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Phonak Naida Paradise P90 Bluetooth sound quality

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Edited

@Neville I have hearing loss of around average 105db. NHS no longer provides hearing aids for my level of hearing loss so had to go down Access to Work grant to get funding for Phonak Paradise P90. Don’t think there are any other powerful aids other than maybe Resound.

The NHS does have access to all sorts of aids including the 675 UP aids. In fact there’s ( or used to be) a special provision with the National purchasing contract for UP aids.

They won’t necessarily be amongst the standard contract stuff like the Resound I-fit, but they will be available to the Trust/Hospital Group.

Your hospital Audiology department knows this: the information you’ve been given is wrong. Either write to the head of department and copy your MP or take it up with the chief executive of the hospital.

Interesting, thank you for this information @Um_bongo

I have a letter from NHS Devon confirming they are not able to supply UP aids and they (Devon region) are limited by the existing contracts. Without this letter, I would have not been given Access to Work grant because as you say, it is expected NHS should be able to supply hearing aids to all.

The best they could supply in my case were Marvel SP or Signia SP, both were too quiet compared to Naida V70.

Bear in mind I’ve been at odds with NHS Devon for about 5-7 years now.

They didn’t supply Naida V70 previously, but instead bought it from the private branch of their NHS partner on my behalf as a one off, as they still couldn’t cater to my hearing loss.

Then when the time came to upgrade, I was stuck again and had to go down Access to Work route. It’s been a stressful experience.

In reply to @flipcooke

That’s ridiculous!

Your Trust can’t bump off the needs of the most severely impaired users because of ‘contractual obligations’. Take that letter straight to the MP and cc the head of the trust. They have an obligation to find you something that works, even if they have to go outside of their normal purchasing routes.

Exeter used to be a centre of excellence for hearing care provision in the NHS.

Also, are they saying that ‘ALL’ users who need UP aids are likely to be abandoned by the system? That’s mad, and certainly outside of the terms of service if the trust.

@Um_bongo completely agree it is ridiculous, I couldn’t think what else to do, and that’s right, Exeter is where I go.

They say that they don’t have many people like me to assess the actual needs for UP level and that their current offering usually caters to everyone. They strongly encourage people like me to go down route, which I have found them to be quite aggressive to push me that way.

My worry is, I actually have good relations with the several audiologists there and they have been extremely frustrated with the current aids they currently have access to, and I don’t want to ruin that by going down the routes you suggest (but may well end up going down that route anyway)

@Um_bongo Oh and don’t get me started on moulds. I’m using the ones from two years ago (but remade recently using same impression) as ever since they changed providers for making moulds, it has been terrible and often needs 3-4 trips to get a lottery luck of well fitting moulds!

So I’m surprised to find you mention that they are supposed to have Excellence accreditation

You need to bang a few desks there.

The “don’t have the right hearing aids’ bit is utter rubbish though. Historically, there was always a separate contract/tender for UP aids with the central purchasing unit in Merseyside.

Now it might be true that they don’t sit on the same platform as their standard product, however the inference that they aren’t available is bonkers. Using that suggestion to coerce people onto their programme also seems beyond reproach.

Edited

In reply to @Neville

@Neville said:

it takes a few seconds for the hearing aids to detect what program they should be in, and then when they flip into that program something is wrong.

I truly appreciate your comment! I’ve wondered, and asked and never had it explained so well.

DaveL

In reply to @flipcooke

I have the P70 UP aids and l set my aids at 100 percent gain. Since your hearing loss is a bit worse than mine, have you set the gain to 110 percent? It always take 30 seconds up to a minute to connect to phone but it connects quickly when tv connector is on.
In addition, l have SoundRecover turned off.

Thanks for the message.

One worst ear is set to 110% but the issue remained the same in both ears.

I believe I have resolved the issue, which I’ll update shortly.

After extensive testing across various devices, the drop in gain is due to the limitations of Bluetooth.

Bluetooth and RogerOn settings and graphs are exactly the same, except that Bluetooth only exhibited the random drops in quality and volume.

Laptops and PCs with built in Bluetooth are generally very poor quality because the Bluetooth uses the same antenna as WiFi antenna, which causes interference. With the purchase of the USB Bluetooth dongle have massively reduced the number of times the drops occured.

The Bluetooth volume was set to 100% volume by default when paired - even though it sounded my normal level as not excessive and excellent quality, dropping the volume to 50%-75% level didn’t reduce the amplification but essentially eliminated the random drops across all devices, with or without the usb dongle.

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