AmpCROS using the Phonak phone program

Hearing Aids
#1

My friend of 25 years has a moderate loss in her right and a profound loss in her left.

She tried a BiCROS but hated it. She then had to really argue her case to be issued with a hearing aid for her profound ear.

She now has 2 x Phonak Aids and uses the Speech in 360 program 99% of the time as a AmpCROS. I told her all about it.

She has mentioned in the past that the Speech in 360 program is not always accurate but is a lot better then not using that program.

I found out from another thread that you can use the phone program as an AmpCROS.

I want to understand it better so I can tell my friend, to see if she wants to try it out.

If she has the Acoustic Phone program added, which ear is the preferred ‘phone ear’?

If she uses the phone program, will she get speech into her right ear even when someone is on her left side?

(She has the NHS version of the Naida V70 SP and UP.)

I should add that her hospital were not impressed with the idea of having an AmpCROS so she got the Speech in 360 program added by saying she wanted it for another reason.

I watched Dr Cliff’s You Tube video but it doesn’t go in to detail.

#2

Hi there. Caught this question while Googling. It’s from 2 years ago, so not sure if it’s relevant anymore.

Yes, the V70 products are capable of being set up for AmpCROS. The audiologist needs to set up the binaural acoustic telephone setting in the hearing aid, and set the routing from the signal to go from bad ear to good ear – much like a regular CROS system would. The difference is that she still might benefit from some limited amplification on the bad side, if there is any residual hearing in that ear. The volume on that side should be reduced, however, to prevent the amount of amplification presented from distorting the signal sent up the auditory nerve to the brain.

Note there are some downsides to AmpCROS, most notably being battery drain. She will go through batterie twice as fast using AmpCROS. Also, certain automatic features in the aids will be turned off when using the AmpCROS setting, most notably directional noise reduction. She should have a manual setting set up to overcome this.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

#3

Does AmpCROS not also significantly mitigate the benefit of the hearing aid in the better ear? Does is not sacrifice hearing on the better ear to some degree?

#4

Sacrifice in what way? You lose a lot of features, but as long as you wrangle the REM (and it does need a fair bit of extra wrangling), gain is largely the same, just with extra access to the bad side similar to a CROS.

#5

I once asked Phonak Aud support about it and the guy i spoke to advised against it because he was of the opinion that using AmpCROS sacrifices gain/focus on the good ear by shifting the focus to the poorer side. E.g. if you set up AmpCROS via Speech 360 you have to force the mics to focus to the left/right (whichever is the poorer side), rather than a forward focus. I’ve never been particularly confident in my understanding of this system, hence my questions.

#6

Speech in 360 can be set to Auto from my understanding?

#7

If you just set it to default without rem, the gain is optimized for phone and I believe the mics on the good ear default to be attenuated. But as long as you set it correctly and verify that things are balanced and the CROS function is transparent then it’s fine. You cannot set it up with the 360 program, only the duophone program, so once you switch to anything else it’s off. Most of my patients using this hack CROS or AmpCROS only use that program selectively.

I’m shocked that no manufacturer has addressed this need with a true ampCROS yet. I’ve been fitting these for eight years and as cochlear implant candidacy expands they are just going to be more relevant.

1 Like
#8

Why would Auto 360 not work as it’s continually transferring to either ear and you don’t loose the highs like on DuoPhone.

#9

360 program is directional compared to ampCROS being omni. It’s just a different sort of function.

#10

Speech in 360 zooms to the left, right, back and front, when set to Auto.

Is it still directional?

#11

Yes, directional back, right, front or left. :slight_smile:

#12

That’s interesting to know.

I would have never of known.

:slight_smile:

#13

AmpCROS isn’t set up using Speech in 360. The Phonak Aud Support had it wrong. It’s actually set up using the “Binaural Acoustic Telephone” setting, which maintains amplification to the good ear while also receiving transmission from the bad ear. Thus nothing is sacrificed along the lines of what this tech support person was saying. He didn’t know what he was talking about.

However…

It does sacrifice the benefits of automatic noise reduction. Since it’s using the Binaural Acoustic Telephone setting, the direction noise reduction features are turned off. I give my patients access to a manual directional setting as a solution, but on it they then don’t get the CROS benefit.

The main benefit of AmpCROS is that it still presents a signal to the poorer ear. This is important to help maintain stimulation of the auditory nerve on that side. This helps if the patient ever considers getting a cochlear implant for the bad side.

1 Like
#14

Auto 360 wouldn’t work because it’s presenting the signal to the poor side, not the good side. It’s not a CROS set-up in any way.

And, regarding “losing the highs on DuoPhone”, that can be avoided by making sure that Real Ear measurements are performed and adjusting the DuoPhone setting to match target.

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#15

@scot-frink

We’ve already concluded that speech in 360 won’t work anyway but I’m puzzled why you think it’ll only zoom one way?!

Set to Auto and it’ll zoom to front, left, back and right.

Set to left and it’ll zoom to the left. Set to right and it’ll zoom to the right so obviously the direction can be changed!

Zoom to the right and it’ll take the speech to the left, which could be the poor side but we’ve already concluded it won’t work as AmpCROS anyway.