Thread: I can hear again!

I guess most realise that if you are a part or full pensioner you are eligible for a subsidised hearing test, purchase of hearing aids and an annual service contract.

I have a set of Oticon Aids Which are pretty basic but cost me only $1200 plus $45 for all batteries , filters etc for a year.
Beware as all the big sound places are owned by the multinational hearing aid manufacturers and will try to sell you up to ones that are 10K.
Mine can have remote calls and adjustment with a dongle at extra cost and a wireless connection to the tv , but in practice I have found you rarely need to change volume and now the TV is normal volume SWMBO has stopped complaining..

The main hassles I have had with mine are cicadas and that the batteries get wet if I work in the heat with them on. The batteries depend on small air holes and if they are blocked they die, and can be resurrected by removing them and drying them out.
Regards Philip A

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I have an inherited degenerative hearing loss (i.e., it's steadily getting worse and is now classed as a "Severe" loss) and I've been wearing hearing aids for over a decade. I just replaced two very antiquated sets of Oticon hearing aids (no Bluetooth etc so no streaming and no calls) with some Phonaks with an AI chip. The AI chip can do noise-cancelling when in noisy environments whilst allowing voices through, which is quite an amazing trick, although using the AI function does halve the battery life. The Phonaks were expensive but I thought that I'd point out that Costco also sell a Jabra AI hearing aid that gets good reviews - and at about $2,300 they're roughly a third to a sixth of what the Phonaks cost.

I had 2 or 3 week trials with 3 other sets of hearing aids from a couple of different manufacturers and the Phonaks were the clear winners.

Whilst the AI function is a game-changer, as some reviews state it is a first generation thing - for example, when mine are in the AI mode they'll clearly pick up conversations metres away and then realise that since I'm not close to those people and not looking at them I probably don't want to hear them so it then cuts off the conversation, which comes through as a squawk. I was at the MCG last night and it was doing that all night when the Irish family behind me were talking, so I'll need to ask the audiologist how to turn that function off.

Oh, and the app control has a mute button which, it appears, turns the microphones entirely off - which was a godsend on a noisy tram the other day. In fact it's probably one of my favourite features.

My employer is buying Phonak's Roger microphones and streamers for me to use in the workplace, and happily they integrate directly with my new hearing aids - although I'm also getting the Bluetooth streamer so that they'll work with my noise-cancelling headphones which I use with my old hearing aids, which are my back-up devices at work.