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Time to call it a day?

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@Judi_L said:

Given my experience to date, I can fully sympathise with people who just put their hearing aids into the back of a drawer and forget about them.

You have some really great hearing aids when set up right. Those aids should help you hear without the need of an external microphone, within reason. Sorry if I missed this but is this your first set of hearing aids?

If you can take the time to educate yourself on your hearing loss and those hearing aids you will be able to have a smart conversation with a audiologist/fitter. This will also help you make a decision about if your fitter is doing a good job or not. One way or the other if you get educated you will have a much better chance of getting those aids tuned up right for you.

We need to see your to get deeper into helping you. Lots of knowledgeable forum members here.

I have had a pair of iSphere 90s for a year. I wear acrylic Cshell vented ear molds. They work well for me. Recently, I had the chance to compare with domes, because the wire pulled out of one of my molds and my audiologist set me up with an emergency double dome on my left ear while a new mold was made.

My experience with that double dome SP was exactly as you describe it.. tinny, uncomfortable, subject to feedback. I couldn’t wait to get my UP mold back. It served it’s purpose but I would hate to have to go back to domes! MTCW

These are my second pair of Phonak hearing aids. I keep the others as a spare pair but they don’t have the chip. As far as I know I have hearing loss across the frequencies, measured as moderate hearing loss and tests have shown that I have severe loss in speech in noise. I have lost count of the times that I have explained the problems I have with the Phonak 90 aids and I am not now at all sure whether the audiologist(s) really know what they are doing as there are no improvements. I know that Phonak 90s are great hearing aids, but if there is no improvement over months, then it is hard to believe this and that possibly they may not be right for me. I will ask the audiologist to let me have my .

It’s doubtful that your audis are taking you for a ride. In any case there’s no way for any of us to know.

What kind of loss do you have: conductive or nerve? If you have conductive loss, look into aids. I have Osia aids and they’re amazing in terms of volume and especially for speech. I also had very low speech in noise scores on my tests before the Osia. Now my score is very near normal, and for all other functions as well. Otherwise, this sounds like a programming issue that could be easily solved. Or, a set of custom molds. Something that should be relatively simple. Maybe you need to find different audis! Best wishes!

I think my loss is ‘moderately severe’ now, but I bought my Jabra EP 10s when it was ‘moderate’. I started with tulip domes, migrated to tulips, then, quickly, to does that fit outside my ear, and finally to small mods, with a vent of 2-3mm that fit close to my ear drums and well inside my ear. Each each change brought a worthwhile improvement.

Your experience might be much different, but …. I think I understand the sunk cost fallacy, but are not poker games. You’ve put so much money into your aids so far; a little more put into molds may be what does the trick for you.

Even so, a new audi might solve your problem without additional investment of lbs, if only to get a 2nd opinion.

I completely understand how discouraging this gets — I went through a long stretch where every appointment felt like another loop around the same track.

What finally helped me was getting much more systematic about it: keeping notes on environments, separating “everyday” programs from aggressive noise modes, and pushing for very small, targeted changes instead of wholesale resets. Restaurants in particular were where speech-focused processing made things sound metallic for me.

I also found that different acoustics (domes vs molds, venting, feedback margins) mattered less on their own than how they interacted with the software settings and which program the aids were actually in.

You’re clearly doing the right things now — taking notes, learning the app, asking about Roger, comparing clinics if needed. The fact that you’re still experimenting and engaging here tells me you’re not done yet, just frustrated in the middle phase most of us hit.

Hang in there — a lot of us only got closer to “this works” after exactly this stage.

(Drafted with help and edited by me for accuracy and details of my own experience and views.)

Many people aren’t told this clearly, but hearing aids alone often don’t work well in noise, distance, or reverberation. If speech in noise is hard, that’s not your fault.
I’m glad you have a remote mic. When used properly, it can provide around 20–25 of help in noise, which is more than features alone. One small but important tip: muting or reducing the hearing aid microphones while using the remote mic can really help keep background noise out.I hope you don’t give up yet. There is a learning curve, and it can take time to get the setup right. Putting the aids in a drawer may feel easier, but staying connected with friends is worth fighting for.

In reply to @jeffrey

What finally moved the needle for me was treating the fitting process much more like tuning a piano.

You make a very specific change, live with it in real environments, listen carefully, then come back and adjust again — tighten one string, strike the key, repeat. Doing that over days rather than minutes was what actually led to progress for me.

In my own case, learning to do controlled adjustments was what made that kind of iteration possible. Being able to test changes immediately in my living room, in restaurants, with music, and then refine them over time ended up being far more effective than occasional in-office tweaks ever were for me personally.

That’s not to say clinicians don’t matter — diagnostics and safety checks are obviously important — but the slow, real-world trial-and-error loop was the breakthrough.

(Drafted with help and edited by me for accuracy and details of my own experience and views.)

I feel your pain. I too struggle with getting my aids fitted correctly. It’s a minefield since analogue was phased out. Nothing matches the clarity of the analogues sadly. I’ve yet to get my fitting sorted and I do have a lovely audiologist. It’s just fitting the time in and tolerating the aids etc to try them out, I just need time out to do this properly which I don’t have. And yes I have many moments when I feel like throwing the towel in. There should be choice between analogues and digital aids all round. Good luck. Ps I don’t know if anyone in London is better than anyone else elsewhere .. it woukd ne nice to know :smiling_face:

That hasn’t been my experience at all — older analog aids left me struggling badly in noise, and modern digital processing is what finally made real-world conversations workable for me.

In reply to @Judi_L

I truly think my Oticon Intent 1s are probably great, what I meant to communicate was my Hearing Care Specialist does not speak English and my Portuguese isn’t good enough to explain whats going on. Since the visit with the English speaking HCS from Lisbon didn’t go well, out of desperation I plan to try Harley Street in London. They have great Trust Pilot reviews, but I’ve never been, so I can’t really vouch for them. There must be someone on this forum who can recommend a good place to go in London….It is always about how good your audiologist is even more than the aids.

I sympathise with the language problems and sorry to hear that the session with the English speaking HCS didn’t go well. I thought you might like to know that I am currently going to Harley Street, and if you would like to email me I can let you know more about it privately and then that might be helpful for you. Anyway let me know.

In reply to @marf

@marf said:

I truly think my Oticon Intent 1s are probably great, what I meant to communicate was my Hearing Care Specialist does not speak English and my Portuguese isn’t good enough to explain whats going on. Since the visit with the English speaking HCS from Lisbon didn’t go well, out of desperation I plan to try Harley Street in London. They have great Trust Pilot reviews, but I’ve never been, so I can’t really vouch for them. There must be someone on this forum who can recommend a good place to go in London….It is always about how good your audiologist is even more than the aids.

That really resonates with me — because communication turned out to be the single most important variable in my own journey.

What finally helped wasn’t just changing equipment, but learning how to articulate what I was actually hearing: in which environments, in which programs, at what input levels, and what specifically felt wrong. That’s much harder than it sounds — especially in a time-limited appointment where you’re being asked to describe subtle perceptions on the spot.

For me, that pressure alone made things worse. Trying to recreate a bad restaurant experience a week later, in a quiet clinic, with someone who can’t hear through my ears anyway, is incredibly difficult. That’s why taking notes — and even using tools like ChatGPT to help reconstruct what I heard or didn’t hear — became so valuable. It let me arrive prepared instead of scrambling to remember vague impressions.

So your focus on finding someone you can communicate with easily makes complete sense. Being understood is often what makes real progress possible.

(Drafted with help and edited by me for accuracy and details of my own experience and views.)

Just to say, I am so sorry. And I’m struggling as well. I have the phonak spheres on trial. About custom moulds…I had them made and trying to eat a lunch at the same time as listen to my friend, one on one in a quiet room, all I could hear was the clatter of my teeth chewing and all the various noises in my mouth. When I spoke, the sounds were so loud it was incredibly stressful and I had to remove the aids. The audiologist has sent the moulds back for an adjustment and gave me temporary domes which were a huge relief though I can stll hardly hear anything because souund is so distorted. I don’t need amplificatio. I need clarity.

@Judi_L said:

metallic/harsh sound

Judi_L,

I can sympathize what you are going through with your metallic/harsh sound because it was my #1 complaint several months ago as a brand new hearing aid user. It sounded like the receivers were defective. The metallic/harsh sound was worse on my own voice then it was with others. Because of this, I entered into and after no less than 37 sessions and a couple of months getting used to wearing hearing aids, I think they sound much better. The biggest improvement was to reduce the gain around the 2 to 2.5 KHz range which also almost completely reduce the need for feedback compensation

Please try streaming some good music or a quality recording of narration and I hope you will be convinced that your hearing aids are capable of producing acceptable sound. Also, in my case, the “comfort in noise” program sounded the best and I keep it on that program 100% of the time.

.

That sounds really frustrating,the “metallic” sound and speech-in-noise struggle wear people down fast. You’re definitely not alone in that. A lot of hearing aid users find restaurants are the hardest, no matter how many dome or program changes they try. Sometimes it’s less about fixing everything and more about reducing listening fatigue.

For certain situations, some people also experiment with simpler setups like bone-conduction headphones paired with a small wireless mic (basically streaming voices directly instead of heavy processing - you can try searching hearlink 3-in-1 on google). Not a replacement for hearing aids, but sometimes easier on the ears in noisy places. Hope you don’t give up, often it’s about finding what works for you, not what’s “supposed” to work.

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