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New Bluetooth
Hearing Aid
Programmer
Blamey & Saunders’ latest
programmer for their
already amazing value
hearing aids makes
them even better!
by
ROSS TESTER
R
egular SILICON CHIP readers will recall two reviews of
new Hearing Aids from Australian company, Blamey &
Saunders. We originally purchased some hearing aids
back in 2011 and couldn’t quite believe the difference they made
to a severe case of industrial deafness which occurred some
30+ years earlier (‘Australia Hears – and So Do I!’ – July 2011).
Later, we had the opportunity to trial some of their new digital
hearing aids and found they were even better, even if more
expensive. (SILICON CHIP, March 2013).
While a little outside the normal ‘fare’ you might expect to see
in an electronics magazine, feedback from readers has been
most enthusiastic and quite a few have told us that as a result
of those articles, their new Blamey and Saunders hearing aids
have “cured” hearing problems they have had for years.
There were two major points of difference between the B&S
hearing aids and others we had considered in the past:
(1) They were significantly cheaper than the vast majority of “fair
dinkum” hearing aids on the market. (There are some el-cheapo
units available on the internet – and they are very cheap – but that
old adage really does apply here: you gets what you pays for!)
However, despite the B&S hearing aids being around half the
price of most quality hearing aids on the market, in this case half
price does not equate to half quality. We reckon they’re better!
(2) You can program these hearing aids to suit your requirements – so you don’t need to spend money to visit an audiologist to have hearing aids programmed – or “tailored” to suit your
particular loss. No two cases are the same; in fact it’s highly likely
that one of your ears has different characteristics to the other, so
the ability of being able to individually program your B&S hearing
aids yourself is a real boon.
Of course, if you have visited an audiologist and have a copy
of your audiogram (ask for it!) then B&S will supply your hearing
aids programmed with that data. Incidentally, there are quite a
few websites which will also provide you with something of an
audiogram – perhaps not up to “professional” audiologist standards, but a good starting point nevertheless.
NEW SCREEN GRAB
TO COME
Assuming you’ve managed to make the Bluetooth connection
(!) programming the hearing aids is so simple, even an
octogenarian could do it! Choose the hearing aid type . . .
32 Silicon Chip
. . . then it’s simply a matter of adjusting the slider bars to
suit your particular requirements and save the profile. You
can play around without the risk of damaging anything.
siliconchip.com.au
But using the hearing aid programmer from Blamey and
Saunders, you can build several individual programs within your
hearing aids to suit various situations without any professional
intervention at all.
New Programmer
Recently, Blamey & Saunders introduced a new, improved
programmer. The Incus programmer, in conjunction with their
‘IHearYou” software, is both similar and quite different to the old
(AHPro3) model – it’s similar in the way it works but it is even easier
to use. The biggest difference is that it operates via a Bluetooth
connection, so it doesn’t even need to be wired to the computer.
I’ll be honest, at first I had no joy whatsoever in connecting it.
After a judicious amount of weeping and wailing etc, this turned
out to be a faulty Bluetooth dongle – as soon as I swapped to a
laptop with inbuilt Bluetooth and downloaded the new programming software, it connected and worked exactly as it should.
Later, I went back to the original notebook PC with a different
Bluetooth dongle attached and presto! away it went.
The software is particularly intuitive – you don’t really need
to have any computer knowledge to run both the software and
programmer.
Connecting to the hearing aids themselves for the first time
is a little problematic – there is a “shiny” and a “dull” side on the
connector which is a little difficult to pick unless you’re in pretty
bright light. But once connected, it’s all child’s play (or in my case,
senior’s play!).You simply work your way through the menu items,
adjusting levels to suit your hearing level.
Following my ‘road test’ of the programmer, I was talking to
Blamey & Saunders about my Bluetooth problems and then the
success I had.
I mentioned that the one bugbear I had with my new program
was the traffic indicators on my new car were so damned loud
– really annoyingly so. Their response: “Why don’t you create a
new program for the hearing aids – call it ‘car’ – and reduce the
levels at those frequencies?” Well, durrr – why is the answer so
blindingly obvious you can’t see it?
So I did. And the solution was perfect – when I get into the car,
I switch over to program 2 (a push-button on these aids) and the
problem ceases to exist.
If you have more than one problem (eg, the TV sound must be
up too high or you can’t understand people in a crowd) you can
create separate hearing aid programs to suit those situations.
There’s not much more I can say about the new programmer,
except that it works! The kidney-shaped device is about 75 x
50 x 20mm so it’s smaller than the old one and operates from a
single AAA cell. Battery life is about three hours. (That’s where
I thought the problem was initially – but no, it was the Bluetooth
link). Typical of Bluetooth, it will operate up to 10m from your
computer and a (new, improved!) Bluetooth dongle is included
with the Incus programmer.
On the top side are three LEDs – red and blue show you when
the right and left (respectively) hearing aids are connected, while
on the right side is a green LED which is inside the (fiendishly
cleverly disguised!) power button.
This Incus/IHearYou package normally sells for $295 but
is included with new hearing aid purchases from Blamey and
Saunders. The software includes lifetime updates and support.
Blamey & Saunders Hearing is based in Melbourne (364 Albert St, East Melbourne, Vic 3002) but operates Australia (and
world) wide via the ’net. For more information and a free on-line
hearing test, visit www.blameysaunders.com.au or call them
on (03) 9008 6371.
SC
siliconchip.com.au
September 2014 33
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