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Anyone using any Phonak wireless accessories?

Hearing Loss | Last Active: Jul 25 6:17pm | Replies (79)

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@beryl2

Thanks whoever wrote this posting above and LiveListen sounds well worth trying. I had written this before reading that so I will continue with the post I have regarding my Roger On tryout.

It was the first time that my audio had ever been asked for this device so if I buy it (for $1300 a relatively good price but of course expensive) I worry a bit about after sale service and advice albeit I have two techie sons nearby who both have some degree of hearing loss.
OK so now to my experience with this device after 5 days.
1. In quiet settings as when 4 of us had tea in our house and also 4 people again on a neighbor’s deck for lunch it made listening to the speaker very easy and even when I went inside to the powder room I could still hear the speaker. In both of those situations my hearing is such that aided alone I might have strained to understand depending on the speaker or asked them to repeat none of which I needed to do with the Roger On. I have to note that in those small quiet settings if more than one person was speaking at once the hearing advantage wore off.
And in the house with my husband wearing it on a lanyard it worked well but wouldn’t be needed if he only faced me! I didn’t hook it up to the tv but put it near the soundbar and from that can imagine that it would stream well obviating the need for closed captions which are now essential.

2. The second situations were in noise and not successful. Whether I could have gone into the app and turned off some of the 4 microphones for a better situation I don’t know and at 84 I am not a big cell phone user or that adept at my iPhone compared to younger ones albeit better than most of my peers!
Anyway both in a restaurant and at the optical desk at costco the background noise came through with the speaker’s voice loud and clear and I did better without the device and turned it off in both instances.
3. Another situation it is meant to be good for but I am never likely to need these days is meetings where one person at a time is speaking although I gather it is not good if more than one person is speaking and this I found in the quiet home settings too.
The situation where I think I would find it useful is in the back of the car when about 4 times a year we get driven somewhere by others. Unless the upfront passenger turns to the back normally I can’t understand them.
So this is my experience to date and I am still on the fence about whether to buy or not. In terms of other assistive devices I love the Captel phone on our landline and use innocaption on my cell for the very rare call on that.

Someone just mentioned NALSCRIBE and I think it would have been great at the Costco optical situation as would likely have been other speech to text apps. By the way I have 4 year old phonak audeo hearing aids.
I would very much appreciate any input that would help with my decision.

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Replies to "Thanks whoever wrote this posting above and LiveListen sounds well worth trying. I had written this..."

@barbarat I've used the Roger On for 3 years. I also have a Partner Mic for car rides, which is much cheaper. Between $100-$200 I believe nowadays. I've experienced everything you discussed in your posting with the On.

1) Putting it on a table when it is just 4 of you at the table can be useful as long as there is not a lot of extraneous sound in the background because when laid down flat, the On picks up 360 degrees. So if there are lawn mowers, etc. in the neighborhood, it will pick it up The other issue is if more than one conversation is going on. If either of those occurs, you need to pick up the On and point it at the conversation you want to be a part of. When in pointing mode, it works good just picking up that person's voice. I use pointing mode when in cocktail party situations and only want to hear one person in front of me. There are some adjustments you can make to the app on your phone that I discovered in order to block out more extraneous noise around you, but probably too tricky to explain in this post.

We like to go to a sports bar nearby weekly. I will point it at my wife or daughter or the waiter as well as adjust the Ambient Sound button in the app to block out noise behind me and it has been working well -not perfect but good enough. Speech-in-noise will never be perfect.

2) You mention hooking it up to TV - I've done that and it works great, better than a bluetooth connection to TV in my experience. The one negative is that it tends to block out other people in the room so hard to have a conversation with them. You can also buy Phonak TV Connector to listen to TV.

3) You mention its use in meetings. This has been a tremendous help for me as I sit on a couple of non-profit Boards and the table setup is like a U-shape. I was having trouble hearing people that weren't within 3 -4 chairs from me. So I began putting the On on a small table in the middle of the U-shape and now am hearing all 12 board members pretty well as long as they don't talk into their hand or mumble! I would do the same if it was a large Conference table. But again, if there are numerous conversations going on, it doesn't work as well.

So there are many uses for it. Counters like at CVS or the airport are helpful too. It takes some practice but has been worth it. If you can get it for $1,300, that is a good price and what I paid 3 years ago. I've heard people pay as much as $1,750.

I hope this is helpful.

Mike