Costco Kirkland Signature 9.0 (Product Information)

We probably have that flyer in the envelope Costco gave us when my wife bought the KS9 aids.
She has been out of town ever since she got the aids. She just called to let me know she will be home in a few hours. I am curious to hear how she has been doing with her new aids.

It’s tuff to make a comparison when the KS9 aids haven’t been in the public’s hands but a few weeks now. Literature is so deceiving.

You are in a great position to do the real deal comparison between the KS9 and the KS8 by wearing both.

The circumstances are not in my favour to do that. Because of our provincial health care plan I have to sign off on accepting the KS8’s in another week or so, or give them up. KS9’s won’t be available here by then.

That information helps some. Some questions I would have about the KS9 would be:

1. Is the 9 only have 20 channels? The 8 has 48 channels with 20 handles.
2. It says the 9 has 9 programs but says it is within the 3.0 Automatic program. Are these selectable by the user or only by the automatic program? How many can you manually select? The 8 has 6 you can set from a list of about 10, plus 3 more as part of the app. Within the 3D Classifier they claim the 8 has 24 different situations that can be used.
3. Is the narrow speech focus automatic or controlled by the app manually?
4. Is the DuoTel like the xPhone for the 8? for landline phones?
5. Are there different levels of noise reduction, feedback, wind noise, impulse noise, how many?
6. Is the Multifunction button, just one button? Seems limiting compared to two buttons or a toggle.
7. Does it have the equivalent of the 8 Own Voice Processing to tame own voice sound?
8. Is the smart phone control and use as good as the iPhone use with the 8?

member6, just to be clear, I am not expecting a response to these questions and I appreciate your posting the additional information. These are just the questions going through my head on whether or not I should consider switching from the 8 to the 9. I am not sure whether the 9 is an upgrade or a downgrade from the 8.

Comparing this list to the features of the M90, they seem very similar. Phonak changes names to make it difficult to compare. Without a doubt it is a good value.

My wife just got home after having a few days away to try out the new KS9 aids. She had two loud restaurant evenings and dealt with her soft spoken niece and brother. She was absolutely clear these KS9 aids were superior to the Starkey 2400 Livio aids she trialed for a couple months. She was able to hear well at the restaurant and heard almost all speech with her family. She has not used the phone enough to make comments about that yet. The speech recognition is very good, very happy.

I guess I don’t stream a lot with my KS8’s to my iPhone. The times I have tried it, it seems to work. When I stream in my truck it switches to my truck sound system. Same with the phone audio. I have no trouble hearing the phone calls through the truck audio system. I have not had one channel drop out when streaming out of iTunes or on a phone call that I can remember. However the connection between the iPhone 7 and the Smart Direct app does drop out frequently and I think especially when in my pocket. But it either repairs by itself or if I close the app and open it again. It seems I never have to repair with the MFi part. The only time I had to do that was after my last appointment with the fitter where she did some programming. That seemed to force me to go into the whole repair process in the MFi screen.

About the only part I am not really happy with is that there is no way that I have found to use the iPhone microphone in hands free mode. You have to hold it up close to your mouth when speaking. However, from what I am reading about the KS9 and Marvel is that it tries to use the HA mics and that does not work well at all.

Your experience is a lot like mine. Streaming switches to my car sound system seamlessly when I’m in the car. It has no problem - and the signal appears to be stereo with neither channel dropping out. Streaming to the KS8s, on the other hand drops out very frequently, but usually only to one or the other hearing aid. It does seem to be loosely related to the distance. If I put the phone near my face, it will reconnect maybe 50% of the time - but not reliably so. This is the aggravating part.

I’m curious why you call the KS9s “connectivity friendly.” Is it just because they are better than your Brio 3s which requires a 2d device for streaming or because they are supposed to work better than other connected HAs, like the KS8s?

Yeah, that’s pretty much my reasoning, assuming they work as I hope they do. For example, I have cheap BT headphones that connect to my phone, iMac, and tablets with ease. I hope the HAs will do the same and according to the specs on Costco’s user guide24, they should.

@Sierra said:

1. Is the 9 only have 20 channels? The 8 has 48 channels with 20 handles.
2. It says the 9 has 9 programs but says it is within the 3.0 Automatic program. Are these selectable by the user or only by the automatic program? How many can you manually select? The 8 has 6 you can set from a list of about 10, plus 3 more as part of the app. Within the 3D Classifier they claim the 8 has 24 different situations that can be used.
3. Is the narrow speech focus automatic or controlled by the app manually?
4. Is the DuoTel like the xPhone for the 8? for landline phones?
5. Are there different levels of noise reduction, feedback, wind noise, impulse noise, how many?
6. Is the Multifunction button, just one button? Seems limiting compared to two buttons or a toggle.
7. Does it have the equivalent of the 8 Own Voice Processing to tame own voice sound?
8. Is the smart phone control and use as good as the iPhone use with the 8?

I have the B90, similar, but has autosense 2.0. My take,

1. 20 seems plenty.
2. 9 in autosense 3.0. Separate from Autosense you can have manual programs. For example, I have a manual Speech in loud noise, which is also an autosense program. My manual version has more noise reduction.
3. Both. I have a manual program for directional, front facing, and another manual program for directional, 360. In the app I can click on front, left, right, rear.
4. I think so. For any kind of phone it makes the left mic hot (I’m left-eared) so it is easy to get the phone sound picked up and it transmits it to the other ear. I have it as manual number 1.
5. Yes, all sliders. Not sure how many, but plenty.
6. Right ear, short press volume up, long press program change. Left ear, short press volume down, long press program change. Compilot 2 has more ability, but not available on Marvel.
7. It does, and it does help some. I didnt see any benefit from OVP, but mine is physical occlusion (that’s not the right term, but mine exists if the hearing aids are in place but turned off).
8. It is going to be like a bluetooth headset, not MFi.

In my KS-9s, I am getting ALL the sounds my iPhone XR makes via Bluetooth (keyboard clicks, text alerts, system sounds, etc). I don’t remember that happening when I tested the Marvel 90s. Anyone else?

Uburobob: Check the user portal. I use Android. But I suspect you need to turn off whatever system sounds you don’t want to hear, in your phone settings.

In addition to what Jackster said, many have reported the same thing with the Marvels.

My Samsung s8/Trax42 combo switches to bluetooth when a video starts or I take a picture, regardless of whether I have the phone muted or not. [grumble] Hoping the KS9 hearing aid doesn’t do this, but realistically my issue is probably a phone problem, not a hearing aid problem.