Programming a pair of ReSound Nexia 9 hearing aids ------ yourself

Here’s a question:

It’s that time in life where I must now get hearing aids. So I made an appointment with an Audiologist and I went in and had a hearing test. I’ve got moderate to severe hearing loss. The doctor told me about the Resound Nexia 9 and I went home and researched it.

The piano has been my career and I’ve been playing probably about 60 years. About 5 years ago I purchased my dream piano, a new 7 ½ foot Yamaha Concert Grand. Here’s the issue: IT SCREAMS AT ME! When I play it I hear so much distortion. I honestly thought it was the piano and that Yamaha had shipped me a defective instrument. I’m also a part time piano tech and a few of my tech friends have told me that the piano sounds fine. Whenever my wife says something to me, my reply is always: “what?” So, I realized that I needed to address my hearing, or loss of hearing.

I just have this feeling that there isn’t a hearing aid out there that will help my situation. I’ll be able to hear people (speech) a lot better sure, but as far as sitting down at an acoustic piano and expecting to hear clear tone, nuances, color etc….forget it. In the last several days I’ve researched how to set up hearing aids for a pianist. I found a lot of good stuff:

• Disable feedback manager
• Turn off noise reduction
• Turn off directional mics
• Reduce compression ratio
• Raise the MPOs
• Remove frequency compression
• Fit: make sure of the fit to avoid the occlusion effect
• Dynamics: try to find a hearing aid that uses a higher bit rate (20-24bit) for A/D conversion.
• Frequency: look for a device with a wide frequency response, up to 10k if possible.
• Disable frequency transposition or frequency shifting

That’s a lot of tweaking and I would rather do it myself slowly, with lots of time, sitting and testing different things at the piano. Then I found out about “NoahLink Wireless 2 Hearing Aid Programmer”. It’s available at Amazon. Thing is, it requires “Smart Fit” ReSound hearing aid programming software which is only available from your provider. So I thought, fine I’ll talk to her about it today to see what that costs.

Well….it doesn’t cost a penny, know why? It is forbidden by ReSound for me to have it. And it is not a download from ReSound either. It is “proprietary” software and only hearing aid professionals are allowed to have it. And I am not going to look for an illegal way to get it.

So here’s my question: how does a DIYr program a ReSound Nexia 9 if the manufacturer will not allow their customers access to the “Smart Fit” programming software? What’s up with that?

Thanks!
Dan