She has me in small closed domes at this point. I have extremely narrow ear canals, so need the smallest I can get.
What is your experience in terms of streaming with the left/right sync issue? And distance of connection for streaming? With the phone in my right front shorts pocket, I lose connection to the left hearing aid, and vice versa.
I suspect the issues are related, the losing of connection / out of sync. I don’t have much of an issue with losing the connection to one of the aids, but I am only a few days into using them.
It’s more of an issue when walking outside, since there are no walls or other objects for the signal to bounce around. When you have a chance, go outside to an open area, put the phone in one of your pockets, and see how the connection is to the hearing aid on the opposite side.
And yeah, I think this is all a BT/LE/ASHA/firmware issue. Likely fixable to at least some degree, but without their acknowledging the issue, and providing some time-frame for a fix, this could be a deal killer for me personally.
Another scenario……
I understand the aids do this.
I take a few steps in a different direction and do not have phone call issues.
I’m not sure I’m following exactly what you mean here. Could you clarify, so I can test it myself?
I also wanted to mention the fact that you need to use your phone’s microphone during phone calls, so just having it in a pocket doesn’t work, even without the left/right sync issue. The KS10’s use the hearing aid’s microphone, so allows one to be completely hands-free. I’m not sure which will provide the better sound on the caller’s end, although I suspect that actually might be better with the Jabra. Has anybody make this type of comparison?
My point is don’t look for problems, solve them.
I owned the Marvels for a couple years, loved them.
One thing about the Phonak marvel and paradise aids, they have to be properly fitted to work right. So many of the complaints we read about here are aids that are not fit properly.
Good luck.
I agree that any hearing aid needs to be properly fitted to get an optimal result. No question. That pertains primarily to the ‘regular’ functioning of the hearing aids, but that is not where I and others are experiencing problems.
My posts are primarily related to the streaming capabilities and limitations, which as far as I can see, are not dependent on the fitter’s skill, but rather on the streaming technologies in use, codecs, hardware, firmware, etc. These have to be remedied by the manufacturer.
My asking him to test something out is to help determine if this problem is inherent to the current hardware, or if perhaps there are some defective units floating around early in this hearing aid’s life cycle.
This is a real-world problem: if I can’t take a walk with my phone in my pocket, and be able to stream a podcast to both ears, and have a stable connection, this is not a hearing aid that will meet my needs. If this or other streaming-related problems are identified by multiple users, then the manufacturer can be alerted to these, and potentially do a firmware update to fix them.
I’m reasonably happy with them in terms of their ‘regular’ functioning, and any shortcomings in this area can likely be improved by further visits with the fitter. But this is separate from their streaming performance, which so far, is not satisfactory.
I agree that we should be looking for solutions, which at a level requires us to confirm the behavior between multiple people so that we know it’s not a fault in our hardware, our location, etc. This is something I do in general as I do a lot of alpha/beta hardware/software testing, and I am willing to do so with new HAs.
I don’t have expectations of my hearing aids providing high quality streaming audio, but I do expect to be able to use them similar to how I did with t-coils and be able to clearly understand the person on the phone.
I already have a work around for the issue, I have a pair of EarFun Free Pros that I wear for calls, they fit fine along with my hearing aids, provide a reasonably good mic and are < $50. This solution may not work for others but it allow me to focus on the main reason I have hearing aids, which is to be able to spend time around my family and friends and hopefully understand enough to not have to ask them to rephrase/repeat what they say too often.
Absolutely the phones microphone, far superior to any of the microphones on any of the hearing aids available today.
I don’t get what the issue is, I mean “Hands Free” calling wasn’t invented by Phonak or any other HA manufacturer, my hands free is easily done through my car stereo or with the phones speaker, the only thing here is of course it’s not “private”
If I need “private” I use my bluetooth streaming accessories, which is extremely rare.
The issue for me is that when I take a call, all other things being equal, I’d like to not have to take the phone out of my pocket and hold it in front of me. I could be at home, taking a walk, etc. My wife has this with her KS9’s, and I would like to have this as well.
In my car, it’s a different thing, and I usually use my car’s bluetooth and sound system, which is fully hands-free. I’m still working on this, but in my case, I always run Android Auto, connecting my phone wirelessly to my car’s display, and so far calls coming in are routed to my hearing aids, rather than the car, by default. This requires the phone to again not be in my pocket, in order to have the microphone accessible. I have to manually make the change through my car’s touchscreen, which is not ideal. I’m trying to figure out a work-around. My wife’s KS9’s do not have this behavior.
As you indicated, I’m not surprised that there would be a price to pay on the other side of the call, because of the microphone quality. So it’s a question of whether this negative outweighs the positive of not having to take my phone out of my pocket. The KS10 also has the ‘double tap’ option to answer the call without needing to do it through the phone, although it isn’t clear how reliable this is.
Since 2003, I’ve always carried my phone in the car while driving using a combo-mount made by Pro Clip, USA: ProClip USA | Car Phone Holders and Dashboard Phone Mounts.
I say “combo-mount” because it’s designed in two parts. A base mount designed to go into your car dashboard and be firmly and almost irremovably anchored. Then a very secure phone clip that screws onto that and has a ball-and-socket joint that you can swivel the phone up/down, left/right into your preferred viewing angle. The ball-and-socket joint can be tightened so the swivel has as much resistance as you want. In my 2007 Honda Accord Hybrid, my phone is positioned over the top right of my steering wheel so I can glance at it without taking my eyes too far away from my line of sight down the road. Obviously, since 2007, I’ve had a bunch of new phones and what you do is you buy a new phone clip and still keep using the same base mount as long as you own that car. If you buy a new car, you just buy the base mount for that car and either move or get a new phone clip to use your phone in another new car.
The reason for this long-winded description is that the phone would be out of your pocket mounted a foot or two away from your face but with the phone microphone pointed down towards the floor. In my instance, the phone is mounted near the central dashboard air conditioning duct, which is great for me since the phone is always cool even when charging or using the Waze driving app. But a similar mount for anyone who wants handsfree calling might have to contend with the noise of the air flow from the AC. I think I’ve successfully used voice recognition with Waze with the phone in this position to ask for the nearest McDonald’s or the nearest gas station. Obviously, if one has Google Auto or Apple CarPlay and a car navigation/backup camera screen, one might not need to mount the phone to see a version of its display but if one has a microphone problem and the car system isn’t working for you, a phone car mount such as Pro Clip USA sells might work. They are expensive but their products have always been well-made. When a new phone comes out, like the latest Samsung device or iPhone, it always takes them a couple of months to get a clip of the right size into production. I think they’ve started offering mounts either for a bare phone or for a phone with a case of an approximate thickness - I usually prefer the bare phone mount the better to keep the phone cool with AC with the sun shining through the windshield on 100 deg F plus days, etc.
BTW, with my Quattro’s and a direct MFi connection from iPhone to HA’s, voice navigation and hazard ahead alerts work great. My Android phone (Note 8) is not ASHA-capable and I had to use a Phone Clip+ to have an audio media connection. The double BT connection(phone to PC+, PC+ to HA’s) caused a significant dropout and/or delay in Waze voice announcements. A direct ASHA connection should probably work great and the wife doesn’t have to listen to the Waze voice babbling on down the road when piping phone output to my HA’s. BTW, Microsoft in a deal with Google, is temporarily offering a Halo sci-fi video game theme for Waze with your car being depicted as a Warthog on the map and your guide the deep profundo bass of Master Chief with a few odd jokes thrown in for ride (my favorite navigation app of all time was TomTom back in the day with John Cleese in charge, pleading in promo ads to buy the add-on theme because he needed the money to support his poor dear old mother and cursing the use of the metric system invented by those Froggies for European driving, etc.).
First, thanks for the reply, along with your thoughts and experience, Jim - always very helpful.
Until I got a car with a large touchscreen, and Android Auto built-in, this was always the way I did things, and it worked fine, as you said. But now that I have this very large display for Google Maps, or Waze, my phone stays in my pocket. And my current vehicle actually has a wireless charger pad, so if I’m going on a long trip, I just put it there to maintain a charge, and the phone wirelessly connects to my car, giving me access to Android Auto, Google Maps, Tidal, PocketCasts, etc. Works wonderfully well.
The wrinkle the Jabra has introduced is that if I get an incoming call, or place an outgoing call, it defaults to using my hearing aids for the audio (via ASHA), rather than through ‘regular’ BT to my car’s system (which sounds infinitely better than the Jabra’s). I may be able to bypass this default behavior, depending on which button I press on my steering wheel to answer, but I haven’t yet taken the time to be sure.
I have vivid memories of TomTom as well, along with the John Cleese commercials! You then might also recall the Program Street Atlas, by Delorme. I had this running on a Laptop for trips to England and elsewhere! Amazing how much better things are now GPS-wise!
Edited to Add: I actually upgraded from a Note 8 to the S21 in order to have ASHA compatibility. I may have outsmarted myself if I end up going with the KS10, which would work fine with the Note 8!
For me I can actually use the volume up button to answer and so can keep it in my shirt pocket, the caller hears me no problem this way, there’s also auto answer as well, I can, while my smart watch is connected, set to auto answer, this may work for you.
Good suggestion - thanks. Now that I’m (mostly) retired, I no longer wear shirts with pockets, but I can see that being a good solution. The SmartWatch option is another good one. I’m a real tech junkie, and started looking at SmartWatches many years ago. Poor battery life in the beginning argued against them, and now that things are better in that regard, I realize I haven’t even put on a regular watch in years!! But that is a good thought.
Also one more suggestion to look into. You don’t have to actually wear them as such, just flip them up to rest on your head or cap.
Very interesting! I can’t imagine why those never popped up on Engadget! Pricey, but that’s not a big surprise. I wonder how they really sound.
Thanks!
Yep! Had that one, too. And by suggesting it to my elderly father, turned him into a GPS-navigating junkie. On any trip, he’d have my elderly mother in the front passenger’s seat holding his laptop on her lap for 50, 100 or … more miles! He always complained that DeLorme always picked routes that took you by the business customers who paid to have their locations added to DeLorme maps …
With TomTom, I remember a cross-country trip from Edinburgh to St. Andrews in the middle of the night where my British in-laws device appeared to be suggesting the preferred route be on what looked like a country lane or worse through a farmer’s field in Scotland on my TomTom phone map. After a lot of “discussion,” we took the obviously longer but more main road TomTom route and uneventfully arrived in St. Andrews. That’s always been my go-to memory of “never blindly follow GPS instructions.” I later had a U.S. Garmin incident where the software suggested I turn the wrong way onto a one-way Interstate access road, which might have been fatal if I’d followed that advice …
Am looking forward in whatever my next set of HA’s, whatever that might turn out to be, to get handsfree the better to GPS with (they ought to allow instantaneous dictated feedback as for Amazon Echo and Google Home, etc).
Since getting cochlear implants with Cochlear processors the navigation tools on the Google pixel have been really nice.
A recent trip I was surprised to have a female voice giving me exceptional Bluetooth directions while driving. Clear as a bell!
I was impressed!
I just got the Enhanced Pros from Costco today with the M&RIE and the wind noise is unbearable. I’m interested that yours is the second comment to say that wind noise was great. These are my 3rd set of ReSound. Did my fitter maybe forget to do something? Any thoughts why the wind noise would be so bad on mine and “non-existent” on yours?
Thanks.
If you look in the Smart 3D app, when the wind noise is bad, what program are you in? And then, if you tap on Sound Enhancer, at what degree of strength is the wind noise setting? For Quattro’s, the Outdoors program is best for wind noise and you can tune the degree of wind noise suppression but having it on in programs designed mainly for speech, e.g., All-Around vs. Outdoors, degrades speech comprehension a bit the more you have it cranked up. Same for noise suppression - the max noise suppression setting is recommended mainly for suppressing noise without speech. “Considerable,” last time I checked was the highest noise suppression setting recommended when you want to listen to people talk.