It’s been a long time coming, but here is my advice on the Resound Multi Mic based on my personal experience so far: if you are thinking of buying one of these, try before you buy if possible, and whatever you do, don’t have it set up on 100% multi-mic instead of a 50/50 multi-mic and hearing aid mix, unless you are a hermit.
Also, don’t leave your charger where the office tea leaf will nick it the first time you plug it in. The Multi Mic spent its first three weeks of use in its box with a dead battery because I was afraid to flout the manufacturer’s dire warnings about not using a generic charger with their product. Unfortunately, there’s no obvious way to get a replacement ReSound charger, but the nice people at Connevans supply a generic one which works perfectly.
The good news is that, when plugged straight into the telly, the Multi Mic improves speech discrimination on poor soundtracks markedly, and I’ve actually been able to pick up bits of dialogue that the normal hearing Spouse has missed. It genuinely is amazing. The downside is, that with tulip domes currently acting as earplugs when the aid mics are muted, I have no awareness that The Spouse is speaking to me when he’s asking me what someone just said, for a change. As a temporary fix, I tried switching one aid to wireless Multi Mic and the other to The Spouse, but in mono you don’t get the benefit of either and I’ve now just given up until I can get the settings changed.
The other big disappointment is that my fabulous NHS Resound Up Smart paediatric mini bte aids seem to be the only version of the ReSound aids which are not recognised by the ReSound Smart app which allows you to use your smart phone as a remote control for your hearing aids and Multi Mic. Probably because it’s intended for babies rather than 50 year olds. Explains the too-tight grip on the ear cartilage as well. I had to trawl deep (for me) into the online specs to discover that it wasn’t just my ineptitude which was preventing the aids from pairing to the iphone, but you can find the information a little more quickly in the ReSound pdf here should you need to.
My final gripe is the most devastating, though. Before I used it, I was worried that there might be a time delay on the sound transmitted by the Multi Mic, but this is not the case and there is no noticeable delay on your conversation partner’s voice or line in audio input from tv, etc. However, I have found that when the Multi Mic is clipped to someone else for conversational purposes, it picks up my own voice at almost the same volume as theirs and adds a very noticeable time delay (to my voice only) which prevents me from speaking. Think very bad satellite phone connection, or highly effective Delayed Auditory Feedback weapon. Since conversing with others in noise is the task I primarily bought the Multi Mic for, I am pretty gutted and have not even tried to use it at work with students. They think I’m a total weirdo as it is.
It has to be emphasised that some of my problems may be down to the settings rather than the product, so I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve seen the extremely helpful audiologist at Clinic O. In the meantime, if anyone out there has any experience of these things, I would be most grateful for any tips or pointers for solving the Delayed Sound of My Own Voice problem…Delayed Sound of My Own Voice problem…Delayed Sound of My Own Voice problem…