Hearing Loss: Come introduce yourself and connect with others

Thanks for your reply
As for the app, after talking to Google I cleared the cache. It did not help much.
As for mike, the pixel 3 is only six months old. Otter and ava work much better than live transcribe now when I try one after the other in the same situation.
I will look into an external mike.

@davekoh
Hi,
I rely heavily on Live Transcribe especially in these masked times. There are some areas, like my salon, where the WiFi is weak and it doesn’t work at all. It also doesn’t work well in restaurants and other similar noisy environments even if the phone is right up near the speaker’s mouth. I have TextHear on my phone which is not very accurate and also Otter which is more accurate. You have to keep hitting the mic icon on TextHear and hold the phone closer to the person speaking. I am going to try Otter today at a very noisy restaurant and report back on that. My Samsung Galaxy s7 has a powerful mic but the phone desperately needs to be upgraded. I sometimes turn the phone upside down when using Live Transcribe so the mic is facing the sound source. I was considering an external mic but will wait for my upgrade.
What kind of problems are you having?

FL Mary (west coast...no hurricane this time)

Hi,

It blinks that it is sensing the speaker but shows no captions for up to a minute...then starts and restops again. Closing and reopening the app only sometimes helps. I am not usually in noisey
environments.

Dave

I bought a $200 Samsung android phone to use Live Transcribe, primarily for technical meetings discussing public water shortage problems in our rural county--only to learn that most places have no WiFi or very weak WiFi available. I have zero cell reception at home, and the WiFi from our modem is too weak for phone calls...but, occasionally, Live Transcribe starts running, without being asked, only catching a few random words. Sometimes, it's difficult to shut it down, which is extremely annoying. I tried Otter, but found it simply can't report technical discussions well enough to be helpful. Fortunately, I've now gotten my newly-bilateral Meniere's in remission, so can puzzle out what people are saying for the most part. I was amazed that after a year of being virtually deaf, when I got the disease under control my hearing returned to about the level it had been before I went bilateral over a year ago. The last remission lasted over 30 years and I'm 78, so, hopefully, I'll only need to deal with increasing age-related deafness in my future. I'm positive that the 20-year guarantee on my new septic tank field will be adequate!

Android vs. IPhone: The GPS while driving app is far more accurate with proper pronounciations for Android, but the GPS for off-road wilderness use is much weaker for Android, at least the apps I've found, than for IPhone. I found that trying to follow discussions on any phone adds problems, meaning that you find yourself fussing with the phone to make the mic more effective or point it toward the current speaker, which only adds to the difficulty of following technical discussions when you can't hear most of the words. Looking at your phone means that you miss many of the facial expressions/body language we've learned to use to interpret what we think we're hearing. I've learned how to "fake it" for simple conversation, filling in for the words I don't hear or can't understand.

Hellowhatdidyousaynaz. Sorry for your very disappointing experience. There are so many who are happy with Costco, not that I think it is for everyone. I was hoping to find some comments about your experience but haven't seen any - maybe I'm not looking in the right place. I would like to think that for some reason your experience is unique - perhaps to the Costco location you dealt with. I am hoping that some of the participants who are technically so knowledgeable would comment e.g. Julie, Tony? 🙂

In response to whatdidyousaynaz and barbb:
I think that the Kirkland aids are designed for those with little loss, that it's the entry line sold by Costco.

@davekoh, that certainly sounds like a WiFi issue. Do you typically leave power on your device? If you haven't cycled the power, you may want to see it that helps.
Tony in Michigan

Costco varies all over the board. I have heard both positives and negatives. A few locations have audiologists, but many have only hearing instrument specialists. Fully agree that the price is right in most cases. It is true that some of the hearing aids sold by Costco are 'locked'. That means that ONLY Costco can make adjustments. If you move or travel and have an issue with a hearing aid, you cannot get it adjusted or fixed unless you go to Costco. Not always possible.

In most cases with a poor fitting, it's not the hearing aid, but the fitter that can be the difference between a well fit device and a poorly fit one. Regardless of where you buy a hearing aid, you are a 'customer' of a product. If you do your research in advance you will likely learn that you should get manually operated telecoils and volume control, and also BlueTooth. But don't expect the provider to tell you that. Sometimes they'll tell you telecoils are 'old technology'. They are, but they still connect you to many audio devices and events. And, they do not add cost to hearing aids. Those of you who are on Connect are all computer users. Have you ever used your hearing aid's telecoils to hear audio messages on your computer?

Manual controls are important because you want to control what you're hearing. Automatic sounds good until you're in a setting where everything is too soft or too loud and your stuck with automatic controls. BT adds cost to hearing aids, but it's worth having if you use it to hear on the phone. It will also connect you to other hearing assistive technology. Again, there is a learning curve on all these extra devices. Worth time time to learn if you want to hear as best you can.

Question: Has anyone who has had a bad experience with hearing aids had a problem returning them whether to Costco or any other provider. Trial times vary, but what happens when one decides to return them?

@joyces We have all become such fakers in communication. If my husband is around too after I am having a conversation with someone, much of which I did not hear, I end up asking him what was said.
JK

Answer is yes so will recycle power...thanks

Even before doing that the app worked beautifully this morning in the house to pick up Skype conversation....wierd! So maybe it needs a stronger Wi-Fi than do the other two speech to text apps and is more affected.