I visited Ascent last week for a bit of re-programming and while I was there I managed to get a quick look at the new iNSTAFit hearing aid from Audiosync.

The iNSTAFit is part of the iSync family and is running on the same S Series technology from Starkey. What makes it different from the iSync is that it is not moulded to fit your ear, instead the aid is a thin straight tube and so one size fits all. It’s about as wide as a pencil and about 2cm long – it’s small. As you can see from the picture below, it’s only very slightly wider than the battery that’s in it.

You wear the iNSTAFit in the rubber case as you see it above, it has a bit of rubber that extends about 1cm from the top that you use to pull it out of your ear. The rubber shell also doubles as a way to keep the battery in place.
I don’t have the fitting range of the iNSTAFit to hand but I believe it is being sold as being suitable for up to moderate-severe hearing loss whereas the iSync can support a severe loss.
I’ve already written about how impressed I am with my iSyncs and seeing as the iNSTAFit is running the same technology I can only assume it’s good too but I haven’t actually tried one out. Gotta be worth checking out if you want an invisible hearing aid.

I’ve been wearing a pair of iSyncs for about 4 months now and I thought it was time I reviewed them. The iSyncs are the world’s first IIC (Invisible In the Canal) hearing aids.

In the interests of fairness I should let you know that I got the iSyncs for free from Ascent Hearing – this came about when I was visiting their Banbury branch in the summer to have a chat with Michael Nolan. Turned out on the day that they were looking for someone to trial the iSyncs and I was in the right place at the right time. So I started the day thinking I was going for a cup of tea with Michael and ended the day as Europe’s first IIC wearer! Ascent have done a write-up of the fitting here and, believe me, if I had had any idea my picture was going to be taken and put on the Internet I would have had a shave and a haircut before hand.

The fitting

The term Invisible In the Canal (IIC) is not an idle boast. These hearing aids really are invisible, even if you look right down someone’s canal the only thing you can see is the plastic wire that is needed to pull them out. The iSyncs are fitted so that they sit in the second bend of the canal, in other words: very, very deep. I’ve been wearing hearing aids for the best part of 30 years, have had numerous fittings and mould takings and I was totally shocked about how deep the impressions for the moulds were going. So be prepared for this, it’s a little uncomfortable as you are not used to have anything that far down in the ear – it’s much further than CICs.

Putting them in

The same as with any new hearing aid really, it takes a bit of getting used to. I found that in the first few days of getting them I was not pushing them far enough into my ear – it takes a bit of courage to push them that little bit more so that they sit where they are supposed to. They are so deep that you think you’ve pushed them as far as you can but you haven’t.

When I was at Ascent they watched me putting them in and made sure I had pushed them far enough – if they hadn’t done that then I don’t think I would have ever pushed them deep enough.

If your iSyncs are producing feedback or feel uncomfortable then you probably haven’t pushed them far enough in.

Sound quality, localization and ability to hear

I can only compare the iSyncs with the hearing aids that I have previously worn and they are definitely the best so far. They are very similar in terms of quality to the Starkey S Seriesthat I wore (in fact, I think they have the same internals) but they win out over those in a few ways:

• Wind noise is greatly reduced because the aid’s microphone is further down the canal and not so exposed. This means I can hear a lot more on windy days and that’s a a big win for me.
• Localisation is better. I noticed this really quickly after I started wearing them and I’ve been told it is because they sit deep in the ear it allows the ear’s shape to funnel the sound into the aid in a more natural way – whereas before my hearing aid was blocking up the whole canal and sounds hit the aid instead of traveling down my canal first.

Voices are crisp and less muffled than they are with my old pair of Destinys. I have the noise reduction capability turned down to a minimum because that’s the way I like it and I do not ever hear the reduction kicking in, which I have down in the past when trialling out other aids. Music sounds good and I’m able to wear headphones without any feedback.

Appearance

I’ve been wearing aids for many years and I’m used to people noticing them in my ears and it doesn’t bother me that they do. Having said that, it’s kind of liberating to be wearing hearing aids that can’t be seen by anyone else – it gives me a bit extra confidence and I don’t feel like the guy with the hearing aids any more. It sort of evens the playing field a bit.

Recommendation

I’ve had quite a few emails from people asking me if I recommend the iSyncs. Well, all I can tell you is that they are the best hearing aids I’ve worn in terms of sound quality and ability to hear and that they are invisible to other people, which is really nice. I can’t tell you if they are better than hearing aid X because I haven’t worn hearing aid X. The iSyncs are groundbreaking in terms of their size and how deep they sit in the ear and are giving me a great hearing experience so far.

I like to watch TV with subtitles/captions on. It’s just easier, it saves me having to have the volume up too high for everyone else – particularly when the rest of my family have gone to bed, I can watch my favourite shows without waking them.

This would be great if the quality of subtitling wasn’t so hit-and-miss.

Some channels have no subtitles at all, which I can live with and doesn’t bother me that much. I just don’t ever watch that channel.

What does bother me though, and it bothers me a lot, is the channels that provide half-assed subtitles. The channels that miss out entire sentences. The channels that have text that freezes on-screen for a bit and then lags behind the audio for the rest of the show. The channels that don’t always manage to delete the text before displaying the next sentence and you end up with a mass jumble of words. The channels that have titles for some programmes but not others.

But the absolute worst thing, and I reserve some special level of bother for this, is when a programme will have perfect subtitles on one channel and then completely broken ones when it switches to a new channel. We watched series 1 of The Mentalist on Hallmark – a great series and it had perfect subtitling. Now series 2 has come to the UK and it’s on Five – the subtitles suck, they lag behind and the miss entire sentences out.

How can subtitles for a programme be broken on one channel and work fine on another?

Feedback can be a problem for hearing aid wearers. It results in an annoying whistling or squealing sound.

Why feedback occurs

A hearing aid has one input: the sound comes in through the microphone. It has one output: the sound goes out of the speaker into the ear drum. But, sound moves in all directions unless something blocks it. Feedback occurs when sound coming out of the speaker travels back into the microphone and is amplified again.

Causes of the problem

There are a few things that can increase the chances of a hearing aid producing feedback:

• The size of the hearing aid – The smaller the aid is, the closer the speaker and microphone will be – thus increasing the chances of feedback. That is not to say that feedback will always occur in small devices – newer digital hearing aids have in-built feedback reduction that reduces or eliminates the problem.
• The volume – The higher the aid’s volume is set, the louder the sound coming out of the speaker is. Louder sounds can travel further – increasing the chance of them feeding back into the microphone. For this reason, CIC, ITC and ITE hearing aids are not always suitable for people with moderate, severe or profound hearing loss.
• Venting – Many hearing aids are fitted with a vent. This is a hole drilled into the shell of the aid and is a route for sound to come back from the speaker.
• The fit – If your hearing aid does not fit perfectly tightly into your ear, it will leave gaps for feedback to travel.

What can you do to reduce feedback?

Turning the volume down is an obvious solution but you have the volume set high because you need it! If that’s not possible then seek the advice of a hearing aid professional. They will be able to reduce the size of the vent or completely close it and also check the fit of the aid. If you have had your aids for a while and they no longer fit snugly into the ear you should be able to have new molds made rather than buy completely new instruments. You can take a deeper look at why hearing aids whistle here.

The Museum Of Endangered Sounds is a website that collects famous and memorable sounds from obsolete technology such as video game systems and VHS video recorders. Coming across that site got me thinking: what sounds would I put into a museum? What sounds are important enough to me that I’d want them stored and shared with others? Not just sounds made by out-of-date machines, but any sound that means something to me.

Seeing as I have a progressive hearing loss that has been getting worse since I was 5 years old, there’s a pretty good chance that I wont have any useful hearing at all at some point in the future, I’ll be deaf instead of hard of hearing. What sounds would I miss most? What sounds trigger fond memories and make me happy? We all have favourite songs and we all love to hear the laughter of loved ones, that’s the things that spring to mind first, the obvious things, but what else is there? What sounds effect us in positive ways and maybe we don’t even notice it?

The sound of a Harley Davidson like your Dad used to own when you were young. The sound of trees rustling at the bottom of your garden. The sound of your Mum singing her favourite song as she prepares dinner. The click of the door shutting in your beloved car. The list is unique to each of us, we all have sounds that trigger an emotion or remind us of a happy moment. Sounds that are either long forgotten or are heard so often that they have been relegated to the background in our busy, noisy lives.

This is a few of the things that I would put into my museum:

The sea

The sound of the sea lapping onto a beach is mesmerising. We don’t get to the sea very often, we live near Oxford, which is about the furthest from the sea as you can be in the UK – and often when we are there it is on a busy and noisy beach in the school-holiday season. But just occasionally there’s only the warm sun, a quiet beach and the sound of the sea. My Wife and I went to Kefalonia many years ago and we happened across a small deserted beach, we sat on the sand for hours listening to the water, was lovely.

Football crowds

I’m a big football (soccer) fan and watch it a lot on TV but there’s nothing quite like going to a stadium and watching a game live. The sounds of a match add just as much to the atmosphere as the visual. The crowd’s songs and chants, the collective “ooooooh” of a missed chance, the sound of 8000 people standing up at the same time as a team nears the goal and, of course, one half of the stadium going ballistic when their team scores.

Dog dreams

We’ve got a little West Highland Terrier called Oscar, he’s getting on a bit now, he’s 13 years old, he sleeps a lot. Occasionally he’ll be having a dream and he’ll start making running motions with his paws and barking in his sleep. Accept it’s not a proper bark and it’s not a whine or a yelp, it’s the contented, warm woof of a dog who has finally caught that pesky cat from across the road.

What would you put into your sound museum?

Can you help with this problem?

I got an email from Michael about a problem that he is having with his Starkey 5 RIC aids – I’ll let him explain:

In the higher registers of an instrument there seems to be two notes, side by side, one slight flatter than the other and one of them slightly late. So every note, whether from an instrument, voice, whistle, cell phone beep, car door beep, ignition warning, etc. has the distortion.  Not all speaking voices but some. And it is all the time in any mode. When I sneeze I sound like a Wookie – no kidding.

Has anyone come across this problem before? Apparently Michael’s audiologist has said that there’s nothing they can do about it.

He is running the standard programmes: normal, music and restaurant – all of which have the double-note sound. I’ve suggested that he get his audiologist to create some new programmes that massively reduce (or, if possible, turn off) noise reduction, compression and feedback elimination to see if that helps.

I know that some hearing aids produce an opposite sound to break the feedback loop but I don’t know if Starkey use that or whether it would ever be audible?

Any help greatly appreciated.

I’d always assumed that bigger breeds of dog were used as Hearing Dogs, probably because our own dog (a west highland terrier) is a law unto himself and when I’m out walking him it always seems like the bigger dogs are better behaved.

According to the Hearing Dogs For Deaf People charity the best hearing dogs are Poodles. Apparently they are one of the more intelligent breeds and, “they love to learn and as a result usually excel in their obedience and sound-work training“.

Hearing Dogs For The Deaf are running a blog about Chance, their newest canine recruit, and his trainer Tom. You can follow Chance’s progress from the first day of training on their site.

Should buying a hearing aid be like buying a TV or buying a pair of glasses?

When you buy a new TV you can go into your local electronic store and try out a bunch of different models and pick the one you like. You get hands-on with the TV before you part with your money and you can see the differences between them side-by-side. Some people will know the different brands of TV, which ones are better, their strengths and weaknesses, they probably have a favourite brand that they are loyal to.

When you buy a new pair of glasses you get your eyes tested, pick some frames that you like and have the lenses fitted. You might have some choices to make about the lenses – thinner for extra money etc – but it’s mostly a case of you get what the optician is fitting you with.

So where should hearing aid sales be?

At the moment they are sold like glasses. You have your hearing test and you get a recommendation or two from your audiologist and that’s about that. You can pick a colour and a style (BTE, ITC, etc) but not a lot more. I’m guessing that 99% of people buying hearing aids go with their audiologist’s recommendation – there aren’t many that will know the difference between different aids or the brand names that are available.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the audiologist’s recommendation is a bad thing. They are working based on the experiences of other customers with the same hearing loss and requirements. So a lot of the time it probably works out and the buyer is happy with their purchase. But could they have got something better?

I’ve said before that I think there are better way to trial hearing aids. I really do believe that having the software from each hearing aid available for the user to try out hands-on and side-by-side will give them a better chance of getting the right hearing aids for them. This would be moving hearing aid sales more towards the TV selling model. It would be a good thing.

I’d love to hear your comments on this. I’d be interested to know if buyers are happy with the way they buy hearing aids at the moment and whether audiologists think they could do something a bit different.

Do you think we’ll ever see the day when people are brand loyal to Phonak, Starkey or Oticon as well as Apple and Sony? Could we ever see a Phonak store opening on high streets? We want to make buying hearing aids an easier process. So we have written an article on the main site that answers a lot of questions about buying hearing aids such as When Do You Need Hearing Aids?

I just stumbled upon hearingfamilies.com via Twitter and I thought I’d share the link with you. Here’s a bit from Dr Schorr’s about page:

My name is Efrat Schorr and I am a developmental psychologist who specializes in the unique social and emotional development of children with hearing loss.

I received a PhD at the University of Maryland in this field in 2005. My research on the social and emotional development of children with cochlear implants was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). My work to highlight the importance of social and emotional development has been published in hearing and language journals.

I am the mother of 5 children, aged 14, 12, 8, 5, and 2. Thanks to my oldest child – my son Moshe – who has a hearing loss since birth, I have had the opportunity to live many of the issues that I discuss on this site. Most of the great ideas I have had about the development of children with hearing loss went nowhere at home (I call it “the school of life”!) or at least usually did not work out as I had planned! So many strategies that are discussed here are tried and true.

Another excellent infographic from Amplifon. 50% of sufferers find tinnitus moderately or severely distressing yet 93% haven’t consulted a doctor, wonder why that is? Maybe people don’t see a doctor because it isn’t a pain or making them feel ill? Still, if their tinnitus is severely distressing them then their health is surely affected.