Resound Omnia vs Phonak Lumity

@tenkan: As an alternative to what MDB and @Neville are suggesting, I think your assessment/recommendation is “on the money” …

@Jody, if you can’t take all this in, all at once, just keep on asking questions: the Forum is replete with knowledgeable Members, who I’m sure have lots of helpful suggestions for you to consider.

Hi @SpudGunner , after yesterday appt with Audi, she suggests CI for my type of hearing loss.
What would be your precious suggestion? I am having More1 with a power dome and 100dB mic for the past 5 months.
I requested a copy of the set-up (5 pages). Post it here or PM you for comments. I have asked @Volusiano the same question.

Hey @Sequoia_Woman,

I wholeheartedly agree that nobody should spent $5K+ on new hearing aids if the audiologist doesn’t appear to know what they are doing and talks down the importance of the REM testing process.

I can tell you from my own person experience, the REM test and fine tuning process was instrumental in customizing the Lumity hearing aids for my own specific hearing loss. I would say the REM test and adjustments thereafter took up at least an hour after the initial fit process was completed via the Phonak fitting software. My REM test kinda went like this. Hope I remembered this correctly:

• REM harness was placed on my shoulders and the small sensory tubes were placed deep in my ear (almost touching the ear drum). This was done without anything else in my ear.
• Bunch of test tracks were played at varying sound levels and the results were shown as a graph on the computer screen along with the target levels based on DSL v5.
• Lumity hearing aids were then put in my ear (with the REM test tubes still in place) and the sample speech tracks were played again to see how well the hearing aids were delivering the same audio directly to my ear drums. To me, this was important because this was the real measurement of what the hearing aids were doing. He mentioned at this point that Phonak did a good job with their first fit algorithm and the levels were not as bad as he expected.
• My audiologist then noted the frequency ranges on the graph where the Lumity hearing aids were not closely following the target frequency levels he was trying to achieve. What I noticed is that the measured performance line on the graph for Lumity matched the target line in some frequencie ranges but was too low in other areas.
  My audiologist then started boosting different ranges and then he repeated the sound tests to see if the changes improved the results. This went on for a while and the test track was repeated many times until he got the actual output of the Lumity hearing aids close to the target line. He also repeated the audio test tracks at different sound levels (quiet, normal and very loud).
• At one point he wasn’t happy with the results he was seeing with my right hearing aid so he replaced the double dome with a heavier double dome and then repeated the testing process a few more times.
• He then indicated that the heavier double dome allowed him to get my right ear to an almost exact match of the target levels. He spent some time showing me the graph, explaining what he did and explaining the benefit I was now going to get by the whole REM fine tuning process. I also think he went into some of the specific programs like Speech in Very Loud Noise and made additional tweaks based on what he was seeing.
• You could see that much of the adjusting he was doing to the various frequency ranges was based on his gut feeling as to what he could do to improve the results without negatively impacting other areas and at the end of the process, he was super pleased with how good the results on the graph were.

IMHO, there were many variables here at play including the amount of amplification based on your loss, the type of domes (very open or very closed), feedback control on the hearing aids, shape of your ear, etc. This is really where the audiologist’s skill and experience really came into play. It sorta felt like the Phonak software got the Lumity hearing aids to a 60% good fit and the REM testing and fine tuning process took took the Lumity hearing aids up to 95%+ fit. I’m not surprised you didn’t get the best results without a REM test.

Maybe some of the other folks here could add some perspective but I personally think that I’m seeing spectacular results because my Lumity hearing aids were setup properly and the REM test was a big part of this success. Not sure why Phonak allows audiologists to fit these hearing aids if they don’t properly understand how to fit them.

Jordan

I’d agree with you that dome/mold and REM are irrelevant for the concerns you have for Lumity. Curious if you’ve reconsidered Costco’s recently released Jabra Enhance Pro 10 since it seems very similar to the Omnia? It seems to be available in disposable battery variants (based on pictures on Costco’s website)

On another note, did you get your computer issues sorted out?

@danka: I don’t think many Members would benefit from the discussion if you post your setup in the Forum - it’s just too much detail.

I’m flattered that you have asked my opinion, however:

1. I’m not an audiologist, qualified to do such a thing, and
2. There are Members like @Um_bongo ,@Neville, @Louie ,and @tenkan who are

The link does work in HT @jim_lewis. I didn’t know you could do that!

Lumity to me implies light. Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate to name them Audity?

Just sayin’.

There was one additional thing that occurred to me after I posted my last comment. It’s something I have been wondering about for a while and I think it’s also the reason why the Lumity hearing aids are working so well for me…and why they haven’t worked for a few others.

IMHO, there is a growing trend in the hearing aid industry (and amongst audiologists) to push open fit hearing aids. They all market it as a “more natural” sounding hearing aid and they stress that open fit gets rid of nasty occlusion. The more I think about it, the more I believe that open fit was really created to speed up the fitting process and make it far cheaper and easier for audiologists to dispense hearing aids. Don’t get me wrong…open fit is convenient for both the dispenser and the user but I can’t help but wonder if there is a downside to the patient by pushing open fit on people who have moderate to severe hearing loss and should probably be looking at a closed fit solution. What I have noticed is that open fit is advertised to work for a hearing profile like mine (i.e. moderate to severe) but I can’t help but wonder is if the noise reduction and feedback suppression that the hearing uses to control feedback somehow dummies down the sound environment to make everything work. In other words, does open fit come at a cost of blocking out some of the sound environment? Does open fit and less occlusion reduce the effectiveness of the hearing aids in noise and with other sound scenarios? I’m not sure.

It kinda makes we wonder if some of the audiologists are using open fittings for hearing aid trials because it’s fast and easy but the patient ends up with poor results because open fit has too many trade off’s for their type of hearing loss. It works…but it doesn’t work well. They then skip the REM (to save time and cost) and the whole trial ends up a mess.

Just kinda thinking out loud here. Frustrating to hear when people have poor trial experiences. Makes me wonder if some of the Lumity trials listed in the comments above would have gone better with closed fittings and a proper REM.

Jordan

Absolutely

…too short to post

@JordanK said:

It kinda makes we wonder if some of the audiologists are using open fittings for hearing aid trials because it’s fast and easy but the patient ends up with poor results because open fit has too many trade off’s for their type of hearing loss. It works…but it doesn’t work well. They then skip the REM (to save time and cost) and the whole trial ends up a mess.

@JordanK: This may very well be, but my audi uses REM and seems to be well-versed in fitting genuine Oticon®️brand More1 devices. I would say that given my dismal unaided LHS WRS my aided word recognition is pretty good with the More1s.

The Oticon Speech in Noise program is very effective, in my situation, but - and I make this very clear to my audiologist - I’m more concerned with hearing the sounds happening all around me, made by my geriatric, sadly “end of life” pets. Being able to hear these sounds (audibility) is more important to me than speech comprehension.

Furthermore, as a former FOO, my psyche has been trained to require access to the 360° soundscape to increase my sense of security and reduce anxiety. I’m afraid that training cannot be undone.

Beam-forming, noise attenuating, automatic switching approaches are not for me, even though others may find just the opposite. So, in my case, open fitting is not a lazy audi’s cop-out : it’s what I want and insist upon in my HA adjustment.

@MDB said:

Curious if you’ve reconsidered Costco’s recently released Jabra Enhance Pro 10 since it seems very similar to the Omnia? It seems to be available in disposable battery variants (based on pictures on Costco’s website)

On another note, did you get your computer issues sorted out?

I made arrangements with my audi to trial both the Lumity and the Omnia before the Jabra Enhance Pro 10 was available at Costco. She’s essentially allowed me to trial the Lumitys for 6 weeks and have both Lumitys and Omnias simultaneously for up to two weeks to compare the two head-to-head. So, I didn’t want to leave her in the lurch and be off to Costco to buy the Jabras. Costco couldn’t have offered me the Lumitys to trial and even if they could, I doubt they’d give me such an extensive trial with both Lumity and Omnia available to compare at the same time.

On the computer imbroglio, it turned out to be (probably) a bad Dell BIOS update that Microsoft was offering in the Windows Insider Windows 11 Release Preview channel but not (yet) in the standard release channel. So, the easiest thing to do was to remove a 2 Tb system upgrade SSD that had Windows 11 Release Preview running on it and reinsert the original 512 Gb OEM system SSD that had the standard public release of Windows 11 on it, then restore a previous BIOS. I have a deadline to produce two sets of Minutes for our neighborhood community association and I didn’t want to risk making my computer inoperable again by further experimentation with the 2 Tb SSD until I’d met the Minutes deadline. Potentially, blocking BIOS updates will allow me to use the 2 Tb SSD again. Hopefully, Dell will release an improved BIOS update - I suffered the same problem when I subsequently tried the latest BIOS update direct from Dell on the 512 Gb drive running standard Win11 and again rescued myself by being able to revert to a previous BIOS with some trickery.

I have a question for those who have experienced REM fitting of aids. Is it only used for the initial fitting or after adjustments too? I had Costco tell me they only use it for initial fitting.

My understanding is that REM should be repeated with anything that changes the acoustics (changing to a different kind of dome, custom mold, etc.) However, it also my experience that Costco only does it on their initial fitting (and sometimes when asked) I don’t think there’s any need to repeat if you just ask for a little more gain or change some setting (like noise reduction)

We do it whenever acoustic coupling to the ear changes (e.g. Open dome to closed dome), annually or semi annually to check hearing aid function (or more if necessary) although simulated REM can be done in the test box to check function if there aren’t serious adjustments and if you have a previous measure to compare against, and any time we need it to sus out a problem. We also run simulated REM in the test box post repair.

With pediatrics, we take new RECDs much more frequently in the first few years (every three months) as the ear is growing and every time the ear mold changes or the middle ear status changes.