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Costco Philips HearLink 9050 fitted using the new Act (Audible Contrast Threshold) Software

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Ok, we run Avant Arc and A2D here anyway.

I’m not exactly sure how you’re expecting to run a modern audiology business without having this kind of gear in your office anyway. It’s a minimum standard like having a v/o.

In reply to @kgilbertsen

My Costco fitter this week says they have inquired to headquarters but says it may take several years for Costco to invest in the new equipment needed. I find that hard to believe it would take that long. Maybe if enough customers ask for it repeatedly they can work a bit faster.

I’m with you, it seems like Costco wouldnt take so long to provide their fitters with a tool that sounds like a clear winner for improving outcomes for their customers. I’ll be sure to ask on Monday when i get my ’s.

My 9050’s are “Almost Heaven”. However, because the ACT features are built into the aids, but will not be programmed by Costco, using my NoahLink 2, I copied General into P4 to trial and error ACT, starting with a setting of 8.

In most environments I don’t notice any difference. But last night 4 of us went to a small restaurant that was very noisy ~78 to 84 . I was facing the corner with two walls. Behind us were three families with 5 loud boisterous girls under 5 years old having a great time. Beside us was a table of three adults, and fortunately the overhead music speakers were not close to our table.

Using the General program, I was understanding 75% of the conversation - far better than my older Rexton hearing aids. But when I switched to P4 with the ACT setting of 8, there was an order of magnitude improvement - probably 95% easy comprehension.

The reason Costco does not do the ACT is they don’t have the hardware boxes to do it. Glad your setting worked out well! What is your P4 program you mentioned?

The 9050 can have 4 programs. For me, Costco set General as my go to setting; Speech in Noise just to see if it would help (didn’t make much difference); and HiFi Music to give richer sound when listening to music. P4 was empty, so I copied all the General settings into it (very easy) and the only change I made was to input an ACT value of 8 (on the high side of moderate). It worked very well. If it hadn’t, I would have experimented up and down (say first an ACT of 6, and then 10) until I found an ACT value that worked best for me.

Thanks for the added details. I also find the General the best, although I have HiFi, Noise, and Automobile too. The Noise (not Speech in Noise) is good when there is a lot of noise; lawnmowers, traffic, etc. It just cuts down the overall volume. The automobile only seems to bring up the radio sound a bit, for better intelligibility, but the General actually seems better even in a car. I do use the HiFi when out in nature to hear more of a whole spectrum of sounds a bit better than the General. By the way, if you have a TV Adapter, it adds a fifth program for streaming from the TV.

Edited

You guys know that inputting the act score into the oticon software just adjusts the noise reduction settings, right? Like, the same noise reduction settings you might adjust manually.

I’m not saying having a measure to support an initial setting recommendation isn’t useful, but I’m not sure it deserves the sort of magical treatment it’s getting in this thread.

Also, it’s a speech in noise test very similar to the . The benefit of the ACT is that it’s not a language test, so non-English speakers can use it. But it’s doing the same thing.

Neville - you are correct in each of your statements. However, ACT has proven to be prescriptive to get to optimum and dynamic settings, whereas tests such as are not prescriptive.They provide an audiologist a guide to setting adjustments over perhaps multiple visits that may get to the same end result. Having read the white-papers from Oticon and Interacoustics.com3, I self-diagnosed that I would benefit from an ACT setting of 8, and it proved to be correct.

From Oticon,

“There is currently no speech-in-noise test that automatically integrates the patient’s results into the hearing aid prescription, and there is no test that will inform the fitting of a hearing aid for a person’s individual speech‑in‑noise ability using an evidence‑based method. The purpose of speech‑in‑noise testing has been to aid in counseling and to demonstrate benefits of amplification to the user, before and after their fitting. ACT serves the purpose of prescribing the right amount of help from the hearing aid in complex, noisy places.”

Costco aren’t licenced to input an ACT value, even though the tab and ACT field are on their software - the same software I used with my NoahLink.

I mean. . . not really. Given that ACT categorizes people into mild, moderate and severe deficits and so does the quickSIN, so you can just take your quickSIN score or “mild” and choose an ACT score of “mild” to enter and Bob’s your uncle.

There’s no such thing as a license to input an ACT value. Is that really what the Costco clinician said? They can stick whatever they want in there. Are you sure they didn’t mean that Coscto hasn’t purchased the actual test?

In reply to @Neville

Or you just put a ‘speech in noise’ program in P2, ask the individual to try it in the real World and then if they prefer the settings, move the P1 noise management that way………

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