08/26/2025
Not being able to hear properly is a thing- a really big thing when it is you or someone you know. My friends and family know what it is like when I don't have my hearing aids. Frustration all around as I am a pain in the ass to communicate with unless it is one on one and I am reading lips. Over the past 10 years now the quality of hearing aids by all companies has improved dramatically to where having them is a joy, versus another source of frustration and imposition. I am now finding myself wearing them 100% of my waking hours, except when paddling, and often go to bed before I remember that I am wearing them. This is a sign that the quality of them and the natural sound and feeling of wearing them has improved to the point of my brain accepting them as normal and enjoyable. I am very excited that ReSound came up with the Vivia, which I am wearing today for the first time. While I can't review them for you yet, in full, I can tell you that they solved a basic challenge in how the connectivity to the phone and the sound filters worked in the last generation. I can hear people on the phone like they were in front of me at any volume I want, and they can hear me without me pulling my phone out of my pocket, like I am in front of them. Awesome. Most hearing aids are terrible in one way- if you go outside, they create wind noise that sucks. Anyone who is in the media business knows how wind on a microphone makes the sound unusable. Resound has a "MARIE only" setting that you can get your audiologist to create for you (No idea why resound doesn't make it a standard setting, or why 100% of the hearing aids don't come with a microphone that is inside your ear, versus on the outside of your ear where the wind hits). I use that setting in the wind and the wind noise doesn't exist any more than a normal person's ear. Without it, you can't wear aids riding bikes, on a boat, windows down in a car, etc.. without it being terrible. While the technology of the actual devices of hearing aids are rapidly improving, the programming departments of hearing aid companies (Oticon, Starkey, Resound, all of them I have tried so far) are not doing as good of a job as the actual devices. What that means is that the actual device is capable of a ton of stuff, but the programmers don't actually understand what the experience is that the user has with certain things they do, such as, and in a big way, Noise filters. Noise filters are amazing things, until they are programmed incorrectly. then they make ou dizzy, are a constant reminder that you are wearing hearing aids, and greatly reduce whatever situation you are in by pulling back volume randomly, then ramping it back up and back down again. Where they can be good is drowning out a single background noise, such as a fan that is humming, etc.. For me, however, I am not the person who doesn't want to hear the surrounding sounds, the "ambient noise". I want to hear EXACTLY what is going on around me, and exactly in the volume that I would hear it if I had normal hearing. Most old people get used to their new lower hearing levels and then complain about hearing normally again, so hearing aid companies create a situation around that, and most of the time the recommended amplfication levels are literally only 80% of normal- or 20% hearing loss with hearing aids. Crazy. It is unfortunate that the average user of hearing aids is an elderly person, and they are typically neither tech savvy or open to any change in their lives, so their feedback is fine for this demographic, which won't be around in 10 years or so, as the more tech savvy next generation comes into their declining hearing years. I am lucky (or not) to have had severe hearing loss since I was 2 due to Scarlet Fever (or it is hereditary and that is just what my parents told me??). Therefore I have learned how to deal with it, and I can over come it for the most part with hearing aids, so I get the best of both worlds, a quiet world if I want it, and a full volume world when I want it. I want full volume 99% of the time. I truly feel bad for people who don't wear hearing aids, like my new ones, because they are really amazing tools for doing business, for family life, for traveling, etc.. Bionic ears with so many options of how to use them. Listen to music and shut out the outside world, or keep the outside world at full volume and it is like a concert in your head, and you still hear everyone around you. Same with the phone calls. So much more as well. I am a product designer by nature (and profession) and really understand how these things works and am able to stretch their capabilities and tweak them with the help of Lisa Davidson who is my audiologist (or 20 years or so). Lisa works with all brands and all levels, and she spends a bit of extra effort with me to make these do what they are not advertised to do (such as the microphone inside the ear only, cutting off the outside ones to eliminate wind noise). I can call her and have her reprogram them remotely if I need anything like that done, which is pretty amazing. however, or the most part- I walk out of her office, like today, and I am in hog heaven with the ability to hear at full volume (or, FYI- to crank them up and amplify the sounds around me by 30% more than a normal person hears!). Cool beans- I'll give you the full report after I test out the "AI" system in these, called Deep Neural Network (DNN), of which I am a bit skeptical of the programming, but I am sure the actual device's capabilities is amazing. We'll see how it pans out soon! Meanwhile- NO question that I have upgraded from the Nexia- the phone experience alone is a massive upgrade on how they used (didn't use!) the sound filters during streaming.
