Introducing Beltone; the new hearing aid manufacturer from GN, Resound's parent company. We focus on its newly released hearing aid - Imagine.
Emma discusses the new innovative technology of M&RIE, a new microphone and receiver-in-ear technology, as well as new features such as Crosslink Directionality 3, Ultra Focus and more.
You can also find out more info on Beltone Imagine at: https://blog.valuehearing.com.au/news/introducing-beltone-imagine Search Smartphone compatibility here: https://www.beltone.com/en-au/support/compatibility www.valuehearing.com.au
Here is a transcript of Emma's video:
Hi there, welcome back to Value Hearing's YouTube channel.
I'm Emma. I'm a clinical audiologist.
In today's video, I'm going to be talking about Beltone and the Beltone Imagine hearing aid.
Who is Beltone
So, who is Beltone?
Well, you may have heard of ReSound or GN ReSound who are a highly respected manufacturer of hearing aids and Beltone is essentially a sister company of ReSound owned by GN as well.
The difference will be that they're going to be a more customised brand, more of a boutique brand, so their intention is that they will only be retailing through independent audiologists.
And the level of training that's going to be supplied from Beltone to those audiologists is going to be quite intense, so they're going to make sure that all audiologists that fit Beltone within reason, of how much they can control, will be of a very high level that they will be fitted very, very well, very accurately. Essentially because Beltone are going to be giving this superior level of training to these clinicians.
Also, Beltone intend to have a lot of the features that ReSound have before ReSound get it, so for example, the Imagine hearing aid has been out for a few months now and ReSound won't get it until the end of this year in Australia so that is a plan that I believe will continue for the future.
And in some cases they will keep some exclusivity as well.
An extra level of technology
What I've noticed is different about the new Beltone Imagine range is that they also have an extra level of hearing technology, so another platform level which is lower than what you can get from their sister company ReSound.
Essentially, if you're someone who wants a budget hearing aid, but a very good hearing aid, and can't afford a ReSound you can look at the Beltone option because they'll have that extra level at the bottom that ReSound don't.
Microphone & Receiver In Canal
So part of them being very, very customised is their new offering to the market no one has ever had. This is something called the M&RIE, which is a receiver in the ear hearing aid like any other, but with a third microphone - a microphone actually in the receiver in the ear component.
With all other hearing aids at this point in the receiver in the canal style, they have usually two hearing aid microphones at the top of the ear and then just the receiver, or speaker as they call it, in the ear.
But Beltone have created the M&RIE which has, like I said, the third microphone placed in the ear.
Now what is the reason for this well everyone's ear, everyone's pinna, the outer ear, the bit that you see, is very, very unique and it actually has quite a specific function - to help us localise sounds.
Everyone hears slightly differently based on the different shapes of their ears.
Now, at the moment, most hearing aid manufacturers are using an algorithm to calculate the average effect that a pinna has on the sound. So the average pinna, not specific to you, whereas with the M&RIE will actually allow you to hear more naturally.
It will allow you to hear with your natural pinna acoustics and when I tried this myself, I actually was quite surprised just how much more natural the hearing aid sounded when compared to any other hearing aid I've tried.
I'm not saying that that means people will hear better because of it, which they may, but it sounded more natural. It sounded like it was actually you hearing from your ear rather than out here so that was very interesting to try.
Improve ability to localise sounds
The other thing that people notice, and what science proves, is that when we're hearing from here (our ear) rather than up here (above the ear), it improves the localisation cues, so people's ability to know where sounds are coming from, which is actually pretty important one for making sure you're not knocked over in traffic.
But another thing would be having conversations in background noise. The better your localization for the noise and the speech, the more easy it is for you to understand the speech over that noise.
So certainly having that better localisation and spatial awareness thanks to the M&RIE will potentially allow you to understand speech better in noise.
Improved wind noise reduction
The other really interesting thing with the M&RIE is how much it has improved wind noise. Wind noise is something that the hearing aid manufacturers have definitely worked pretty hard to resolve over the years, and in some cases have done a really great job.
Obviously, when you're hearing from above your ear you're going to catch more wind than if you're hearing here (in your ear) and certainly in the windy situation it was noticeably different.
The research is indicating that it will reduce the wind noise by about 15 decibels by using the M&RIE so that is really impressive.
For some people obviously wind noise doesn't matter to everyone, but for some people that will be a really, really exciting feature.
Improved directionality
Something else that they've improved on with the previous platform with the Beltone Imagine is the directionality, so their ability to focus in on the person you want to hear over everything else around you that you don't want to hear, has improved further.
But what's really important here is that they've made the sound quality better and sound more natural, so they've put in a number of functions that will mean that when you're having these conversations and background noise, and the directional microphones are kicking in that it still sounds very very natural and it's not cutting you off from everything else that's going on around you.
The classic situation of, you're having a conversation in noise at a dinner table and you have someone in front of you but also perhaps people on the left or the right that you want to hear as well when they're talking.
These hearing aids are equipped to allow you to do that - to be able to have this conversation in front as well as have awareness of the conversations on either side of you which traditional directional microphone approaches do prevent.
Another addition to the directionality is that they've actually given you an option for a manual program called Ultrafocus which has a really narrow beam form.
So when we talk about beamforms, we mean the directionality and where exactly in terms of degrees is it focusing and where is it cutting out. For example, very basic directional microphones ill help you hear about 180 degrees in front and try to damp everything 180 degrees behind.
Generally ReSound with their typical directionality program, when it's quite noisy it'll go into about a 70 degree beam form. But if you want to, you can use the app or the button on the back of the hearing aid to really narrow that in to about 30 degrees, which you would not want the hearing aids doing that automatically, because it will really dampen all the sound around you, it could be quite disconcerting, but if you're the one controlling it, and you're pressing the button to do that or using the app, it will really improve the signal-to-noise ratio for you allowing you to understand, the speech in the noise much much better.
It looks a little different
The hearing aids look quite different. The cosmetic design is really quite different and I have to say when i first saw them myself, and my colleagues were the same, we're like, ‘look they don't look particularly attractive just to look at’.
We spoke to Beltone and there are very good reasons why they designed it the way they did. Once you actually hold them and put them on your ears you will see why.
So just to give you an example, I have one on my right ear right now and i have very small ears being a very small person but as you can see, you can't really see the hearing aid behind my ear at all from the side. From the back you might catch it a little bit.
Let me just show you what I mean so it's a slightly different shape to a lot of the other hearing aids out there. It's got this flatter back but so it, you know, probably mean to say that it's unattractive, but it's certainly a different shape from a lot of other hearing aids out there.
For example, this one is a more typical hearing aid shape so Beltone have certainly gone for something quite different but they have said it's for cosmetic reasons that you can pop it behind the ear and it actually sits really nicely and it feels really comfortable on the back of the ear.
And because of the design, it doesn't stick out it actually sits really nicely like that and we have had someone else in the industry say that when they've been wearing this model with a mask during the pandemic situation, that it's been much better for not getting caught up in the mask than the more traditional styles.
It's a different approach but I think it makes some sense.
Remote Support
When it comes to remote support, the ability for the audiologist to fine-tune the hearing aids Beltone have it all. They've got the ability for us to do it in real time where we can set up an appointment with you and make adjustments on basically everything that we could possibly need to.
But they've also got the option that if we can't tee up a time to see you in real time, or it's just a little bit of fine-tuning that you need, that we can actually send you a fine tuning file and you can incorporate that into the hearing aid at any time that you want, so really, really convenient.
Again, all about that customized care, that really tailored approach of being able to be super, super flexible for you as the hearing aid user.
Battery and Rechargeable Models
They have pretty much all similar models to the other manufacturers - you've got the battery powered model, but you've also got the lithium-ion battery powered model. The rechargeable option with ReSound is fantastic.
This is one of the rechargeables that I showed you earlier and the battery one doesn't really look much different. It's about the same size.
The charger itself is lovely. Very, very easy to use and it actually stores charge for about three cycles of charge, so amazing for a long weekend. If you haven't got the time to plug it in and charge the hearing aids up, you can actually take the charger with you without having any power. Great for camping and things like that. It will allow you about three extra charges on top of what you've already got in the hearing aids
High quality streaming
So with the phone streaming with Beltone being a company of GN we can expect that the streaming is going to be of a very, very high standard and sound quality, as they were the first company to come out with it.
The sound quality of their streaming is excellent and the stability is very, very strong so you can stream from a lot of different phones most of the apple phones and some of the android phones.
Check out their website, they've got a full list of all the phones that are compatible. Basically, if you have an Android for example, as long as you have Android 10 and Bluetooth 5, you should be able to stream to these hearing aids quite easily and with most Apples you should have no issues with streaming either.
So there you go, there is a bit of a synopsis on who Beltone are and the Beltone Imagine hearing aids.
