Phonak CROC

LoveBlue said:
The ComPilot doesn't use batteries - at least not the kind you can replace. You just charge it each night. Of course, that can be a problem when it dies as you'll probably have to fork out another $$$ to get a new one...but then, hopefully by then there'll be a even better solution.

Maybe you meant the BT drains the batteries faster??
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What I mean is that every Bluetooth item I have read of for anything (not just hearing aid/s) takes a battery that needs to be charged and/or replaced.
 
Jane B. said:
What I mean is that every Bluetooth item I have read of for anything (not just hearing aid/s) takes a battery that needs to be charged and/or replaced.
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Yes, that is because it is using a physical part of the motherboard which can be shut off. The streaming itself does take more battery as well, I imagine.

It's like paying your gas bill, you still have to pay for the service.
 
Jane B. said:
What I mean is that every Bluetooth item I have read of for anything (not just hearing aid/s) takes a battery that needs to be charged and/or replaced.
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Well, yeah. How do you think it works without a source of power?
 
Well, it may be that I have to turn this aid in and look for another audi, but I'm hoping to avoid it. I need an audi that is under the insurance so it will pay 80 percent. I'll look for another audi tomorrow.

I'll still have to pay the $150 service charge, unfortunately.
 
lovezebras said:
I would like the zoom feature but since I have one UP and one SP it won't work either cuz they can't communicate with each other.
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I'd also love to take advantage of the more spiffy features but I have Naida III dAzs that are from vocational rehabilitation and are thus the lowest technology possible.
 
VacationGuy234 said:
Well, it may be that I have to turn this aid in and look for another audi, but I'm hoping to avoid it. I need an audi that is under the insurance so it will pay 80 percent. I'll look for another audi tomorrow.

I'll still have to pay the $150 service charge, unfortunately.
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She really also should of told you that getting the Naida S IX when you only will be getting one is a total waste of money as the Naida S V only has 4 channels less compared to the IX but you have feature within the S V that you can use!
 
NaidaUP said:
She really also should of told you that getting the Naida S IX when you only will be getting one is a total waste of money as the Naida S V only has 4 channels less compared to the IX but you have feature within the S V that you can use!
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She did, but I want every bit of technology possible. To be fair, she's not a bad audi, Phonak screwed up the name of the receiver, but she needs to have all the equipment if she is going to sell this type of aid.

Trust me, I'd take just one more channel if I could get it and see some music improvement.
 
VacationGuy234 said:
She did, but I want every bit of technology possible. To be fair, she's not a bad audi, Phonak screwed up the name of the receiver, but she needs to have all the equipment if she is going to sell this type of aid.

Trust me, I'd take just one more channel if I could get it and see some music improvement.
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Well I can see you point but you wont see any different with 4 extra channels and I wouldnt want to pay around $600 more just to get 4 extra channels.

The more channels you have, the more separate keys on the keyboard you can separately control the intensity of the sound over. It's quite believable that people would not hear the difference with more than six in a flat profound loss, however if your loss is steeper or has more variation, or you need to hear better in competing mechanical noise situations, more channels may be beneficial.

IMHO I have a sneaking suspicion that more than two channels per octave is overkill, so if you consider that a receiver is operating from 250/500 to nominally 8 kHz (5-6 octaves), that gives you a maximum of 10-12 channels at the optimum level. Again, these would only be fully required if the loss changed a significant amount across two adjacent channels.

More channels are only really needed if you have a bigger different between two frequencies or are regualy needing to hear well in noise
 
NaidaUP said:
This is what Phonak state in their email to me regarding programming FM receivers. (Note the bit in bold, which is why I said your Audi is wrong)

FM systems ideally should be matched to electrical input of the direct audio input connection to microprocessor so that the final acoustic output to the ear is comparative to the output obtained from the hearing instrument microphone to acoustic output. There should not be a difference and under basic tests should not increase gain pushing audio into more compression. A FM program including the users degree of hearing loss should make no difference to FM as its the same microprocessor controlling everything.

In plain english, the FM receivers need to be programmed to match the gain in your HAs.
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Copy the bit in bold and print it out and show your new/old audi about programming the FM.

This information has come from Phonak.
 
“Channels and Bands
There is a lot of confusion in the hearing aid industry relating to channels and bands. Simply put, channels affect how the hearing aid operates; bands affect how the hearing aid is adjusted. In general, having more channels is better than having more bands, and the more channels the better – to a point! Research has shown that more than eight channels offers marginal improvement. More important than the actual number of channels or bands is what the hearing aid is doing with them. In other words, don’t place too much emphasis on these numbers. The more noise you regularly experience, the more you will benefit from a greater number of channels and bands.
Channels are sections or slices of the frequency spectrum that are processed more or less independently by the hearing aid. For example, if a hearing aid has eight channels, it will divide up the sound into eight separate sections and each section can be processed independently from the other seven. This is useful for automatically adjusting to a variety of sound environments. Usually the audiologist or hearing specialist can make some changes to the channels for the management of loud sounds.
Bands are used to adjust the hearing aid’s amplification characteristics and for fine- tuning the hearing aid to the wearer's loss and preferences. Hearing aids can have a band for each channel or multiple bands per channel. Like channels, the audiologist or hearing specialist can adjust these bands to the wearer's preference.”
 
Here is what Phonak wrote back to my audi, looks like I need the smartlink+ and there is no programming, if this is true:

He is miss-interpreting what he is getting third hand… The proper amount of gain for a hearing loss is programmed into the hearing aids; the amount of gain in the FM receiver is NOT set the same amount of gain as the hearing aid, that would really blast him out of the water (not to mention really put everything into compression-as his latest email stated). He is confusing the FM program in the hearing aid to programming of the FM units. They are not the same thing.

If the audiologist has programmed his hearing aid appropriately, and I am sure she has or he would not be doing as well as he reported, then there is typically no adjustment to the actual FM receiver that needs to be done. The autoConnect and Dynamic Speech Extractor are part of the Dynamic FM System and cannot be programmed in or out of the Dynamic FM receiver. If He is using a Dynamic FM receiver AND a Dynamic FM transmitter together, then he is automatically getting all the benefits of the Dynamic FM features. There is no programming that needs to be done to turn these features on or off.

No, He is not getting Dynamic FM benefits with the SmartLink SX. He needs the SmartLink+ (or any other Dynamic FM transmitter) to get those benefits. Right now, he has just the traditional FM benefits, which are good but not as great as Dynamic FM. The biggest difference is the Dynamic FM system measures the background noise around the ‘speaker’ and if the noise gets too loud (above 57dB) it will automatically raise the FM loudness (gain) to help maintain the +10-12dB S/N.

You do not need the FM Successware at this point. I don’t think he needs the gain of his FM receiver increased at this time from what I have heard so far. (And if he did, you could send it to me and I could do it for you!)
 
VacationGuy234 said:
Here is what Phonak wrote back to my audi, looks like I need the smartlink+ and there is no programming, if this is true:

He is miss-interpreting what he is getting third hand… The proper amount of gain for a hearing loss is programmed into the hearing aids; the amount of gain in the FM receiver is NOT set the same amount of gain as the hearing aid, that would really blast him out of the water (not to mention really put everything into compression-as his latest email stated). He is confusing the FM program in the hearing aid to programming of the FM units. They are not the same thing.

If the audiologist has programmed his hearing aid appropriately, and I am sure she has or he would not be doing as well as he reported, then there is typically no adjustment to the actual FM receiver that needs to be done. The autoConnect and Dynamic Speech Extractor are part of the Dynamic FM System and cannot be programmed in or out of the Dynamic FM receiver. If He is using a Dynamic FM receiver AND a Dynamic FM transmitter together, then he is automatically getting all the benefits of the Dynamic FM features. There is no programming that needs to be done to turn these features on or off.

No, He is not getting Dynamic FM benefits with the SmartLink SX. He needs the SmartLink+ (or any other Dynamic FM transmitter) to get those benefits. Right now, he has just the traditional FM benefits, which are good but not as great as Dynamic FM. The biggest difference is the Dynamic FM system measures the background noise around the ‘speaker’ and if the noise gets too loud (above 57dB) it will automatically raise the FM loudness (gain) to help maintain the +10-12dB S/N.

You do not need the FM Successware at this point. I don’t think he needs the gain of his FM receiver increased at this time from what I have heard so far. (And if he did, you could send it to me and I could do it for you!)
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Very different view there.

I personally disagree with it could blast your ears out as if the FM receivers gain is set too much, too much compression would kick in and you wouldn't hear much and the dynmatic effect won't take effect. So setting the gain to the same as your Naida means you wouldn't blast your ear out!

I like the end bit tho, saying you don't need the FM successware software at this time (but maybe in the future, lol.

As I'm not in the US, the email has come from a different Phonak but as they are the same company, they should be thinking the same thing.

What I can't work out is why I've noticed a HUGE improvement in sound since my FM receivers have been programmed. Before they were programmed, I hated the sound, if they say they don't need to be programmed.
 
NaidaUP said:
Very different view there.

I personally disagree with it could blast your ears out as if the FM receivers gain is set too much, too much compression would kick in and you wouldn't hear much and the dynmatic effect won't take effect. So setting the gain to the same as your Naida means you wouldn't blast your ear out!

I like the end bit tho, saying you don't need the FM successware software at this time (but maybe in the future, lol.

As I'm not in the US, the email has come from a different Phonak but as they are the same company, they should be thinking the same thing.

What I can't work out is why I've noticed a HUGE improvement in sound since my FM receivers have been programmed. Before they were programmed, I hated the sound, if they say they don't need to be programmed.
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Can you confirm they were programmed?
 
This link and quote about another type of FM system that my friend has as she is also very deaf.

"A 'twiddling stick' adjustment tool and volume control locking clamp screwdriver is supplied with each fmGenie receiver"

This is a body worn device but the above quote is what my friend can do without the software. The software for the Phonak FM system is basically doing what the quote is stating. She also has the FM program on your Naida as well.

fmGenie receiver - connevans.co.uk
 
VacationGuy234 said:
Can you confirm they were programmed?
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How do you mean? Can I prove to you? No! But I was the one who showed the software to my Audi with a PDF printout and also the email from phonak. I then left the FM receivers with my Audi for it to do. My Audi stated that the programming would be done and the different in sound proves that my Audi has done this.
 
When you get the Smartlink plus and the sound is good, then there is no need to get them programmed but with me, I was hearing nothing with my receivers before hand which meant it was pointless. Since its been done tho, it's great!

I have a friend who is getting the receivers programmed as my friend picks up way too much noise with the receivers. Once my friend gets the receivers programmed I can let you know if its made any different to my friend.
 
What the phonak guy appears to be saying is that there is no programming needed to turn it on or off. He is saying he doesn't think they NEED to be programmed.

This is what burns me: How is a deaf guy supposed to know how much he is not hearing, unless it is blatant, one would never know.

Like, I'm really going to take someone's word for it?
 
I don't understand them making software for it when they said to you that they don't need to be programmed. :S
 
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