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Philips HearLink 9050 to hit Costco soon? With similar tech to Oticon Intent?

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In reply to @bobbydigital16

Volusiano has spent a lot of time on another thread explaining detail the differences between the firmware in earlier Philips and Oticon hearing aids. I can’t remember the thread, but you might search for it.

I’ve been wearing the 9040s for about 1.5 years and just bought the 9050s 1 week ago. I wanted to provide an update as soon as I had put the 9050s to some tests. I do my own adjustments so if there is something I don’t like I can quickly resolve it. Here are my first impressions:

  1. 9050s amplify less background noise in normal quiet situations.
  2. The feedback control seems to work better on the 9050 than the 9040. When sitting at the computer sometimes the 9040 would get feedback, this doesn’t happen with the 9050.
  3. Normal situations, usually quiet or low noise, the 9050 seem about the same as the 9040.
  4. I’ve tried two noisy restaurant situations (1 on 1 situation, not a group). In both cases the 9050 seems to over amplify the background, both in Automatic and Noise 1 On 1 settings. I turn down the volume and that seems to help. I put my 9040s in and could understand better the person sitting next to me.

So far, I believe the 9040s are doing a better job in noisy restaurants settings than the 9050s. This isn’t my final conclusion since I want to do more adjustments on the 9050s. In automatic mode, I’ve kept my feature settings the same on both aids (40s & 50s). I did expect a noticeable difference with the 9050s that I haven’t seen yet.

The only time I get feedback with my 9040 hearing aids is when I cup the hearing aid with my hands, and I use the open bass domes.

I wonder if the 9050 hearing aids are setting on your ears differently, and maintaining a better seal in your ears by not pulling on them.

Can you take a screen shot of your feature selections in the programming software?

In reply to @kharri

@kharri said:

So far, I believe the 9040s are doing a better job in noisy restaurants settings than the 9050s. This isn’t my final conclusion since I want to do more adjustments on the 9050s. In automatic mode, I’ve kept my feature settings the same on both aids (40s & 50s). I did expect a noticeable difference with the 9050s that I haven’t seen yet.

Thanks for sharing your experience, especially from a going from a 9040 to a 9050, and your ability to change on the fly the 2 aids right on the spot for A to B comparison. Please keep sharing as you tinker with them some more.

I wonder if you have any comment on the 4D Sensor aspect of the 9050 that doesn’t exist in the 9040. That, and the fact that the Noise Removal program is supposed to be improved on the 9050. It’s interesting that you’re reporting that the 9040 is better at the noise reduction than the 9050. I wonder if you can program the 9050 to have 1 program with the 4D sensor on and another with the 4D sensor off, then switch between these 2 programs to see if you can discern a difference in how it handles noise between them. Perhaps the presence of the 4D sensor tries to be smarter and manage noise differently that gives you the impression of less noise control that was supposed to actually be smarter noise control perhaps?

I think it’s simply because the 9050 had the gains increased at the 65dB & 80dB levels. I’ve changed some other settings (Noise reduction mode, comfort control) and reduced the gains and will try again.
I can’t say I’ve been able to tell the 4D is working, so I may need to program it as you suggest (1 on 1 off)

I can say the restaurant was so noisy the wait staff couldn’t hear well and mentioned how noisy it was.
I was able to hear and understand (mostly the person next to me).

I’ve also found with the 9040 and I’m sure the 9050s that the programs you select are different algorithms, not just different settings. You’ll notice that the settings are different for different programs.
I found with the 9040s the automobile setting worked really well in a restaurant when there were several people in your party.

If you’re aiming to compare the 9040 to the 9050, you could try transferring the settings between them to ensure you maintain the same fit. While I haven’t done this in Philips HearLink, I was able to compare my Oticon More and Intent in this way. Otherwise, you might end up comparing different setups rather than the hearing aids themselves. Nothing wrong with comparing them with different setups though, as long as you keep that in mind.

Good idea. I might try that to see. My hope was to start from the real ear settings that CC made and improve on that.

In reply to @Volusiano

Bad analogy. If you really want to use a car analogy, then a more reasonable comparison would be the various modes in a modern car. In my car, for example, there is a selector for three modes; comfort, sport, and economy. In comfort mode, the car has moderate performance. In sport mode, the transmission shifts differently for quicker acceleration and the suspension stiffens up for better handling. In economy mode, the engine shuts down every time you come to a stop to save fuel. The engine, transmission, and suspension, i.e., the mechanical parts, are all the same. But the software in the engine control computer changes.

Changing between a piston engine and a rotary engine is like changing the processor in a pair of hearing aids, exactly what is NOT happening.

Edited

I guess we agree to disagree. I stand by my analogy. The “comfort, sport and economy” modes that you mentioned is more analogous to the Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 in hearing aids, where the software is used to cripple things to create differentiations in price points.

The piston vs rotary engine analogy may be crude because it uses mechanical things to make analogies for electronics, but the “principle” of the analogy in that the 2 “core” technologies are different stands. If you take an analogy and try to twist it, there can be a hundred ways that you can break it. People look at the principle sense of the comparison in an analogy to “get the point”, never the literal sense of the comparison.

If you transfer settings between 2 different , wouldn’t you need first to make sure the old aids are fitted to the newest ?

Don’t new aids sometimes come with new controls? Would you need to make sure the controls for the new aids are the same as for the old ones?

My first posting. I’ve been following this thread for a bit but have some comments.
I’ve had my 9040(I only need 1) for a few months now. I’ve been using an older model Oticon for ten years and tried out the new model(I don’t know which), but it was expensive and only had rechargeable battery type, which did not stay charged long enough for my day length. So, it was not feasible to use.
After the two month wait time to get fitted with the Cosco 9040, my 1st experience was obscenely bad. Because I need such high gain, the tech did not know how to set mine up and I heard mostly distortion. After another tech did the settings for me, I find it is a nice improvement over the older Oticon.
But what I have discovered:
The auto feedback mechanism cannot be used when listening to music. Pure notes are interpreted as feedback! I had to have my music channel set up with minimal feedback.
Here is an interesting you tube video that I am using to test my . It’s called Hearing Test HD. It is nothing more than a pure sine wave from 1 to 20000 Hertz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-iCZElJ8m0

It is really useful for determining how sounds are getting interpreted by the HA. EG, with my normal program, at 800 Hz, I get a raspy undernote sound in my HA.
Unfortunately, the Cosco technician cannot get you tube in the booth so I cannot give
feedback on the feedback!

Hello Radio_man, welcome to the forum.

You can also use a “tone generator” app on your phone to test different frequencies. I use this one on Android: Tone Generator by Michael Heinz. There are several to choose from.

I discovered that my Philips 9050’s general program adds an anti-feedback warble to pure tone above about 950 Hz. My Oticon Opn aids also do that, starting about 1250 Hz. I have not noticed the undertone sound you mentioned.

I’m also “retro” man in that I only use a land line phone so apps are not in my vocabulary. My phone rings about 2 times a month. Why would I want to carry a phone around with me just in case I miss a call?
I was told the anti feedback cannot be totally disabled, even in the music channel.
I first noticed that the music was pulsing or pumping, almost like (Auto Gain Control) in radio circuits, which gives the music a sort of wispy characteristic.
The new Oticon actually throttled the music back. Doing a stop/start on the You Tube video, I could actually hear the anti feedback decreasing the sound after about 1 second.
I feel like I’m a pioneer here by discovering the anti feedback nuances in music. The Costco techs knew nothing about it until I brought it up.

I know Costco have them because it was offered as a free gift when I purchased the 9050’s I chose the audio clip.

In reply to @d_Wooluf

This response from Demant is a little dated (2019) but when asked about the similarities of Philips vs the Oticon products, the answer was “The Philips HearLink technology is not Oticon (Open at the time) technology, however, it is Demant technology. The Demant hearing aid platforms are firmware-based, which means that the core signal processing encoded on the platform is different for Oticon and Philips, respectively, for instance, Oticon Open Sound Navigator and Oticon Speech Guard are unique to Oticon hearing aids. The Philips Hearing aids use two different core technologies called SoundMap and SoundTie.” There’s more to that article, but this was the gist of it. Seems alot different than the old KS10 vs Phonak P90 where every single option I could find had a direct correlation between the two. I’m trying the 9050 for now and my KS10s are in a box. So far, the bluetooth issues are my biggest hurdle.

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