phonak – Climb to the Stars

Trying Venture: It’s Smooth [en]

As the founding editor of Phonak’s community blog “Open Ears” (now part of “Hearing Like Me“) I contributed a series of articles on hearing loss between 2014 and 2015. Here they are.

A surprise was waiting for me on my last trip to Phonak headquarters in Stäfa, 10 days ago: Venture.

I had an appointment to try some Audéo hearing aids and tweak a few things that were bothering me with the fitting and the settings. As I arrived in the building, I bumped into Ora. I excitedly told her, “Do you know I’m trying Boleros? And I like them, there are really situations where they perform better than my old hearing aids.” She answered that she was delighted to hear that. I mentioned some of my beef with Soundflow. “You should try Venture! Are you going to try Venture? Tell them to make you try Venture.”

Venture? Phonak’s new platform (chip, software) for Audéo.

I headed towards the audiology lab and was welcomed by Michael and Simone. Here is what they had for me 🙂

Venture! I didn’t even have to ask. They had planned it all in advance. I was pretty excited, I had to say. New functionalities, resolution of the Soundflow switching issues that had annoyed me in my car, smaller BTE. No purple, or pink, sadly, but I decided I wouldn’t be fussy about the colour and be happy with the silver that was offered me.

The fitting went smoothly and I got to know Simone, my audiologist for this visit. We did things wirelessly (I was wondering about that in my first post: both options exist for Phonak, it really comes down to the audiologists preference), selected some new programmes, and — even more exciting! — tested the ComPilot Air II and got to see the RemoteControl smartphone app in action.

Two and a half years ago, when I got fitted, I was dreaming about this. My initial assumption once I got over the wonder of hearing more was that there should be a way to interact with my hearing aids directly from my phone. I was shocked that it wasn’t possible. I was also shocked that the device I was provided with to “connect” my phone and hearing aids was so… 2001. With the ComPilot Air II, I feel we’re really getting there.

It’s not direct phone-to-hearing-aid connection, but the device is small, looks good, is actually wearable, and has an autonomy that makes it usable. About 4 hours of streaming, I’m told, versus 1 hours for the M-DEX I tried two years ago. And the app, though it is still quite simple, is also really on the right track. Unfortunately, due to iOS8 Bluetooth problems, I’m going to have to wait a bit for it to be available on iOS so I can really try it out (get it from Google Play though). While we’re talking about “in the right direction”, I can’t wait to see what EasyCall is like — a flat device that fits on the back of any Bluetooth-enabled phone and boasts upto 10 hours of talk time.

The ComPilot works really well. I got to try it for a few real-life phone calls, and once we had set the default behaviour to “mute the room” when streaming started (who on earth would like surrounding sounds to be amplified too while trying to make a phone call?!) it managed to be at least as good as my default “earbuds and no hearing aids” solution. I used it on the train home to listen to podcasts. Now I get to look even sillier when I laugh all by myself on the bus, because I don’t even have earbud wires dangling from my ears.

The smartphone app connects with the ComPilot and allows things like changing programmes through the app instead of cycling through them with the hearing aid button. It also allows control of the general amplification volume (up/down), and with the Speech in 360 programme, you can “lock” amplification in one direction if you desire, instead of letting it automatically determine where the speech you want to listen to is coming from.

In addition to the Speech in 360 programme, I got a dedicated Music programme with no Soundrecover. I also added a simple Calm Environment programme as a fallback if ever the automatic programme was doing things I didn’t want it to (I had been burned, but I needn’t have worried).

One little snag I hit with this new pair of hearing aids was linked to the little bend that has been added to the RIC part of the aid. It actually improves fitting — meaning it’s possible to fit more people with that bend. Sadly it’s not a good thing for me, as I seem to be one of the small number of people for who the bend makes things uncomfortable (outright painful actually!), but Simone managed to find some “old” unbent ones for me. And Michael told me that the bend could be tweaked by the audiologist — so no big showstopper. Just a snag.

I really like that they now make the open tips black instead of transparent. Even if you’re squeaky-clean, the transparent ones always become yellow with time. No problem with black 🙂

We decided to take some imprints of my ears to prepare custom molds for me next time. Even though I don’t like the idea of “occlusive” molds, I did give them a fair chance with my Widex aids, and I’m willing to give Phonak a chance too. So, stay tuned, next time is probably going to be about that.

It was a really exciting morning. I left the audiology lab with a huge smile on my face and a lot of hope for the future.

After a week or two of use, I am totally in love with my Audéo V90s. They’re smooth. I don’t notice them. We’ve solved all my physical comfort problems. I don’t need to take them out when I get a phone call (with or without ComPilot). I don’t hear any transitions between programmes. The sound around me feels completely natural. I never hear anything “weird” coming out of them.

The ultimate test: in the automatic programmes that come with Venture, there is a new one designed specifically for car noise, so I was curious to see how that would play out. Answer, a few days later: great. I had music on full blast, on the motorway, and I was singing at the top of my voice — on the automatic programme. And I never heard my hearing aids misbehave. It was as if I wasn’t wearing them, but could hear.

They’ll have to pry them out of my cold dead hands.

Impressions on New Hearing Aids [en]

As the founding editor of Phonak’s community blog “Open Ears” (now part of “Hearing Like Me“) I contributed a series of articles on hearing loss between 2014 and 2015. Here they are.

As promised, here are my impressions of the Bolero hearing aids I’m currently trying out (hoping I don’t get any of the technical stuff wrong here, do tell me if I did!). They have open tips, like my Widex ones have, but are BTE (entirely behind-the-ear) rather than RIC (with the receiver, the part that produces sounds, directly in the ear canal — this would be the Phonak Audéo model, which I might try in future). My Phonak audiologist Jennifer tells me it doesn’t change much, acoustically: a RIC just moves some of the technology away from behind the ear, allowing the part that sits there to be smaller — important for those, who, like Steve, appreciate when their hearing aids are invisible.

Phonak Bolero Q90

The first thing that struck me with these aids was that there was less ambiant noise. Or less operating noise. Or different. I had the strange feeling I wasn’t really wearing hearing aids. There was probably a little less amplification than what I was used to, but clearly something in the sound texture too.

Voices felt a little tinny/reverb-y at first. Mine, Jennifer’s. Not unpleasant, but a little bit weird. Jennifer told me it was probably due to SoundRecover, which compresses high frequencies into a lower frequency region so we can hear them better. She warned me it would take some time getting used to. I don’t notice anything strange with voices nowadays, so I guess I did indeed get used to it!

I discovered that with Phonak there is a whole list of programmes the hearing aids can switch back and forth from, and which can also be set manually. I left my “main” channel in automatic mode to see how that worked, and for the other ones picked StereoZoom, which is optimised for speech in noisy environments, with a lot of noise reduction and a very narrow beam for amplification, speech in wind (for sailing), and a phone programme (right ear). The last position is a “mute” mode (indispensable for me).

The buttons on both aids have different roles: they can either be used to turn volume up or down, or switch programmes. The catch is that the left button is the “volume down” one, and the right button “volume up”. So as I wanted a “volume up” button, I had to have my programme switch one on the left — whereas it would have made more sense for me to have it on the right. I’m right-handed, and switch programmes more often than I increase volume. Oh well.

I can’t say I’ve used the phone programme much. I tried it, and it works, taking the sound from the right ear (the phone one) and channeling it into the left ear too. It’s pretty neat. But it requires positioning the phone in such a way that the hearing aid catches the phone sound (takes some getting used to) and pressing the phone against my ear with the hearing aid in it ended up being a bit too uncomfortable. So, for long planned calls I’ve reverted to my trusty earbuds. For impromptu calls I still tend to switch to mute, because background noise sometimes interferes with the phone mode (i.e., gets amplified too) and I don’t really feel like experimenting with acoustics when I’m on a call. I guess I should probably run some test calls to really try that mode out.

Given the lousy weather this summer, “speech in wind” has also been largely left aside, as it’s the programme I was planning to use when sailing. I like StereoZoom, though I sometimes have trouble determining if I should use it or leave the hearing aid in automatic mode, specially as automatic mode has a whole bunch of different programmes it can switch to and even blend.

While it’s nice to have a hearing aid that recognises the acoustic environment and chooses the best programme suited to it, it’s sometimes frustrating in practice. I’ll be in my car talking to a friend, and suddenly the quality of the sound changes and I have more trouble understanding speech. And then it changes back. Or I’ll be listening to music in the car, and one ear seems to be treating sound differently from the other. I find the whole concept of a hearing aid intelligent enough to know what it’s listening to fascinating, and would love to know more about how to the tech/programme works, but the control-geek in me would like to be able to have some kind of indication telling me which mode I’m in, and an easy way to override it.

I haven’t yet put my Widex aids back in my ears, which in my opinion points to how comfortable I am with the Phonaks. There’ll be a little tweaking to do next time I go to headquarters and see Jennifer (one ear is slightly less-amplified, and maybe I need a smaller size tip in one ear, we’ll see), and I’ll probably change my selection of programmes, including at least the music one.

Trying Something Different [en]

As the founding editor of Phonak’s community blog “Open Ears” (now part of “Hearing Like Me“) I contributed a series of articles on hearing loss between 2014 and 2015. Here they are.

It’s no secret that I’m not a Phonak customer, despite being the editor-in-chief of this blog. It could be argued that this is a good or a bad thing, but right now I’m actually not convinced that it’s all that important.

Fitting some Phonak hearing aids

Anyway, since I started working with Phonak, it’s been (kindly) joked about that something needed to be done about my hearing aids. To tell the truth, I’m very happy about my current hearing aids, and not just because of their colour. I like the sound quality, I like the way my voice sounds (important! I speak a lot!), I even find their operating noise soothing. They allow me to understand people so much better and have really changed my life.

My complaints? Well, restaurants, mainly (who doesn’t complain about restaurants?) and the crackling sound they make when faced with loud noises. Oh, and the phone.

Last time I went to Phonak headquarters in Stäfa, we arranged an appointment with one of the audiologists there (Jennifer) so I could try out some Phonak hearing aids. This would allow me, well, to try out their technology and maybe talk about it (what I’m going to do in a bit), and also to play around with Phonak accessories. After all the horrible things I had to say about the M-DEX (and I’m not alone), my Phonak colleagues kept saying “oh, you should try the Roger Pen”. Well, my current hearing aids don’t let me do that. So, first step in that direction: for the last few weeks I’ve been walking around with Phonaks on my ears.

Overall, I like them. I’ll write another post about the acoustic/hearing stuff, but what I want to talk about now is differences. Differences in audiologists, fitting process, hearing aids. Is different good or bad? The answer is probably in the eye of the beholder.

First, I had a really interesting discussion with Jennifer about how to take an audiogramme. Jennifer is from the UK, and the process taught and used there is different from the French/Swiss one I’d experienced until now. She starts with a loud sound, so I know what I need to listen to. Then she makes it softer and softer. When I don’t hear it anymore she goes back up until I do again. Then back down until I don’t. In this way she pinpoints the exact spot where I lose the sound. I have to say this makes it less stressful than the “usual” (to me) beeping-sound-getting-louder process. Hearing tests and sound-proof booths are great environments for drowning in your tinnitus, and I always ended up realising that I’d been hearing the beeping sound for quite a bit before I actually realised I was hearing it (if that makes sense). “OMG that was a real sound!”

Now, does it make a huge difference in the resulting audiogramme… Not certain. But it was interesting to see that the way certain things are done is really a product of culture.

Steph all plugged in :-) Second, to program my hearing aids Jennifer plugged wires into the back of them. It felt strangely cyborgy, in a cool way. But in my opinion it’s a bit more cumbersome than a wireless solution. With Widex all I had to do is wear a kind of big necklace which connected wirelessly with both the computer and the hearing aids. (To be honest, I can’t remember if Phonak fitting is always wireful or if this was because we were in a test/trial/development environment.)

Third, the in-the-ear sound measurement sound is different: Widex uses some kind of breathy rythmic burts of noise (not very pleasant), whereas Phonak has a combination of background noise and human voices speaking a mash of languages. Pretty surreal to listen to, because bits and pieces feel familiar but the whole thing is of course unintelligible. A kind of audio “lorem ipsum“? As somebody with a strong interest in languages I found it quite fascinating.

At this stage, I feel a bit like somebody switching from Mac to PC or vice-versa. Change in ecosystem!

We all know that hearing aids require habituation. So I’ve left “my” hearing aids in a drawer these last weeks and stuck to the Phonaks. What I want to do (soon!) but am apprehending a bit is swap back. I’m used to the Phonaks now, and I have kind of forgotten what my Widex aids sound like. To compare, I need to go back to them.

Why the apprehension? Well, I feel a bit in a “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” situation. What if I prefer my old hearing aids? What if I prefer the test ones? But to be honest, I have the feeling it’ll be more nuanced. It’s not a clear-cut 10 to 1. But still, I’m apprehensive. I’ll probably do a first write-up before the swap, and another one afterwards. Interesting, no?

Printemps chargé [fr]

[en] What's keeping me busy professionally this spring.

Pas beaucoup d’activité sur ce blog ces temps, mais beaucoup d’activité dans ma vie. A quoi je m’occupe, du coup?

Principalement, je m’occupe du blog communautaire Phonak qu’on a lancé en début d’année. Un grand projet qui me plaît beaucoup! Je cherche d’ailleurs des contributeurs: en anglais, sur ce qui touche à l’audition, l’appareillage, la surdité, etc… pas besoin d’être client Phonak (je ne le suis d’ailleurs pas) ni même appareillé pour en parler. Je suis donc de temps en temps du côté de Zurich, et je suis même allée à Budapest le mois dernier pour présenter le projet à l’occasion d’un colloque marketing interne.
Je travaille toujours avec l’équipe social media d’Orange, sur des choses un peu moins visibles et montrables, mais tout aussi intéressantes.
Deux mandats de formation ce printemps, dédiés exclusivement au blog — un pour la HEP, l’autre pour CREADIGITAL. Je suis ravie de pouvoir faire ça de façon un peu plus approfondie.
L’eclau va bien, de nouveaux membres nous rejoignent, et je suis allée à Genève pour présenter brièvement le “premier espace coworking de Suisse” (à ma connaissance) lors d’un RezoFirst.

Pour répondre aux questions non posées de ceux qui suivent un peu: la formation SMSCL que je co-dirigeais au SAWI, c’est terminé. Les accréditations blogueurs pour la conférence LeWeb, également.

Dans deux semaines ça va se calmer. Là, j’ai un peu la honte: j’ai lancé à mes étudiantes (sisi, toutes des femmes) HEP un challenge “3 articles par semaine”. Et je n’ai moi-même pas réussi à le tenir! Il faut faire preuve d’un peu d’humilité, parfois…

Two Days in Stäfa [en]

As the founding editor of Phonak’s community blog “Open Ears” (now part of “Hearing Like Me“) I contributed a series of articles on hearing loss between 2014 and 2015. Here they are.

A few weeks ago, I spent two days at the Phonak headquarters in Stäfa, near Zurich. If managing a blog and writing for it can be done remotely, meeting people can’t.

People are sometimes surprised that I value face-to-face exchanges so much when I am such a “digital” person. Well, I do — you get something out of spending an hour in the same room as somebody that is very hard to reproduce at a distance. I sometimes wonder if it has anything to do with my hearing loss: I need to see people, probably because in my 38 years without hearing aids, I’ve relied a lot on non-verbal communication. I don’t like talking on the phone with people I’ve never met or don’t know well (close friends is another story, I can talk on the phone for hours with them). And as for video conferencing… give me good sound quality and high-quality video which doesn’t freeze or lag, and I might start taking it seriously.

For my third visit, Vincent had set up meetings with various people inside the company, as well as a guided visit of the production centre. I could have stayed in there the whole day, actually — the geek/engineer in me just loves big machines and production chains, obviously.

Robot Arm Electrodes

I was amazed at how much machinery goes into producing the tiny devices that we wear behind (or in) our ears. I also learned that some of the machines used in the process are actually made by Phonak, too. So not only does the production centre contain machines that build hearing aids, it also contains a tool shop that produces machines needed to produce hearing aids. See the idea?

The discussions I had with Kurt, Ora, Katharina, Solange and Jean Anne made me dream about the future (some insights on what’s around the bend, like distance fitting and 24/7 aids — already there in fact) and reconsider some of my assumptions (on device pricing and fitting strategy).

From the first time I set foot in the Phonak headquarters in December, I have to say I really liked the feel of the place. My initial impression was that I had entered a university rather than a company building (it’s a compliment in my book). It’s very open, light, with running water in the lounge — very welcoming. It feels more like a place for research than for commerce, and I like that.

Phonak Stäfa Inside

The people I’ve met so far are all very enthusiastic regarding this blog project. It’s extremely encouraging! We haven’t “launched” officially yet, but the news is spreading word-of-mouth, and we bump into people who say “I heard a rumor… is it true? :-)”

As I digest everything I heard and saw during these two days and create blog post drafts in WordPress, I’m concentrating on the next step in my mission: find motivated bloggers, internal or external, who want to share their stories here!

A Little Bit of Background [en]

As the founding editor of Phonak’s community blog “Open Ears” (now part of “Hearing Like Me“) I contributed a series of articles on hearing loss between 2014 and 2015. Here they are.

My hearing has been stable since birth, and chances are it will probably stay that way until age-related hearing loss catches up with me. I was fitted reasonably late in life, at 38 (two years ago) and so my interest for audiology and hearing loss in general is quite fresh. I’m a bit of a geek, so I did my homework when I was fitted, but hearing loss wasn’t really a big part of my life growing up (I considered it a detail), and as my loss is mild to medium I clearly approach things from another angle than people with severe hearing loss or profound deafness. Hence the variety of contributors that we are currently getting in touch with for this blog.

Steph on Phonak roof

I’m aware the field of hearing loss/audiology is fraught with occasions to say things the wrong way, so I hope you’ll forgive me (and gently let me know) if I blunder into an issue with big uninformed boots. I’ll do my best not to, of course!

I’d also like to say a few words about my involvement in Phonak’s community blog project, and what I’ll be doing here. I started blogging a long time ago, in 2000. My blog Climb to the Stars is still active, and in it I write about pretty much anything that catches my interest, from futile to serious. I’ve been a “social media professional” since 2005, though I hate the term (“social media” didn’t exist back then). Over the years I’ve worked with companies big and small to get them started with blogging or social media, manage their blogs, or assist them in establishing relationships with bloggers that go beyond “let’s put you on our mailing list and send you press releases and goodies every now and again”.

A few months ago Vincent and I met up to discuss a possible collaboration. Phonak had been thinking about setting up a community-oriented blog, and they were looking for somebody who had expertise in blogging and and also had direct experience with hearing loss. Based in Switzerland, in addition to that. That would be me!

We kicked things off early this year and as you can see we’re now in the process of getting the blog off the ground, defining its direction, and getting people inside and outside of Phonak interested in contributing. In addition to my blog-editor-in-chief role, I will be writing articles based on my personal experience and reflexions, and also what I’m discovering about audiology and hearing loss through my contacts with Phonak.

I’m really excited about this project, first because it’s a rather large-scale blogging project on a topic that is of personal interest to me, and second because of the role we are hoping this blog will play in the relationship between the company and “the outside world”, if I may put it like that. We find the vision behind Microsoft’s Channel 9 inspiring, and I’m really looking forward to opening the doors to passionate Phonak employees so that you can read what they have to share directly.

If you have questions about the blog or ideas, or if you’d like to contribute, feel free to get in touch!