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Phonak Naida L50-SP - programming issues

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Hi

I’m trying these Phonak Naida L50 SP after using Naida V SP for about 16 years (bought them in 2008).
As efficient as my current hearing aids are, they’re at the end of their rope and lack several useful things such as bluetooth so I’m trying to find a proper replacement but it’s quite an adventure

Some background :
Tried some Phonak and Resound a couple years ago, with no success.
After trying 3 different hearing aids Signia and Resound, with my first audi who I parted way with (less than a minute programming sessions didn’t fit the bill, I had several issues, persevered for 3 months but each appointment was a disappointment, settings were pointless) and never got to try out the Phonak since they forgot to order them, so I switched audi and am now working with a great one !

First tried on Naida L70-UP, since they are supposed to be the proper ones for my hearing loss but after trying several things, and taking into consideration all my previous experiences, we came to the conclusion that on paper they are appropriate but in the real world, they are too powerful and my brain/ears can’t process such powerful settings, and L70 has too many pointless programs for me. So we ended up deciding to try something less powerful, with the caveat that we will not have a lot of margin if my hearing loss was to deteriorate…

Back to the present, results with the L50-SP are quite good (we’re not working with auto sense but a single program, my brain can’t tolerate switching between programs yet) but I’m encountering a couple annoying issues :

  • saturation for some sounds (sound is “vibrating”), such as the sound emitted by our gate when it’s open, my crying nephew or the sound made by a dove… Streaming sound (whether it’s music or a call) is pretty much perfect, so saturation issues are probably due to sound processing imo. Will talk about it with my audi but if you have any idea, I’m all ears !
  • over-presence of “small” sounds, computer fan, fans in general, car motor noises are way too loud : on the app, I added more noise reduction (almost to the max) and it makes it better but with the issue that speech is harder to understand in noisy situations. Will again talk about it with my audi but if you have some advice, it would be appreciated.
  • SoundRecover is an issue… at the moment, we switched it off (so I’m hearing “real” high level frequencies for the first time) since I can’t use SoundRecover2 (we tried pretty much everything but S sounds are sounding like SH sounds all the time, it’s quite exaggerated) but I had SoundRecover with my old aids and I can see the difference (both with how I perceive the sounds and results, better with SR). Is there any way to put back the “old” SoundRecover in Target for Lumity aids ? Already looked for it with the audi but couldn’t find it, if any of you know how to do it, it would be awesome !

I’m about 90% sure that I will go with these aids, since I don’t really have a lot of choice and they’re the best I tried , but if any improvement is possible, it’s always a good thing.

Thanks for any help you can provide !

8 people in this conversation10 min readJump to latest
@younguy69 said:

over-presence of “small” sounds, computer fan, fans in general, car motor noises are way too loud : on the app, I added more noise reduction (almost to the max) and it makes it better but with the issue that speech is harder to understand in noisy situations. Will again talk about it with my audi but if you have some advice, it would be appreciated

Soft sound reduction would help this issue.

Edited

It’s worth the wait - in 3 days Phonak will announce a new platform. You may be able to test the Audeo Sphere with the UP receiver or wait about a year for Naida on this platform.

Maybe they release the Naida at the same time, because I saw the charger for the new Virto series which were aways announced with delay, quite as Naida.

In reply to @Bimodal_user

Heard about it and I’m sure there would be some awesome features but I tried some UP receiver in the past and there wasn’t enough power, don’t know if it’s changed in the past 5 years

I’d probably need a Naida and waiting more than a couple months is no longer an option since I waited wayyyy too long to replace my current hearing aids, I’m afraid they will no longer work by then… and I can’t afford to not be able to hear properly (not sure my employer would keep me unfortunately !)
But in France, where I’m from, we can have a new pair every four years, mostly paid by our social security and health insurance, so I will definitely check the new platforms then !

@younguy69 said:

but I tried some UP receiver in the past and there wasn’t enough power, don’t know if it’s changed in the past 5 years

Ok, my bad, just checked and UP receiver for Lumity may be too weak. We will see what about possible new receivers - maybe they’ll be based on xMEMS technology?

Screenshot_20240803_230348_Adobe Acrobat

What about your Word Recognition Score () on each ear separatedly + binaurally?

Have you ever been qualified for cochlear implant e.g. Advanced Bionics?

I would have thought that the UP Naida would be the best fit for your , when adjusted properly.
As respects SR2 then reproduce the exact settings from your ventures. Remember it needs time to acclimatise.

@Bimodal_user : Left ear is pretty much at less than 5%, right ear is at 65%.
Binaurally, I’m at 68%. If lip-reading + hearing aids, I recognize 96% of the words
All checked at soft-spoken voice level, with my old hearing aids.
I’ve been qualified 7 years ago but got cold feet but I’m going through the process again later this year :slight_smile:

@michael1 : yeah they would be for sure, but we tried every settings and couldn’t make them work, maybe in a couple years I’ll try again. SP right now already feel more powerful than my old ones, but in a manageable way, when UP were way too much discomfort (for sure it was a programming issue, but how to improve it is a tough one).
I believe my old ones are even older than venture (by 5 to 7 years), we tried reproducing the settings but SoundRecover changed a lot when they released SR2 (more adaptive sound treatment I believe) and even after a month of wearing the aids, it was still a huge issue. Not even sure going back to SR1 would be better but just wondering if it was even a possibility with those Lumity, just to check if things improved or not. If not a possibility or not better, I’ll manage but I’m all in on trying things to get the best results !

In reply to @michael1

@michael1 said:

As respects SR2 then reproduce the exact settings from your ventures

The OP has Naida V SP which is the first generation Naida run on the Core Platform which has SR1.

Naida I, III, V, IX were the different ones.

A quick update prior to my appointment this afternoon : checked on Target (I’m considering DIYing) and switching to SR1 is still doable so we’ll try this today !

I’ll let my audi know about your advice regarding some tweaks to do

Edited

In reply to @younguy69

@younguy69 said:

I’ve been qualified 7 years ago but got cold feet but I’m going through the process again later this year :slight_smile:

It’s worth the effort. Many implanted people regret to not be implanted earlier. Hearing aids probably don’t give you over that 68%. The only way to elevate score is cochlear implant.

My decision about my left ear was easy because it hears totally zero. Your left ear is quite unusable to hear speech so you also have almost nothing to lose with surgery.

Concededly, I have from Cochlear company, but if you plan use Naida on right ear consider Advanced Bionics because of bilateral cooperation with Naida mics:

Advanced Bionics Naída CI M90 Review6

David Ryan and Howard Samuels Naída CI M90 First Impressions The Naída CI M90 is the first Advanced Bionics processor to be produced entirely under the Sonova umbrella from concept on through produ…

Screenshot_20240805_173800_Chrome

So, for bilateral (more precisely - , see my nickname) features it’s worth to think about Naida L90 for right ear (90 instead of 50).

** saturation for some sounds (sound is “vibrating”), *
** over-presence of “small” sounds,*

These two seem related to compression, i.e. how much the hearing aids amplify soft intensity sounds.
For severe to profound losses, some long term wearers prefer less compression, and it is not something easy to get used to.

You could request a more “linear” setting, which for phonaks is easy to accomplish.

  • SoundRecover is an issue… Is there any way to put back the “old” SoundRecover in Target for Lumity aids ?

Yes - under phonak target setup > fitting session > fitting there is a tick box called “show soundrecover versions in global tuning”. once enabled, your audi will have control over soundrecover version under ‘global tuning’

One other thought is to import your previous naida v hearing aid settings into the new naida L-50 hearing aids. Even though the Naida V is very old, you can still import some of the fundamental settings over to the newer hearing aids, including the frequency curve, compression settings etc

in my experience this works maybe 50% of the time for wearers in your situation, as with old hearing aids there are some factors influencing the sound that cannot be replicated on new hearing aids, including distortion of older circuitry which might now be part of your preferred sound quality.

You would need to make sure you have your old hearing aid settings copied and saved on the audis computer system, and then they can import it using the fitting > transfer fitting function within phonak target.

In reply to @Bimodal_user

Thank you for all these informations, I was not aware of most of it and I will then ask my Audi to switch my hearing aids as to make sure I’m fully prepared if I end up with a short term !

Quick question about the post-op : was it a long road to recovery ? How does it sound ?

Edited

In reply to @bigaltavista

@bigaltavista said:

** saturation for some sounds (sound is “vibrating”), *
** over-presence of “small” sounds,*

These two seem related to compression, i.e. how much the hearing aids amplify soft intensity sounds.
For severe to profound losses, some long term wearers prefer less compression, and it is not something easy to get used to.

You could request a more “linear” setting, which for phonaks is easy to accomplish.

Will try this since, at the moment, he used the “soft sounds reducer” slider (made some improvements but not a lot, don’t know of much he put) for the small sound issue, and increased for the saturation (didn’t work)

@bigaltavista said:
  • SoundRecover is an issue… Is there any way to put back the “old” SoundRecover in Target for Lumity aids ?

Yes - under phonak target setup > fitting session > fitting there is a tick box called “show soundrecover versions in global tuning”. once enabled, your audi will have control over soundrecover version under ‘global tuning’

We found it and it’s made a great difference already !

@bigaltavista said:

One other thought is to import your previous naida v hearing aid settings into the new naida L-50 hearing aids. Even though the Naida V is very old, you can still import some of the fundamental settings over to the newer hearing aids, including the frequency curve, compression settings etc
in my experience this works maybe 50% of the time for wearers in your situation, as with old hearing aids there are some factors influencing the sound that cannot be replicated on new hearing aids, including distortion of older circuitry which might now be part of your preferred sound quality.
You would need to make sure you have your old hearing aid settings copied and saved on the audis computer system, and then they can import it using the fitting > transfer fitting function within phonak target.

Unfortunately, current audi doesn’t have the old program on is computer (and it’s not compatible with his Windows version). I remember trying this a couple years back and it was indeed not a huge success : distortion is indeed a HUGE issue :frowning:

Thank you for your help everyone, I hope I’ll have good results soon !

I use SoundRecover aggressively on my Lumity UP and i get no S/SH issues. Sound Recover is adjustable but it looks like you would only benefit on the side where you dont get any high frequency sounds.

The default setting on Sound recover for my loss is starting at 2700 hz so it would basically take 3500-5000 hz sound (that i cant hear) and put it into 3000-4000 hz (which i also cant hear. So, mine is set to start at 1100 hz.

My thought is to check your hearing with aided word recognition test, and see, somewhat objectively, what you are hearing. You cant expect the sound to be similar to your old ones, but the word recognition should be fairly good.

Next step would be cochlear implant.

In reply to @younguy69

@younguy69 said:

Thank you for all these informations, I was not aware of most of it and I will then ask my Audi to switch my hearing aids as to make sure I’m fully prepared if I end up with a CI short term !

Fingers crossed for Nada L90 with Naida Link!

@younguy69 said:

Quick question about the post-op : was it a long road to recovery ? How does it sound ?

I am not to be the best person to ask about it, because my better ear hears quite well. But see here, there are also my point of views:

How well do people hear after getting cochlear implant? - Cochlear Implants - Hearing Aid Forum - Active Hearing Loss Community (hearingtracker.com)

@younguy69, there are other useful topics:

Any major reservations regarding Advanced Bionics brand? - Cochlear Implants - Hearing Aid Forum - Active Hearing Loss Community (hearingtracker.com)

Anyone here with a Cochlear implant regretted it? - Cochlear Implants - Hearing Aid Forum - Active Hearing Loss Community (hearingtracker.com) Advanced Bionics CI Activation a Success - Cochlear Implants - Hearing Aid Forum - Active Hearing Loss Community (hearingtracker.com)

On this forum @joanhawsey is user:
Advanced Bionics CI Activation a Success - Cochlear Implants - Hearing Aid Forum - Active Hearing Loss Community (hearingtracker.com)

Thank you guys for all your help ! Program is way better now and I’m also looking all these informations about cochlear implants as a next step in a couple months or a year !

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