I have acquired a pair of Phonak Naida hearing aids yesterday and they are totally different to what I have been used to for the past 11 years which were the Widex Senso hearing aids. The sounds seem to be quite muted, and not as amplified, for example when I'm driving in my car listening to music, I can't hear myself speak or hear the engine noise! All I can hear are the instruments playing but not the lyrics! If I turn my music up to max, it still sounds the same as if it were on the medium volume!
I get the feeling that these hearing aids have been automatically programmed to remove the background noise and limits the amplification at which I can hear. I can hardly hear myself whistle, I can't hear myself coughing it is all very surreal! But I can hear footsteps, the rustle of paper and birds tweeting outside. When someone speaks to me, their voice seems very electronic like and it sounds as if the hearing aids are trying to suppress this sound and mould it into something that I can easily 'understand'. My audiologist said to give these hearing aids about 3 months to bed-in because I am too used my previous ones.
I just find this all quite uncomfortable, because I find my hearing to be at least 50% worse than before. Also, I can't even use the phone anymore because the hearing aids seems to think it's fit to tone down the sound of the person speaking to me. I get the feeling that these Naida's have been convoluted with some pretty useless technology especially as it seems to enjoy muting out certain sounds. I want to be able to hear everything that I could before, I don't want these Naida's to drown out sounds that it deems necessary.
I'm not finding the experience really enjoyable right now and I still have my old widex in a box upstairs which are tempting me to use again! I'm willing to give these Naida's an extended trial because sooner or later, my older Widex aids will bite the dust and I'll be left in a really tight pickle! This is the perfect time for me to be using these aids as I am currently on a 3 month Summer holiday before I do my Masters degree at the University of Exeter!
Is what I have described an normal experience, and if not, what can you suggest for me to tell the audiologist before I go back to see her on the 8th July? For the record, I'm a 21 year old guy who is suffering a profound level of deafness who has only ever used one pair of digital hearing aids in his life time so maybe that has skewed my experience of the Naidas'. With my previous hearing aids, I have maintained an acceptable level of hearing in order to survive in most aspects of socialising and working in a hearing world. However, with these current hearing aids I'm struggling to even hold a basic conversation with my friends and family!