Have you ever heard of Completely-in-Canal (CIC) hearing aids? These hearing aids are specifically moulded to your unique ear canal and are practically invisible to the casual observer.
Many people love this discreteness, if looks are a big concern to them. These hearing aids are also very comfortable to wear due to being specially fit to your ear. People also love being able to just put their phone against their ear like everyone else instead of using bluetooth to stream the phone. Another commonly mentioned bonus is that less wind noise is picked up by these aids because they are deep inside the ear. Unfortunately, these hearing aids are not suitable for people with severe hearing losses because their small size means they have less amplification power but if you have a mild or moderate hearing loss these may be the aids for you!
Here at Hearing SA we love the Starkey CICs because they have a reputation for being the best and smallest on the market. They range from our smart value range to our premium range depending on additional features you may be interested in. Today we will discuss the cheapest option available, the Starkey Muse IQ 1200 which is in our smart value range.
The Starkey Muse IQ 1200 is a battery powered, non-wireless hearing aid. This means good dexterity to change the small size 10 batteries would be ideal, and you cannot use any bluetooth technology to control your hearing aid. Instead this hearing aid will have to do everything automatically. Some of those automatic features include:
Automatic Scene Selection:
The Automatic Scene Selection, tells the hearing aid what listening environment you are currently in, and adjusts the hearing aid settings accordingly. For example, if you are in a quiet place, the hearing aid can easily focus on any sound and amplify this for you. When you move to a noisy place, the hearing aid will ignore background noise and focus more on speech.
Noise Reduction:
Noise reduction is exactly what it sounds like! When you go into a noisy environment like a shopping mall or restaurant, the hearing aid can simply reduce the background noise. This is beneficial because your ears will feel much more comfortable without extra noise coming in, and you can focus more on speech.
Automatic Adaptation:
This is a feature your audiologist can turn off and on depending on your preference. When we have a hearing loss we are deprived of sound and our brain starts to forget what it is like to listen to those softer sounds. When you first wear a hearing aid, the volume is only amplified by 80% so that you don’t get overwhelmed by how noisy our world is. Over the course of a set period of time, the hearing aid can automatically increase amplification until you reach 100% as your brain gets used to the new income of sound. Consider this physiotherapy for your ears.
Wind Noise Reduction:
Wind Noise takes away from what we really want to listen to. And that’s speech of course! The Wind Noise Reduction reduces that shushing noise when you are outside playing golf with your friends or trying to enjoy a beautiful walk on the beach making it easier to understand your communication partners.
Feedback Management:
Like most modern hearing aids, the Starkey aid also has feedback management. This prevents that annoying squeal from the hearing aid when sound is too loud or too close to the ear.
Speech Optimisation:
Everyone who has a hearing loss has the same goal in mind…and that’s to hear speech clearly again. That’s why most hearing aids come with some type of speech optimisation feature and starkey is no different. The speech optimisation makes the speech as clear as possible for you. This feature is excellent in Starkey’s aids which is how they got the reputation for having the best quality CIC hearing aids on the market.
Surface Nanoshield:
The surface of the Starkey CIC hearing aids is coated in a nanoshield which makes the hearing aids moisture resistant and wax repellant. This is incredibly important for hearing aids which are completely in the ear because moisture and ear wax can accumulate quickly and it would be inconvenient if this common issue damages the aid.
Overall, CIC hearing aids are popular for their discrete look but they do deliver great sound quality to the right person. If you would like to look at some examples of CIC hearing aids or see if these are right for you please call us on 0403 690 980 and we can have a chat with you!