I mentioned the price at Ziphearing and she had nothing but bad things to say and would not match that price!

She said she would only turn on the front mikes for speech in noise. I dont know much about it. But when sitting at the end of a table my head is always pointed toward people at the table.
Honestly I really dont know enough about HA to ask her intelligent questions. I just told her it wasnt working so she only turned on front mikes.

I was in a very large conference room with no noise other than that large hall sort of echo but was having trouble understanding the speaker. I found that the program “hifi music” worked best in that case. Still figuring this out.

@Angel said:

I was in a very large conference room with no noise other than that large hall sort of echo but was having trouble understanding the speaker. I found that the program “hifi music” worked best in that case. Still figuring this out.

I’ve read some research papers and they say that for directional microphones (which is what is usually used for speech in noise frontal only beam forming setting) to work well, the speech signal has to be close enough to the listener (6 feet or less), the noise has to be on the sides or in the back of the listener, and the room has to have minimal reverb.

In your case here, the hall is large with a lot of echo, and your signal source (the speaker) is probably further than 6 feet from you, and I don’t know if the speaker is speaking through a mic system or not, but if yes, then the speech source may not be directly in front of you but is from the speakers which is not ideal for front beam forming full directional microphones setup speech in noise program anyway.

Oticon Genie 2 has a Lecture built-in program that’s more suitable for this setup. I don’t see a Lecture built-in program for the Philips HearSuite, but I see a Classroom program, Classroom MT (Mic & Telecoil combined?), and Classroom T (Telecoil only?), which may be is equivalent to the Lecture program in the Oticon Genie 2. There’s also a Movie/Theater and Concert program, probably for even larger halls. If you happen to be in this environment often, maybe have the Costco HCP put in the Classroom program for you to try out. But if the Music program works for you, then that’s fine, too.

Thank you!! Will speak to her!!

Is it me, or is HA pricing a lot like used cars, aluminum siding and mattresses? Pretty much what the seller decides to charge? The prices seem to be all over the map for the same thing.
Big John

Absolutely. And why does the same pair of hearing aids cost thousands of dollars different from the top tier to the bottom tier and in between? It can’t be cost to manufacture. And it’s not a difference in the cost if the audiologist’ services. Even car salesmen don’t do this.

@billgem said:

And why does the same pair of hearing aids cost thousands of dollars different from the top tier to the bottom tier and in between? It can’t be cost to manufacture.

This type of pricing isn’t only for hearing aids. I’ve seen similar software enabled hardware features in expensive scientific equipment and in enterprise-level routers. You pay extra to enable better performance and/or added features from the equipment - no changes to the hardware. In the case of the science instrument, it added 50% to the cost of an already expensive box. In the case of the router, the higher level software was double the cost of the basic software and the software maintenance was also more expensive. We needed the higher level for the better encryption available only in the higher level software. For both the router and the science instrument, you could upgrade later by purchasing the appropriate (expensive) software license. Welcome to the world of software defined equipment

There has to be a lot of duplicated effort in the R&D of five companies, and we as hearing aid users are supporting it. Maybe it’s time for more consolidation.

@Um_bongo said:

I’m wondering if this will be a version of Bluetooth (or later BLE), that allows mesh networking/integration of the devices with mics in your immediate vicinity (say 10m) so to actually hear in noise you won’t receive the signal from ‘your’ mics, but your hearing aid listening to Dave’s IPhone mic, with Tom’s smartwatch mic providing the noise information to clean up the signal, even though Ian is talking.

Am I correct to infer that you think we have reached a dead end when it comes to speech in noise? Physics simply won’t allow us to do any better, so we should move towards having extra inputs and thus a better signal-to-noise ratio?

Indeed.

I worked as a computer designer for many years for IBM. We did this sort of thing routinely. Early on we would do it simply through the addition/subtraction of a jumper wire or some other sort of switch. Later-on, software. Still later… well, if I told you I’d have to kill you lol, the point being that when you do these sorts of things you had better cloak the activation means such that the customer or a third party doesn’t find it.

We called this sort of thing “functional pricing”. Which is a pretty accurate way to characterize it: Pricing according to the functionality being delivered, not cost.

Removed as off-topic