Hi there welcome back to Value Hearing's youtube channel I'm Emma I'm a clinical audiologist
and today's video is actually the update on the Phonak Paradise which was released back
on the first of September here in Australia and at that time we made a video talking about
all the things that we were excited about based on the training that we had received from
Phonak but at that point we hadn't actually fitted any of the hearing aids so now we fitted
quite a number in the last few months and we've had some really interesting
experiences and feedback so this video is just basically giving you
the updates on what we've observed from our paradise fittings and really essentially comparing
it to what we experienced with the previous very popular phonak model the marvel hearing aid
so first things first something that has definitely been noticeable for our clients
who have had previous models such as the marvel is that no matter what level of technology we
fitted they're all coming back and saying and in some cases saying in the very first
moments of hearing with the new paradise hearing aids is that the sound quality is different
they're saying that it just sounds a little bit more natural or in some cases a lot more natural
than what they've experienced before one client in particular who went from a marvel to a paradise
said that as soon as we switched on the hearing aids and set them up for her that even her own
voice sounded clearer sharper and more natural and that wasn't at a premium level so whatever
they've done the things that they claim to do to the overall sound quality seem to be coming true
so the other thing that we were very excited about was the bluetooth stability as i mentioned in the
last video the bluetooth stability in our industry with hearing aids has been at times a little bit
questionable so this is not necessarily a fault of the hearing aids or the hearing aid manufacturers
and in a lot of ways just the nature of bluetooth but phonak were suggesting that the bluetooth
stability would be better and i have to say for most of our clients that has definitely been the
case there's still been a few issues here and there with some models of phones but overall
with the main mainstream models of phones we have found definitely that stability has improved and
i have a number of clients in my own clinic and we've had a few throughout value hearing that are
actively using the ability to have two bluetooth devices connected at the same time and that seems
to work really seamlessly so we do have clients who are watching something on their ipad and are
able to take a phone call and then go back to their ipad we've got others that have two phones
one of the other things that was very new to us and phonak was the tap control option so being
able to double tap the hearing aids to answer a phone call to end the phone call and also to stop
streaming or pause streaming if you're listening to music or podcast for example and restart that
streaming and then also the tap control can be used for activating your voice assistant such as
siri or google for example so the overall reports back from our clinicians here in value hearing
have been mixed so we've certainly got a lot of clients who straight away as soon as they do a
double tap it works perfectly for example in my ears i wore the paradise for a little while myself
and the tap control worked with no real issues in fact mine were a little bit sensitive if i
scratched my ear the next thing you know i had siri in my ears so in some cases with some people
we may want to switch some of the features off or it might drive them a little bit crazy
but we have had a few of our clients struggle to get the tap control to work apparently it does
seem to be that it's with ears that are less tight to the head so a little bit more floppy perhaps
one of my own colleagues has had an issue i have personally found with the few clients that have
had problems with the tap control that when i've used the training module in the target software
and i've put it up on the tv screen we've basically made it into a game
so that the client when they tap it will tell them on the screen
if they've managed to activate it or not and that has actually been really powerful so a few of the
clients that were really struggling to get it to work after the training it was fixed so that
may be something worth looking into if your audiologist hasn't already done that with you
so another thing that we were excited about was being able to control and emphasize very soft
speech and again that has definitely come back without me having to ask my clients i've had a
few clients say that they've instantly noticed that they're able to hear the soft speech better
so that client i spoke of earlier who went from marvel across to paradise she specifically had
one friend that spoke very very softly when they were socializing and she instantly noticed with
the paradise that she heard her much better she still heard her when she wore her marvels
but it was much easier with the paradise so that was really encouraging to hear
the ability to understand speech and noise has definitely improved it seems certainly
in the clients that were fitted with the premium hearing aids the p90s
have come back with some really really positive stories of being able to understand speech in
noise that they haven't been able to understand with previous hearing aids in similar environments
but what i've also noticed is that even at the very lower levels of the phonak portfolio we've
had clients come back and say that they have noticed a significant improvement
we've had one client he was wearing much older hearing aids they were five years old before he
moved across to paradise but he said it he described it as spatial hearing that he went
out for dinner and he could not hear the whole conversation in any direction that he wanted to
and he noticed that was a big improvement on his previous hearing aids where he certainly couldn't
pick and choose what conversations he wanted to hear and really had to focus and look at the
person he wanted to hear and get those directional microphones working with him with him with the old
technology so he like i said described it as just the whole world opening up and being able to hear
in that noisy environment he was specifically talking about a restaurant with a big group of
friends so that was really wonderful to hear and again it wasn't the premium technology
either so far we've only had a few reports back of people noticing the benefit of
the spatial sensors so certainly i have one particular client who does
go out walking with his wife a lot and he has noticed that it's much easier now
with his new phonic paradise when compared to hearing aids that were four years old before
from a different manufacturer and he said exactly what phonak did claim that they
would just pick her voice up more easily and just more awareness of the environment around him
something that i have personally noticed as a clinician is that you should definitely
perform a real ear measurement as an audiologist when you're fitting these hearing aids
notice when compared to marvel for not all but most of our clients that it does seem to be
quite under prescription meaning that it won't sound as loud as it should for the client um so
really i'm not sure why that is if it's something phonak has done on purpose they did mention about
increasing first fit acceptance by lowering the the overall volume but not on a hundred percent
gain i didn't expect that when you were on full prescription it would still be under so make sure
if you're not feeling satisfied with your paradise hearing aids go back to your audiologist and just
make sure they've done a real ear measurement and that it is set to full prescription for you
so the app has had a few issues recently so just with the latest ios update phonak have had some
bugs creep up in their app and it doesn't seem to affect everyone but some people are reporting
that there are buttons missing on the app in fact when you touch where the button should be it will
appear they are working on this and it should be fixed very quickly but another issue with
the app whether it is intentional or phonak or it is a bug we're still not entirely clear that
you can go to all the trouble of putting yourself in a manual program perhaps you put yourself in
the restaurant program or a music program in the app and then when you go to lock your phone
it then kicks you out of that program and you go back into the autosense program and this has
been a real real issue for some of our clients who really love to use their manual programs or create
their own programs through the app so there are some fixes so a good way to fix it is to go into
your phone and switch off all sounds and haptics for example in an apple phone in samsung you just
want to switch off the sounds that are produced whenever you receive a notification or if you go
to lock the phone for example so what will happen it seems is that when you go to lock the phone
the phone sends a signal off to the hearing aids and then the app seems to misinterpret that it
will actually then go into a bluetooth program for a few seconds and then go back to the autosense
anyone from phonak watching this please correct me if i'm wrong but that seems to be what's happening
so if we can stop that notification from communicating with the hearing aid
so you don't necessarily need to stop the notification from coming up on your screen
but just stopping that sound being produced you should be able to stop this from happening
this seems to have worked quite well for a lot of our clients but hopefully if it
is a bug and it sounds like it's a bug phonak can fix it for us at some point in the future
so there you go all in all i mean it's been unbelievably positive the the claims that phonak
made were not necessarily huge but they were significant and it seems that they've lived up
to the claims that they've made according to our clients as always there will always be some issues
here and there and some clients who won't notice the benefit and there's a myriad reasons for that
but all in all it does seem that this has been a fairly big step from marvel to paradise in a
really really positive direction so any feedback from anyone out there who's gotten a new paradise
hearing aid any questions if you've enjoyed this video for example please leave a comment
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