Best CIC/IIC? Any advice on other brands?

Xonic, you’re the one with reverse slope loss, yeah? You’d probably be better off with the word “localization”. If you are the one with reverse slope loss, it would be interesting to see what your hearing looked like at ultra high frequencies. For some reverse slopes it comes right back down in the ultra highs, but for others it’s pretty normal out to 16 kHz and a lot of sound cues for room size and material are up at the high high end.

Interaural time and intensity differences aren’t part of pinna cues, and are lower frequency–they are typically the dominant cue for sound located along the azimuth. People with unilateral or significant asymmetrical loss lose these binaural cues and it’s a big problem for them. Pinna cues are a monaural high frequency filtering from sound reflecting around the pinna and help with front-back confusion at certain angles and localizing sound elevation. The pinna effect is actually fairly flexible neurologically. Just like you can make people wear prism glasses that turn the world upside down for a week and the brain will eventually turn the world rightway up, you can tape down someone’s pinnas and they will initially lose their ability to localize in elevation, but they’ll work out it again after a few weeks. The most common type of loss is sloping high frequency loss, and those people do pretty well with sound localization but definitely do start to lose those other things you’re talking about.

I’ve actually been waiting for someone to develop a way to measure individual head-related transfer functions and load that onto hearing aids, but it hasn’t been done yet and is perhaps a greater engineering challenge that I am imagining. Except. . . given the flexibility of the brain you wouldn’t even need to add the individual’s HRTF, you just need someone’s. That’s why audio like this works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA2

So are you just living the Lyric life, are are you looking to do something else? Lyrics work really well for the people they work well for–why change?

@mindsil said:

or fit to the targets because it’s required/requested, and then reset to the manufacturers predicted targets.

This makes me sad/frustrated. I’ve seen it done too. We’re failing these clinicians somehow. It’s such a powerful tool for some of us and others still think that it’s useless. We’re missing something in training the latter. There was a clinician knocking about on here a while back claiming that REM was always totally different one measure to the next, and I couldn’t understand what he was doing to believe that. I think that REM can be a little bit like cooking–you tell someone who has never done it to just follow the recipe, but there are all these little tricks to know that aren’t actually written up in the recipe and are easier to learn from someone who already cooks than to figure out yourself from successive failures. Also, patients don’t like successive failures.

Na Lyrics don’t work for me. I have reasonable, not great but reasonable high freqs. Lyrics boost eeeeeverything and are really painful for me to ware because of that. The idea is good, but in a noisy coffee shop for example they blow my head off even in the lowest volume state. Due to recruitment a lot of sound is quite painful for me now, especially in the last month or so. They do sound good, no delay, fairly natural sound until they overload at the highs, but they’re just in your face all the time with no way to tune. I’m currently waiting for the Phonak I-R to come out and we’ll see what that’s like. It won’t be as good for localisation of course but my hunch is, better than the RICs.
This is my audio gram bTW:

I’ve just reread your post sorry, ultra high has gone for me I think. Whatever I’m picking up now, I can still localise to a degree, far less than I could when I was younger. Also I don’t know why, but my ability to localise up and down is vastly reduced as compared to front and back. The volume of sounds above me needs to be a lot louder for me to know they’re above me, or they need to be clear seperate sounds for me to go oh yeah that’s up there.
BTW I should say I am interested in the Resound Nexia with the mic positioned in the ear canal, but I have never ever found a review of how people have used this in reality. The reviews kind of go yeah, that’s a thing, some say they’re hard to fit and then they just move on. Proving my point that people understand this localisation/pinna effect whatever is a thing, but I think very few people really use or notice it. In my mind, having mics on the receivers in your ears is as game changing as Sphere but that’s just not how the rest of the HA industry or I suspect the users think of it

Great explanation! Understanding helps. Thank you.

Attached is my Audiogram from Costco.

Unfortunately Costco only carries CIC and no IIC as far as I know. Is this autophonation really bad with CIC?

The audiologist told me that a non-fitted CIC would be better vs a fitted one as I don’t have low-freq loss, so a slightly vented CIC like an instant fit would be better for that. They pushed a BTE/RIC type solutions but I’d like a CIC/IIC for my first HA.

They had me quickly demo a Rexton instant fit iX CIC they had in house. They told me they are getting the new rechargable Rexton CIC soon, and I assume that is the same as the Audicus Mini 2 (which their rep told me is the new rechargable Rexton CIC).
Edit: The new rechargable Rexton is probably the REACH inoX-CIC Li.

Your hearing loss inherently doesn’t suit IIC/CIC fitting. More precisely the occlusional characteristics of these kind of devices don’t fit with your good low frequency hearing.

RIC aids are suited to your hearing loss

Thanks all for the replies! This is good info.
I understand the drawbacks of CIC vs RIC for my loss. However the lady selling the Oticons said something important to me (a new HA user): it doesn’t matter how good the hearing aid is if you’re not using it everyday due to X reasons. I’m a relatively young guy and I’d like to ‘ease’ into this new disability of mine if you will, which is why I’d rather do a CIC/IIC vs RIC/BTE device to start. Eventually I might just upgrade to a RIC anyway if the smaller devices don’t work for me. I am not terribly financially restricted.

Karva, by the ‘Silk’ I assume you mean the near-identical Rexton Reach iX CIC from Costco? (they have the older non-recharging model and the newer rechargable just came in).
Also considering the OTC Sony CRE-C20 which I believe are the same chipset. I am reading online that they have vented sleeves which reduce occlusion.

And if money was no issue; Starkey Genesis IIC to reduce autophonation, correct? (I am not seeing Edge AI being available in IIC yet).

Oticon also has IIC and likely launching the Intent chipset in IIC form this year, any thoughts on that?

I’d wait a few months to see wat Phonak come out with in regards to CIC. One thing I will say, just a point of view, wearing a CIC or any ITE device made me much more aware of my hearing loss than a RIC ever did. Now I know if you read my ranty posts above that might surprise you, but having something lodged in my ear always reminded me i needed something lodged in my ear and that I have hearing problems if that makes any sort of sense. Where as the RIC, even though for me personally it didn’t hhelp as much, I felt more comfortable wearing it. There’s a reason they call it open fit I guess
The reason I bring this up is because you talk about getting used to something new. I completely understand why you would like a CIC, you just might want to try a small RIC also on a trial basis. Also another point, I’m not sure if any CIC devices are waterproof. probably not as they tend to all have battery doors. Not sure how much that’s important to you but you might find it becomes so. The rICs on the other hand are all going waterproof these days. Just some thoughts

Yes, Silk is the name of the Signia hearing aids, and the iX CIC from Rexton will be the exact same thing.

About Starkey, Genesis IIC and Signature IIC are basically the same thing, but they claim that Signatures’ shells are made even better, with their “full knowledge” whatever that means.
Starkey usually release every form of hearing aid directly, I don’t think there will ever be Edge AI IICs.

The new Oticon will be coming out soon, but their shells are not as deep in the ear canal as Starkey.

Darn it I hate it when HA makers produce aids with only half knowledge

BTW Resound also make ITE and I think CIC devices. I actually spoke to a tech guy from Resound today and was encouraged. I might try these myself.