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Hearing aid advertising is barely legal

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I like to try to keep things on a positive note here but I just read through some of the advertising copy for one of the new ‘ enhanced’ hearing aids by one of the major manufacturers and, based on previous disappointments, I couldn’t help feeling there probably wasn’t a big gap between their exaggerated claims and outright lies.

Advertising hearing aids offers a huge temptation because the claims are not falsifiable. The field is open and the rewards are enormous. Improvements in real world performance over the last 10 years has been incremental, but each year we are subjected to the assertion that there have been major technological breakthroughs. A couple of years ago I had the experience of trialling the offerings of all the major manufacturers and with my ‘ski slope’ loss I couldn’t tell the difference between them.

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Well i wear aids that have and find them so much better than any other aids I have tried. But I fully understand that most advertising is done by marketing companies or the marketing department that normally have very little understanding of the product the marketing group is creating the ads about. So just like everything on TV or cable or even on the net I don’t pay it any attention. And after wearing aids for 20 years I that aids are useless without an audiologist that can fit them to the individual’s hearing loss requirements by listening to the patient’s explanation of that patient’s needs.

Thanks for your reply. I’d love to hear from others with similar experience because I can trust that a lot better and it will help to guide me next time I’m buying.

I do wear the Oticon Real1 aids at this time they are better than anything i have previously worn. But I know I will never get my normal hearing back. My gold mine is my audiologist.

I agree with you. I’m convinced that most of the benefit of new hearing aids is having aids that are well adjusted to your current loss. There have been studies done with placebo hearing aids (they did nothing) and some people liked them!

There isn’t much can do when our loss is severe/profound. I will say that each new set I have gotten has been better than the last - I usually got new ones every 4 years. That’s why I chose the route and no regrets.

Edited

In reply to @cvkemp

You’ve touched on the real issue.

We need the best setup we can find

The people who help us here are the exception. And they’re wonderful.

I saw my hearing instrument specialist today he tuned my hearing aids again. He added power receivers. I have an appointment in June to get my Phonaks sent back before warranty ends. I was asked to call and visit if I have any issues.

I am focusing on the positive.

DaveL

I agree. I’ve been wearing hearing aids for 46 years. The marketing has always been about hearing in background noise. Even some people with normal hearing have a difficulty understanding with background noise. Yet, we continue to struggle with the latest and greatest technology. Yes, it seems to press the boundary of being illegal tactics

A company called Orcam appears to be at the forefront of a technology which can identify different voice profiles, select single or multiple such profiles in a crowd and suppress background noise. See the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNx3e3ERct48 and go to the segment at [09:02] for a description of the OrCam Hear. The company that makes it have a website - OrCam - Enhances Hearing in Noisy Environments9. It currently requires a phone and plugin accessory to work.

It is enormously exciting forseeing a time when it can be combined with other hearing aid technology and slimmed down so it does not rely on the phone as the processor. To be properly useful it will need a powerful chip, low battery usage and zero lag.

Advertising is advertising. IMO the only way to find out is to trial the hearing aids. I’ve just trialled Phonak Lumitys, ReSound Nexias and Oticon Intents. I certainly felt there were noticeable differences between them. All had different strengths and weaknesses, and they definitely sounded and performed differently “out of the box”. However, the key for me was having an audiologist who understood the technology of all of them and worked with me to tweak them to my liking. That really helped me make my decision.

FWIW there was one thing in the advertising that I liked about the ReSound Nexias, which was the microphone in canal. I really wanted that more “natural” sound it supposedly offered. The concept sounded great but in reality I didn’t notice a significant difference between them and my previous aids (ReSound Linx 3D). Also, everytime you put the aids in you get really annoying feedback from the in-canal microphones. A minor thing but I found it annoying…

@philbury said:

I couldn’t help feeling there probably wasn’t a big gap between their exaggerated claims and outright lies.

LOL! I’ll tell ya short 'n sweet: Phonak’s initial claim 2 yrs ago that Lumity Life aids were WATERPROOF was rubbish. I proved that wrong in two short swims taking the aids no lower than 6" in water.

In reply to @OldMusicGuy

@OldMusicGuy said:

However, the key for me was having an audiologist who understood the technology of all of them and worked with me to tweak them to my liking. That really helped me make my decision.

You just won the lottery. Hang on to that audi! My Oticon Intent 1 trial was a BUST in 2 days cuz the never stabilized, but also, the audi just didn’t have the time of day to fiddle-faddle settings for me. No wonder there are so many DIYers here!

That was my issue too.
Doing better now. My hearing aids are much louder with
Power receivers

In reply to @1Bluejay

@1Bluejay said:

You just won the lottery.

Well it wasn’t really a lottery, it was a result of many hours of research. I reviewed the background of every audiologist within one hour drive of where I live, phoned several to ask them some searching questions and only one of them met my criteria, the audi I now work with.

But yes, I won the lottery! :slightly_smiling_face:

Edited

Everyone is making valid points based on their experience but I started this thread out of anger and frustration that, for what are extremely expensive medical prosthetics, we, the customers, are regularly subjected to oulandish exaggerated claims by the marketing departments of the companies that make them.

From what I can gather we are on the cusp (2 years?) of some significant improvements in digital signal processing which may, for a change, give us some of the claimed miracles for real this time. Interestingly the manufacturers that we now rely on may not be the ones who profit from these innovations. Moore’s law operates in the world too and a time is coming when cheap and powerful voice recognition and noise suppression reaches the mass market at a very different price point. There are maybe hundreds of millions of potential customers for a cheap effective hearing aid.

I appreciate you coming back.

I’m angry too…because my new hearing aids didn’t work for 2-1/2 years. I’ve had wonderful audis before. And they set up my hearing aids really well. That hasn’t been my experience with what I have now. Except I’ve finally found someone.
My fingers are crossed hoping they find a way to make hearing aids work without the stress I’ve experienced for some time.
The advertising should reflect the product we put in our ears; that isn’t true unless the firm that sells them to us does their work well.

In reply to @philbury

@philbury said:

From what I can gather we are on the cusp (2 years?) of some significant improvements in digital signal processing which may, for a change, give us some of the claimed miracles for real this time. Interestingly the manufacturers that we now rely on may not be the ones who profit from these innovations. Moore’s law operates in the DSP world too and a time is coming when cheap and powerful voice recognition and noise suppression reaches the mass market at a very different price point. There are maybe hundreds of millions of potential customers for a cheap effective hearing aid.

Look at the initial discussion in the “Reckless Speculation in Hearing Aid Technology” Topic

Thanks for directing me to that discussion. I defer to those with more patience than me in arguing the relative merits of the different approaches taken by Phonak and Oticon but I am waiting for bigger breakthroughs which are already being seen in the labs but the chipsets of current ’s are just not powerful enough to implement.

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