Controlling the Device

The Lyric is provided with a keychain mounted stick magnet that screws into the metal case. This allows you to unscrew the magnet from the keychain case without removing it from the keyring. This is also nice because you need to poke the stick magnet into your ear in order to make adjustments and you wouldn't want to be holding the full set of keys up to do this.

On-Sleep-On
If you started with the hearing aids on and pointed the stick in each ear quickly it would give you two quick confirmation beeps to let you know that they have been put to sleep. Another quick point would generate one confirmation beep and turn the Lyrics back on. You don't have to hold the magnet for any duration, so you can be very quick to make the adjustments. The Lyrics will complete the confirmation beeps even if you pull the stick out. I'll still hear the sleep confirmation in one ear by the time the other ear is also shutting down.

On-Off-On
The Lyrics can only be turned off from the on position. To turn the off you make the same motion as to put them to sleep, but then hold them for another 3 seconds after the first two beeps. This will generate 4 confirmation beeps and turn the Lyrics off. You end up having to hold the sticks in your ear for 4 1/2 seconds and the total amount of time including all of the beeps is about 6 seconds. This seems like a REALLY long time to hold the thing in your ear. I wish there was a much shorter gap than 3 seconds to turn them off, but I'm sure the designers wanted to make sure that the devices weren't accidentally turned off when you were only trying to put them to sleep. I doubt I'll be turning these devices off very often, so this isn't really a big deal at all.

Volume Control
The volume can be adjusted anytime you turn the Lyrics on whether from Sleep or Off mode. There are 6 volume levels to choose from and luckily the Lyrics have a great feature of remembering your last volume setting you programmed. The volume is changed by using the stick magnet to turn the Lyrics on. Instead of typically removing the stick after the beep, you can optionally hold the stick in for 3 additional seconds and the Lyrics will start a cycle of 6 beeps for the quietest to the loudest volume. The beeps are about 1 1/2 seconds apart, so you can cycle from volume level 1 to 6 pretty quickly. You can also hear the Lyric dynamically turning up the volume after each click. I happen to be using my Lyrics at volume level 4. This means that as I cycle between On, Sleep and Off the Lyrics are always put back at volume level 4 when they are turned back on. Since these devices work independently of each other, you could technically have your left and right ear at different volume levels or even program modes at a single time.

That's really all there is to it for adjustments you can make yourself. While I wish I didn't t have to stick a magnet into my ear everytime I want to make an adjustment, I will admit that it is a very clever idea and seems to be implemented pretty well. I've already got some ideas on how it could be improved though, but I'll get to those in a later post.

Day 1

The ride home from the clinic in my truck seemed really noisy. I thought I was hearing static and the music from my stereo sounded awful. I’m worried that driving will again be a challenge. The Savia’s I have now do a great job canceling out the road noise, so it will be hard to go back to listening to that again.

I played around with the settings a little and found that having the volume at a 4 instead of a 5 sounds much better. There is less noise in the car and it still seems like I can hear fine.

I got home and showed them off to the family. It took my wife a minute of looking into my ear before she could finally see them. They’re impossible to notice unless you’re tugging and looking up into my ear. The kids were playing in the pool and I sat and watched the kids playing and noticed that I could hear them talking to each other very clearly. Despite the background noise of the kids and the A/C unit, I was able to carry on a conversation just fine with my wife and neighbor without even looking at their faces to read lips. Typically that has been a difficult situation hearing-wise.

The occlusion is pretty annoying. I feel really plugged up at this point and the sound of my own voice is pretty different. This will certainly take some getting used to.

I’m anxious to try these out sleeping. I’ve been warned that users often are sore in the morning from sleeping on their side. I’m going to try to force myself to sleep on my back until I get used to them. As I head to bed, I haven’t noticed any pain or unusual presser in my ears yet and I hope it stays that way.