Time to Read: 15 minutes
Phonak Paradise Versus Phonak Marvel Hearing Aids. In a follow up to her earlier video providing her initial thoughts on the Phonak Paradise hearing aid, Emma takes a look to how the Phonak Paradise has compared to its predecessor, Phonak Marvel. She discusses her experiences with fitting the new technology, as well as provides feedback from her clients who have been fit with Phonak Paradise since its release in Australia on 1st September 2020.
Watch the video or read the transcript below:
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. 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.
Sounds more natural
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.
Marvel vs Paradise: Bluetooth Stability
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.
Two Bluetooth devices connected simultaneously
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.
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.
Double tap to manage calls, start/stop streaming, access voice commands
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 at 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.
Oversensitive in some cases - not responsive enough in others
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.
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.
Tap control training available in clinician software
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 (found that) after the training it was fixed.
That may be something worth looking into if your audiologist hasn't already done that with you.
Another thing that we were excited about was being able to control and emphasise very soft speech, and again that has definitely come back without me having to ask my clients.
“Softer speech clearer and easier to hear”
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 socialising 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.
Noticeable improvement hearing in challenging 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 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 - he described it as ‘spatial hearing’. He went out for dinner and he could now hear the whole conversation in any direction that he wanted to. 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 the old technology.
He 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.
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.
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 Phonak Paradise when compared to hearing aids that were four years old from a different manufacturer and he said exactly what Phonak did claim - that they would just pick her voice up more easily an just more awareness of the environment around him.
Marvel vs Paradise - ‘First Fit’ acceptance
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.
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 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 that you 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.
Marvel vs Paradise - myPhonak app
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.
Edit: myPhonak update released 30 October 202 to address these issues - update to myPhonak 4.0.1
But another issue with the app, whether it is intentional of phonak, or it is a bug we're still not entirely clear is 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.
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.
There are some fixes. 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 that the app seems to misinterpret. 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, it's been unbelievably positive. 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. 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 or any questions.
