HearAdvisor - Compare Hearing Aid Performance

I think if you go to top of page and click :HOME, then the personal icon in far upper right and then ACCOUNT you can log out of everything. Otherwise you end up needing to log out of forum and site separately. Seems needlessly confusing.

Out of curiosity, will you be implementing different languages on the website?
Also, I wonder what’s the purpose of the purple hedgehog (see below)?

OK, you’ve got a TON of feedback here, so my comments are more “pedestrian” about how to interpret the results.

First off: VERY interesting concept! I went right to the comparison page and saw my own 2022 Lumity Life aids good in some respects (feedback control, music) but pretty ABYSMAL in the area of Speech in Noise - with which I totally agree (despite its dedicated program to tackle that very thing! Hence the line of MORE money spent on Roger mics).

It would help if you had a score statement: Ranked on a scale of 1 to 5 where 5 is best - cuz not seeing that anywhere on the page made me wonder. Personally, I’d love to see more features ranked! BT stability, WATERPROOF? wind noise, riding in cars, maybe even availability of accessories.

Even better, some kind of indication as to the exact hearing loss the brands are acceptable for, cuz with my cinderblock ears, even tho Sony scores THE BEST! I’d highly doubt I could get by with just a pair of them and call it a day. How would I stream with my TV? If I didn’t need any accessory due to the quality of sound, I’d literally chuck all my Phonak jumble (2 pairs of rechargeable aids, 2 charging bases, 2 Roger ON iN mics with their charging base) into the GARBAGE!

I can see where over time folks may wonder if the ranking is being influenced by something behind the scenes … But I’d also like to know where to get these devices. So links to providers could be added. Before you know it, you’ve got Amazon for Aids and that’s ENORMOUS to manage.

Will take time to check out the other information here. I’m EVER grateful for the forum, so I appreciate your team tackling this prickly problem.

@MDB said:

I think if you go to top of page and click :HOME, then the personal icon in far upper right and then ACCOUNT you can log out of everything.

Exactly as MDB posts here!

Read a little.

I think every business needs to know who their customers are.

What are your customers needs?

How do you reach out to those customers , meet their needs, and make money from them?

I have profound loss. I didn’t understand that I was t in your target market. That frustrated me.

I’ve been using hearing aids since 2001.

DaveL

Our customers are hearing aid companies that want to make sure their hearing aids work well for the largest market segment (mild to moderate hearing loss). We plan to test other hearing losses eventually, but right now we’re still establishing a foothold, so had to start with the biggest market need. The biggest need right now is to support the smaller companies that are selling poorly-functioning devices on the OTC market. There are a lot of people out there using subpar devices and we think we can change that by shining an objective spotlight on sound performance and forcing new players to take sound performance more seriously in their R&D process.

Some time ago there was talk of the new xmems technology which would be suitable for OTC devices for serious/profound leaks: are there any updates? Or should we abandon this idea?

I think for what they cost hearing aids should set themselves up and adapt when our hearing changes automatically!

Thank heaven we have wonderful audiologists participating here, and hearing instrument specialists too. I would have no faith if you weren’t here.

Ha! I think the simplest solution is probably removing the light blue from the radar chart…

@Baltazard said: (unavailable)

Is it possible for the website’s visitor to add their own audiogram into the the graph and get a list of suitable hearing aids un-tunned & tunned, maybe compare at least 3 HA graphs!!!

For now we only have measurements for the mild to moderate sloping audiogram, so we wouldn’t be able to produce a list like that… however, this is something HearingTracker used to do using fitting ranges, and honestly not hard to do, so I’ll look at doing it again.

@Baltazard said: (unavailable)

By the way, is it also possible to add to the graph the HA manufacturer’s fitting range graph , for example:

I had that exact thought. Cuz WOE IS ME if the OTC Sony CRE-E10 is the best fit for my snake-belly audiogram. (Unrelated, is CRE-E10 just a homophone for CRETIN3? Hope not!)

Today’s press release:

Cutting Through the Noise: Startup's Vetting Lab Highlights Best and Worst...2

HearAdvisor’s Lab Team Has Tested 65 Hearing Devices, Offering Consumers Free Access to Detailed Performance Scores and Audio Samples.

The Best Hearing Aids in Background Noise in 20241

Hearing speech in noise is challenging, but after extensive testing, we found the best hearing aids in background noise. See which ones we recommend.

Okay, let’s look at the Hear Advisor article, which I’ve linked, as a case study of how to use the lab test results. The article pick the best hearing aids in background noise for 2024, using Hear Advisor lab tests as the basis for its selections. The top pick was the Oticon Real with an addendum that it had just been replaced by the Intent when the article was going to press. Runner Up was the Phonak Audéo L90.

Here’s the problem. If the Hear advisor results were the basis for this analysis, Starkey Evolv has the highest Speech-in-Noise score at 3.5. So, how is it not even in the top two? The Real wasn’t too far off at 3.1 and the Intent was even better at 3.7, so there’s definitely a conversation to be had as to which one is the best.

But how is the Phonak L90, the runner uo, even in that conversation? It was tied with the Signia Pure C&G 7IX at 2.3 with the worst Speech-in-Noise score among the latest generation of prescription hearing aids from the Big 6. I know that the L90 has a lot of fancy ways to enhance its speech in noise capabilities in noisy situations, but weren’t they factored into the lab tests? Something is amiss here.

Meanwhile the other element still dangling out there is the fact that the OTC Sony CRE-E10 blew the others out if the water with a speech-in-noise score of 4.5. Can we just ignore that because it’s an OTC product? And as an OTC hearing aid, it’s not just an amplifier, it does do its own hearing test of the user and matches its settings to that assessment. Of course there’s no REM and it is not a sophisticated hearing evaluation, but it’s something which results in a “tuned fit” in the lab. We also know that this is not a Sony product. It is the Signia Active Pro, adapted to an OTC format for Sony sales & marketing. So, I have to ask, how does the same company’s technology produce a best 4.5 speech-in-noise score on one hearing and and a worst 2.3 speech-in-noise score on another - its Pure C&G 7IX? These two came out of the Signia’s factory worlds apart. Or the lab tests somewhere went awry.

Thoughts, anyone?

I find those picks baffling at best, if they want to keep even semblance of trustworthiness they have to be way more transparent and verbose about their choices.
Also, there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with methodology as earbuds style HAs get a major boost, possibly due to occlusion.
Last but not least I would like someone to answer me why Signias Active aren’t ranked.

Bill we’ve tested a lot more aids since that article was written, but will revise … It’s been a very busy time for us. To make your life easier, here’s our top 10 initial and tuned for speech in noise. These are the non-normalized scores.

Initial:

Tuned: