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• Awesome video! Thanks for sharing! Also I'd point out, if your audiologist doesn't use real ear measurement machine, indeed they don't have any better tool than you do, and that's famous 'how do you hear me now'. And taking into the account that their office is usually acoustically isolated, you're indeed better off with tinkering in your own home and environment, because you'll tweak until you find that sweet spot.

  It's cumbersome, definitely. However it's also cumbersome to do it at the clinic which doesn't have the equipment, plus you need to manage your schedule and travel there.

  With 'how do you hear me now' technique by fitter you can waste a month or two if weekly visits, and still won't get it fitted properly even for their ideal acoustic office. And you need one single fitting with fitter who has the equipment to get the really good baseline eg 'in quiet'. And then you spend subsequent visits on seizing that tech inside the aid, noise situations and other.

  And a lot of people get tired of 'how do you hear me now' visits, not to mention it's really hard to describe what's wrong with your hearing so that the fitter can actually make adjustments.

  When fitter is using instrument, you'll get the proper fit in half an hour (I'm speaking only about fitting process once you have your audiogram and other tests done and aid chosen).

  And in 'how do you hear me now' someone has to pay for fitter's hours, and that one is you.

  Not to mention that comparing several models/different manufacturers takes the SAME 'how do you hear me now' process, maaaybe a bit shorter, but it's not a given.

  In short - if you're living a acoustically dynamic life, spend your time finding a fitter who follows best practices, even travel to other country to do it. Further tech adjustments can be done remotely anyway.

  Or invest a ton of time and learn how to tweak yourself. Because fitters without equipment will just run through manufacturer's initial fit, and that one is done automatically by the software anyway, I mean, yes, you'll do waving hands for audiogram (yes some even do audiogram through the aids only), and that's it. Then 'how do you hear me now' starts.

  But refuse to pay high amounts of money for people to basically waste your time.

  Let's push the industry into demanding high quality care we'll pay for, they can do more people in less time if they have right equipment, so it's utter BS that it's too expensive. New aurical in Germany is I think around 20-30 with sw. That's the price of fancy car. If they don't want invest in providing quality care, they don't deserve the money. For the comparison, 'how do you hear me now' office wanted around 6k eur for phonak marvel/paradise 90. I found a rare fitter (of 2 in whole Berlin, plus one chain but they're not taking time) who has the equipment, who gave me discount based on the fact that I told him right of the door that I'm sick of 'how do you hear me now' fitters, and I'll do it myself and buy aids on ebay, but if he can show me how real ear measurement is better, I'll buy with him. He accepted the challenge. He only did REM based fittings for me, and I played with amount of noise cancelling and different environments. Deal was to keep him in the loop what I'm doing, and basically he'd download my programming every time I came, so I have dislocated backup for free :D

  Be open and honest with your fitter. We both learned a ton from each other and I did some back to back comparisons, since he has a normal hearing and cannot really personally test/feel it.

  I moved to Switzerland and at the first glance it seems there's no REM offices... So I'll travel to Berlin if I can't find someone equally cool and wanting to help me hear my best. That's 10-12h train ride overnight.

  You want someone who will work with you, and you have to work with them. Paying premiums to have aids sit in the drawer is not worth the effort nor money. But if you want to hear your best, learn, understand equipment (eg external mics might be better solution for your loss than higher tier tech, because if you need a lot of help, even highest tier can't deliver), spend time to find someone you can work with.

  Trust me, if fitters can avoid tons of your (bundled free) visits for little tweaks because you'll do them yourself, they have every incentive to do so :)

  Just be responsible, honest, and careful. Small single tweak, and make notes over several days, then proceed with new tweak. Otherwise you won't know what each option exactly does, nor which thing helped and which made the sound / comprehension worse.

• My grandpa had hearing aids. Even with them you still had to yell multiple times for him to get what you said.

• Ha ha ha! I get it. PM me when you get a chance.

• hi dr cliff, can we program bluetooth hearing aids via mobile directly?

• Thanks for this Cliff! I am a musician with mild hearing loss. So far I've seen 6 different audiologists in several different clinics and none of them understand what I actually need from hearing aids. Simply programming them to my audiogram is not enough. If all I needed was speech reinforcement, any hearing aid would do, however live music performance has a completely different set of requirements. Getting it right has been a complete failure so far. To date I have sampled over $20,000 in hearing technology and actually kept none of it.

  I fully understand sound how reproduction works and even though I may not have a string of letters after my name, I do have over 50 years of experience in audio production, and know what I'm talking about.

  The most difficult thing thus far is in finding someone who will LISTEN rather than Tell me what I need.

• Glad to hear what all goes into programming hearing aids. I see people talking about programming their own, and they make it sound simple. It apparently is NOT and while cost is still a factor for me, I'll let the professionals handle this for me.

• I love this video. It's like all those Apple's Right to Repair videos that I've been watching in the last few weeks. Thanks for such an entertaining video that actually provides an outstanding service to those of us who want to program our own hearing aids. I'm ready.

• Does the Noahlink Wireless work with the latest Phonak Audeo Life hearing aids? Looks like finding the software is the biggest hurdle. As a guy with a DAW I know enough about compression, nr, eq, etc. to do this and want to.

• I'm exhausted just listening to all the steps a hearing professional takes to set up my hearing aids for me. Whew. 🥵

• How anyone would still want to program their own hearing aids after watching this is beyond me. It may not have been your intent, but this presentation was the most convincing plug for visiting an audiologist who follows best practices in order to take advantage of their skills and experience to do the job correctly.