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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