HearAdvisor - Compare Hearing Aid Performance

Nice job guy! I would love to hear the Lab Recordings when you get them up.

Ah I forgot to upload the audio files. This is done now

One of the best “speech in noise” scores and one of the worst “own voice” scores. Pick your poison type of device I guess. Probably a nice fit if you’re a mute introvert.

With firmware 1.0.1?

Well, this just shows how individual we all are and that it’s hard to rely on lab testing. I am currently trialling Intents and while I find the speech in noise and speech in quiet both very good, the music streaming is really bad for me. I don’t have my audiograms loaded yet but I have sloping mid/high frequency loss (moderate to severe IIRC). The music quality is so bass heavy and lacking in mids that I am applying a -12dB bass cut and a +3dB mids boost on the streaming EQ to get anywhere near an acceptable sound. I find the MyMusic program unusable and if I go with Intents I will have to create a custom program (other users have recommended using the DSL v5 prescription as a starting point).

So IMO this is clear evidence there’s no substitute for personal trialling.

At least Widex SmartRic seems to be well rounded after tuning.
I’m suspicious of some of the results. For example, Own Voice scores of Signia Styletto [which I own] show almost no difference, before and after tuning.
The thing is they have a special setup for that, where during [proper] initial fit it learns your voice, will treat and process it differently, and the improvement is significant.

@Reginald said:

Also, let’s be honest, who cares about the speech in quiet at this point, it’s a low hanging fruit. That’s not what most have issues with.

I disagree, Reginald, it’s a big deal for me. In fact, I think that it has a big effect on overall sound quality.

Just my 2 cents.

Also, I don’t understand the scoring system. How average of 4.3/4.8/2/2.6/2.8 gives the result of 4.6 (Lexie B2). (it’s 3.3 if the rules of common math still apply)

@Reginald said:

I’m suspicious of some of the results. For example, Own Voice scores of Signia Styletto [which I own] show almost no difference, before and after tuning.

The thing is they have a special setup for that, where during [proper] initial fit it learns your voice, will treat and process it differently, and the improvement is significant.

Same is true for the Signia Pure C&G. No difference at all for Own Voice between Initial Fit and Tuned Fit.

I guess it’s hard to learn the voice of a mannequin. Unless Steve has something different to tell us, I think that we have to consider the Own Voice Tuned Fit scores to be invalid for the Signia products.

Must be a weighted average.

Do you have link at hand?

Sorry. I meant to include it. Here it is:

https://osf.io/wb9td/6

Here’s a message from Andy Sabin, HearAdvisor’s Scientific Advisor:

For our “own voice” metric, we are making a measurement of Real Ear Occluded Insertion Gain (REOIG) — the difference at the eardrum between the open ear and the ear with device in but powered off. This measurement has a good correspondence to user reports of subjective occlusion. More in our whitepaper.

That said, it only captures one aspect of what can make self-voice annoying. There is (1) the occlusion effect (body-transmitted-self-voice sound getting “trapped” in a sealed ear canal) and the (2) amplified effect (self voice amplified by the hearing aid mic). Our metric only attempts to quantify (1). The device you mention claims to reduce (2) and our metric would not detect that. It is a valid limitation of our metric to point out. We were willing to accept that limitation because we believe that (1) is a much larger detractor than (2), and we are not aware of any reliable way to measure (2).

We’d welcome any feedback on how to better communicate that.

Nice work.
Unless my eyesight is going the route of my hearing, I’m having trouble finding a “Log Off” option at the top of the Forum, etc pages, so am still suffering with being able to get back to what seems to be a single Log Off option for the entire site. Can that be added to the top of each section?