Started Trial of Philips 9030 yesterday at Costco

Wow! A lot of good information on the Philips 9030/9040s out here. I acquired a 9040 about two weeks ago, coming from a Phonak Kirkland-9. I’m fairly satisfied. My voice comprehension seems much better.

The first restaurant my wife and I visited was very loud. The noise level in the aids was almost overwhelming. I moved to the voice in sound setting and things settled down nicely, and I could hear table conversation quite well. I’ve subsequently determined that the overall sound setting ofr my HAs might be a tad high–easy fix. I often drop the sound down a notch early in the morning; I may have it adjusted in my follow-up visit.

I acquired the TV connector right away, because I previously had found the Phonak TV connector essential. It took me awhile to get it all working properly, but now it seems to be working well. I’m surprised by the range. Last night I was listening to the US women’s soccer match and walked away from the TV area. I eventually went upstairs and still could hear the match. The sound seems a tad tinny; perhaps that’s adjustable. I’ll be visiting the hearing care professional in a few days. But even without the TV connector, I’m finding that I can hear the TV better.

My phone experience has been good; I hear callers well, but keep forgetting that Philips doesn’t use the HA mics (at least in the Android environment). I’ve answered an occasional call with my watch, only to discover that the phone wasn’t with me. It was obviously confusing to the caller, until I could retrieve the phone. I also have to remind myself to take the phone out of my pocket when a call comes and I’m outside.

Bluetooth streaming of music from my phone device (Android) seems tinny. When I close my ear canals down with my fingers, it then sounds reasonably well. I’m thinking that the HAs might not be set for Bluetooth with an open dome, or perhaps I need to play around with closed domes of some sort.

I have a question for the forum related to REM. The HCP seemed to do REM well, taking the time to get good data, etc. However, adjustments seemed clunky, attempting to improve with manual adjustments in various frequencies. When my K9s were set up, I thought the HCP clicked an auto-adjust feature and the change was dramatic (in my recollection). This time, any change was modest at best. Is there an auto-adjust feature with the Costco program and the Philips 9040s? Any help on this would be great, since I’ll be going back for a follow-up visit soon.

Oh, I have the rechargable version and getting good battery life, even with a fair amount of streaming. I’ve never had rechargable HAs before and had tended to shy away from them. I’m quite happy so far. The charge device seems well-designed and its neat how the HAs shut down when placed in the charger, then go to amber light, and of course green when charged, and then automatically come on when removed from the charger.

All for now, but I’ll try to remember to provide an update following any adjustments.

@ThomF said:

I have a question for the forum related to REM. The HCP seemed to do REM well, taking the time to get good data, etc. However, adjustments seemed clunky, attempting to improve with manual adjustments in various frequencies. When my K9s were set up, I thought the HCP clicked an auto-adjust feature and the change was dramatic (in my recollection). This time, any change was modest at best. Is there an auto-adjust feature with the Costco program and the Philips 9040s? Any help on this would be great, since I’ll be going back for a follow-up visit soon.

If the REM adjustment make things sound much better for you, that simply means that your actual gain (with the fittings and your ear canal shape taken into consideration already) is significantly not up to par with the target gain. If you have good fittings and normal ear canal shape, usually it means that your hearing aids’ amplification underperforms to the target by quite a lot, and so the REM gain adjustment to be increased by quite a lot to compensate for this underperformance.

If after a REM adjustment, the change doesn’t seem very dramatic/significant enough, it actually means that your hearing aids already are performing well right off the bat up front, close enough to the target that not much adjustment increase is really necessary.

Whether the REM adjustment had to be done manually at each frequency channel, like with the Philips; or whether it could be done automatically all at once very quickly, like with the KS9, is irrelevant in terms of which one performs better/closer to the target gain curve. Obviously the Philips performed better/closer to the target gain curve here in your case, and that’s why you didn’t notice a significant improvement after REM compared to the KS9. The significant improvement that you noticed after REM on the KS9 simply means that the KS9 actually underperforms well below the target gain curve levels, which means the Philips is performing better than the KS9 to target right off the gate already.

Let’s say if the REM methods were the reversed, meaning that the Philips REM can be automated like the KS9 REM were, and the KS9 REM adjustment had to be manually done like the Philips REM is currently set up, you would still notice a more significant improvement on the KS9 after the REM adjustment anyway, except that you won’t notice it right away until all the manual adjustments were done one by one on it. And as for the Philips in this situation, a quick/automated REM adjustment will still result in you stillbnot noticing much improvement at all because it already performs close to target, so the REM adjustment required for it is already minimal either way.

@Volusiano said:

Whether the REM adjustment had to be done manually at each frequency channel, like with the Philips; or whether it could be done automatically all at once very quickly, like with the KS9, is irrelevant in terms of which one performs better/closer to the target gain curve.

Volusiano,
Thanks, this analysis is very helpful (and timely). I appreciate your help.

The domes can also make a huge difference. The are open domes, closed domes, bass domes (open but have ridged channels for the sound. Of course, different sizes can affect the feel/sound etc.

The Jabras sold by Costco work hands-free on my Samsung S20 5G. Sometimes people couldn’t hear me, but hands-free usually worked fine. Because of other issues with the app and my phone, I switched to Apple. I strongly recommend making sure your phone is on your aids’ compatibility list. My app problems could have stemmed from that fact that my phone wasn’t on ReSound’s list.

Also, neither the Philips nor the Jabra claims hands-free capability with Android in their documentation, but it worked with the Jabras, probably because of a software update. The same may be true of the 9040s.

Would be interested to hear your ongoing experiences with musical instruments. Play ukulele and guitar myself.

So just running the std program I noticed that many strings sounded tinny and metallic. Almost like I was hearing the string rattling more against unfretted frets. This was worse with high freq notes of course. I tried the hifi music program, which has ALL of the noise reduction turned off and seems to have some different gains than the std program. It was much worse to my ears but I did start with this program and set up two versions. One with 2-8khz turned down by 4 dB and one with 4-8 khz down 4 dB. I really can’t tell the difference and I’m sure this might not be optimal. I also go into the app and turn the volume down by -1 or -2. Each one of those is set to -2.5 dB. The offending tinny nature of the sound is gone while preserving the tone. I did try the noise reduction program and it really muted what I hear too much. I have heard that turning off feedback might help too and might investigate that in the future. I usually use the 4-8 khz program now and probably don’t need the 2-8 khz program anymore. Oh in order to do this I had to DIY and if you don’t have the hardware you can suggest the 4-8 khz -4 dB hifi music program mod to your fitter for an initial try at this.

@fbacher1 said:

I hear better most of time but only understand better some of the time.

You have moderate (bordering severe) loss in your high frequencies starting from 2 KHz and up. Normally HAs should be able to compensate for this level of loss OK. But if you’re still struggling to understand speech even though you can hear better, maybe you can try the frequency lowering feature in the Philips aids. Use the 1.5-2.4 KHz destination because that’s where your audible range has not quite bordered the severe loss level yet. Below is a screenshot example. I would try out with a lower intensity level (like at 2 or 4 dB at the most), and keep the High Frequencies option selected to be able to hear both the original high sounds and the newly created lowered sounds from those highs. If it doesn’t help with better speech understanding, you can always turn it off again.

@fbacher1 said:

I wonder how the two programs vary? All I can say is that it sounded bright, brash, distorted at times and metallic to my ears playing acoustic or electric guitar.

I can’t tell you how the default and the music programs vary for the Philips exactly, in the music program for most aids, they minimize compression, turn off noise reduction, change to omni directional (pick up sounds all around instead of beam forming the sounds from the front only), and any other signal processing like frequency lowering, sudden sound handling, maybe even minimizing feedback control if possible.

If assuming that the Philips Music program is a copy of the Oticon MyMusic program, then I can show you some data on what Oticon did on their new MyMusic program compared to their legacy Music program for comparison. The assumption here is that maybe the 9030 Music program reflects what Oticon did to MyMusic in the same way.

The idea for MyMusic is that when you listen to music through speakers in a room, there’s coloration added by the acoustic of the room, and the music producer mix their music to how it would FINALLY sound in their acoustic studio room as played from the studio speakers. But when you stream this directly to your HAs or headphones, the coloration to the music added by the room is missing. And generally the added coloration is in the low end and high end. Below is a screenshot of how the legacy Music gain and the MyMusic gain curves differ, showing how MyMusic has the added gain in the low and high ends.

If the Philips Music program is a copycat of the Oticon MyMusic, then it’s possible that the bright, brash, distorted and metallic sounds you hear is due to the extra gain they added to the high end between 5 KHz and up compared to the original legacy Music program.

I’m assuming the shifting would work best with the general program and probably not with music since it might affect pitch? Thanks for the advice. I wonder if it will help with my own voice that at times seems to break up or almost sound doubled to me. Sort of a mild occlusal effect and not as bad as ear buds. I do have the open domes and for some reason my fitter gave me the closed dual vent ones last times and my own voice issues got much worse.

I scored pretty high on voice recognition at least at the volume levels CostCo tested but I know I have issues with softer voices especially female and young kids are impossible to understand for that and many other reasons, lol.

Yes I’m not so much interested in streaming music with the hifi program (I use an equalizer that works great) but more my guitar and singing. It did seem to the best starting point for that and yes I can see they really boosted the levels for the 80 dB sound levels at the lower end and middle a lot and not that much, 2-4 dB at the high freq. Mid level sounds of 65 dB were boosted slightly less at the bottom end and more or about the same at the high frequency levels. And 50 dB was mostly boosted a bit at the high frequencies. Unlike the Oticon MyMusic there are zero changes from the Philips General program up to 1 Khz in the HiFi Music program for any of the 3 sound levels.

Yes I’m guessing that it’s those high frequency sounds that I have so much trouble with either understanding speech, my own voice or music. Really bad hearing runs in my family and my dad’s family were all pretty much deaf at a much younger age than me. I’m not that bad but life is muffled a lot without my HA and just never realized how much. Wish CostCo handled Widex because from what I’ve heard they are much better for live music for most people.

@fbacher1 said:

I’m assuming the shifting would work best with the general program and probably not with music since it might affect pitch? Thanks for the advice. I wonder if it will help with my own voice that at times seems to break up or almost sound doubled to me. Sort of a mild occlusal effect and not as bad as ear buds. I do have the open domes and for some reason my fitter gave me the closed dual vent ones last times and my own voice issues got much worse…

Wish CostCo handled Widex because from what I’ve heard they are much better for live music for most people.

If you’re going to try the frequency lowering feature, I would ask the Costco HCP to create a new program that’s a copy of the General Program and add frequency lowering on it. Or maybe create a new program from the built-in Speech in Noise, then add the frequency lowering to that Speech in Noise program only. That way you can do an A to B comparison by switching back and forth between the General and the Speech in Noise program to see if frequency lowering is helpful for better speech clarity/understanding or not. If you decide you want it long term after trying it out, you can always have the Costco HCP add it into your General program later as well.

I wouldn’t want to use the Frequency Lowering feature in the HiFi Music program or your personal custom music program just to maintain the fidelity/integrity of the music. But it’s not because it’s going affect the pitch in music that much, as I’ve discovered when I listen to music with that feature that the pitch of the music sound normal to me. You can try to listen to music in the program where you have Frequency Lowering enabled to see if you can tell any effect on the pitch at all for yourself. The thing is that it’s really designed primarily to help with speech, so why use it in a music program where there won’t be any focus on speech? For people with severe to profound high frequency loss, it may be useful for music as well because the amplification compensation for their high frequency loss may not be adequate at all, so at least this will restore what they can’t hear anymore (even with amplification compensation) into their more audible hearing region.

I think the most important feature to look for in a hearing aid specifically for live music is the ability of the microphones to accept the highest possible input level. Older aids used to have only 96 to 105 dB SPL (sound pressure level) for their input dynamic range. Modern aids now mostly have 113 to 115 dB SPL to handle louder level of live music with less clipping/distortion, and not forced to resort to compression earlier than necessary. Just check to see if the Philips aids have 113 dB SPL input dynamic range or not. The Oticon aids supports up to 113 dB SPL, so most likely the Philips aids do, too, but it doesn’t hurt to ask the Costco HCP for that data.

Widex is well know for good music handling, partly due to their high input dynamic range, and also I’ve heard that their sampling rate of 32 KHz is a little higher than other HAs’ sampling rate, although still lower than the audio industry standard of 44 KHz for up to 20 KHz sound reproduction. I think this may make more of a difference for folks who only have mild to moderate high frequency loss. For folks with severe to profound loss like myself, I doubt if Widex’s 32 KHz sampling rate would make a difference to me. Your high frequency loss is at the high end of the moderate loss, bordering the low end of the severe loss (near around 70 dB loss), so the 32 KHz sampling rate may or may not make that much of a difference for you. You just don’t know unless you try it.

As for a better own voice experience, I think the Signia aids has their unique “Own Voice” feature to help minimize the occlusion feel when hearing your own voice talking. I’m not aware of other brands with an “Own Voice” feature like Signia’s.

I did change do to the overall tinny nature of all sound with the BiCores and could not get Costco to really fix that. I have their 8 mm open bass domes.

The sound level even with the HA off is just way too much for my ears at loud concerts and definitely need some protection due to my Hyperacusis. Live concerts with all the cell phones up and blocking views is really not something I miss anymore and ticket prices are really way too expensive too. But I do go to live jams but so far they are mostly acoustic and I just will turn my HA down a step or two if needed.

While I am more used to my OV, there are some times or maybe combination of volume level and frequency that I find it annoying and distorted a bit. And I am currently getting used to the 90% level up from 80%. It’s mostly my own voice that keeps me from going to 100% since 90% has these issues. 80% wasn’t as bad with my OV.

@Volusiano This is extremely helpful and detailed and thank you for enriching my life so that the joy of music can be be more fulfilling. Surprised that there aren’t lots of thumbs up on your post, perhaps folks are busy implementing there own tweaks.