I have a pair of Resound Futures that I got about 7 weeks ago. After the initial fitting and a couple times back for adjustments they are getting closer to what I would like. There are still a few problem areas, though, and I wondered if anyone might have some suggestions for my next adjustment session.
Speech levels in various conditions are pretty good now in general. However, when I go into a tiled room (my kitchen, bathrooms, etc.) where there is little to no sound absorbtion, the higher frequencies become more pronounced (as they bounce around the room) and the balance of the frequency spectrum is thrown off a bit. Maybe I need a special program setup for these areas, but I wasn’t sure what settings should be changed to help this out without messing up speech recognition. Also, when cooking, doing dishes, etc. in my tiled kitchen the sounds of dishes/utensils clanking, AL foil/plastic wrap crinkling, water sprayers, mixers, etc. is way loud in relation to other background noises and voices and is very annoying.
Additionally, the sounds of paper rustling and doors closing (in any environment) are also annoyingly loud and seem overly loud in comparison to voice and other sounds.
Does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with these types of issues?
Thanks,
Andy
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It may just be part of your habituation - kitchen and bathrooms do make sounds less damped in reality via echo: ever sing in the shower?
I’d possibly consider asking for a fraction to be taken off the MPO (maximum power output) of the aids, but I’d leave the gain alone to maintain your improvement in other areas.
Some of your issues may stem from various environments, but your gain for soft sounds seems like it is set a little too high. This is why you are getting excessive noise for paper and other peripheral noises. If you back those off, you will notice that soft sounds don’t override normal sounds anymore.
I have been wondering if it was something I was just going to have to get used to or not.
The MPOs were what I was also thinking might make some difference. Are there particular frequencies that affect those sounds, or do they spread over a broad range? The door closing sounds seem like a good candiate for lower MPOs, but do paper crinkling and kitchen sounds approach high enough db levels to be affected by the MPOs? Also, is there some general level you would not want to reduce the MPOs below, or is it all on a per patient basis?
The instantaneous stuff can be sorted by pushing up the anti-shock settings a bit, the peak mpo values probably just need taking down across the board.
Is there a minimum MPO setting that you generally would not want to go below (or maybe an MPO range that you normally want to stay within)? I realize these values are dependent on the individual, but thought there may be some guidelines.
Thanks again,
Andy
Right Left
Hz dB dB
250 10 15
500 20 30
1K 40 50
2K 45 55
4K 65 65
8K 60 55
If you start bringing the levels down below 90-95dB (really unnecessary unless you suffer with Hyperacusis) you’ll lose the sensation of loudness growth as the aid’s output becomes more compressed. Although certain fitting strategies suggest that amplified level changes in speech aren’t hugely advantageous to the wearer, Oticon in particular have sought to preserve a degree of what they call ‘floating point linearity’ to maintain the discrete differences of loudness.
So, to answer you question, you’ll make the output sound incredibly flat by bringing the MPO down too much - I doubt you’d actually do any damage other than possibly training your auditory system to use a narrower dynamic range than it actually has - which is a bit of a waste TBH.
Just a general note on this, if you are fiddling around with the MPO settings, you’ll get far more observable change in loudness by cutting the lower tones first.
