Still in trial period on Audeo Lumity L90-R hearing aids, smooth sailing so far, except for Bluetooth sound quality. I’m not talking about the occlusion vs bass trade-off, I’m getting adequate bass with power domes. But I have adequate music volume with iPhone turned all the way down and it sounds overdriven, compressed, a little clipped. The same music played over headphones through HA mics sounds undistorted. HA specialist can’t see anything wrong, says BT is just a convenience, doesn’t sound good? I saw this distortion issue reported on P90 from two years ago on Reddit. What is my HA fitter doing wrong, or is he right that Phonak streamed music sounds awful?
Welcome to the community.
If you use the search function you will find many threads here about music and hearing aids and many comments by professional musicians. This is the topic that first brought me here. The comments are diverse with some interesting and informative and others not. There are some excellent recommendations regarding settings.
My opinion is to continue to work with your audiologist, it is a long ongoing process. However, if you really care and understand about how music is supposed to sound you are going to have to learn how to make your own adjustments and recognize your limitations and the limitations of the current generation of hearing aids.
Thanks! I’m still hopeful this s a “configuration”issue instead of a tuning issue. Hoping for a clue to prompt my fitter into fixing it, since I don’t run Target, yet.
A big clue I think, is I can play the same song on a computer through headphones-over-Phonak-mic AT THE SAME TIME that I stream that song directly from my phone to Phonak. Then, in the myPhonak app I can A/B test by sliding Ambient Balance between “Surrounding” and “Audio”. The “Surrounding" mic path sounds much better even though I’m still in “Bluetooth streaming + mic” profile. That is, the corruption doesn’t apply to the mic path in this profile, just the BT path. Is there separate tuning before summing??
Streaming from a computer sounds the same, so not the myPhonak app or phone apparently.
Even inexpensive Sony BT headphones propped above my ears to cover the L90 microphones sounds better (TBH it needs equalization, which I at least have 3 bands in Automatic profile!)
There are bigger worries no doubt. It sounds good if I use headphones, and Sennheiser HD58x fit over the L90’s just fine. Still, adding D2A, headphones, mic, and A2D to the audio path shouldn’t make music sound better, right?
Jeff_P1, you don’t post an audiogram, but look at mine! Even with a flatliner such as I have, my Phonak Lumity Life LR-90s stream music over my Android Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 phone fabulously! If I had custom molds things would sound even better, but I’m allergic to just about any material except the silicone power domes.
I have a dedicated Music program set up that I put my aids into when at concerts or listening to the hifi at home. It sounds rich, full, lots of dynamic range. In truth, most of the settings for this program were copy/pasted over from older Marvel aids. My previous audi set up the Music program (what I call “Dumb Ears” cuz it doesn’t try to do any noise management at all).
Your HA fitter may not be trained enough to know how to set up a Music program. I wish I could be more precise and say exactly what needs to be done in the Target software, but I’m not a DIYer, and don’t know how to do this. I can say with certainty that Phonak Lumity Life aids CAN deliver fabulous sound. And again, with my hearing loss, I’m guessing there’s lots of compression going on, but it still sounds great - and better than my default program that would kill all the dynamic range in music.
Perhaps you have a phone + HA issue? Maybe you could try a different phone, or somehow articulate what you want changed. Clipped to me sounds like too much high freqs, but you also want rich, full bass.
I hope others will chime in, but don’t give up yet!
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Thanks! I can stream from another source with the same issue. And the sound is acceptable as long as it comes over the L90 microphones, even in BT+mic mode! Seems like a weird problem to have, expected BT path, being digital almost to the receiver, to have less mid and high frequency noise and distortion (compressed/clipped overdriven sound).
Have you checked your aids’ MPO (max power output) vs GAIN (volume) on the settings diagram? Cuz if they are too close together, you get more distortion and compression. I recently had my audi boost the MPO up a bit so there was more space between that and Gain. That’s my chart displayed.
Indeed may be getting to that point. He did bump up MPO a bit but didn’t notice much. I’m still hoping for a switch setting or interface gain setting. I’ll see if he will give me that curve for my setting,
Seems like they would have a default “equivalent” gain for full scale digital vs mic sound pressure level based on typical earbud+phone full scale. I have to keep volume at minimum setting in BT source - somedays that mutes so I have to go up one step, but adequate loudness at or near minimum. I do have a pretty big air/bone gap on one ear where this issue is more noticible, but again, sounds fine over mic path! I keep wondering what is unique to BT path vs mic path in BT+mic??
Thanks for sharing your gain curves. I guess lower MPO is safer if it works I see you have typically 4-5 dB compression per 15dB input change which matches what I’ve read elsewhere as sounding decent. Will need to learn more about the chart vs the gain table, from table looks like input + gain would put you into MPO before the curves seem to indicate?
Lots to learn no doubt.
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It is maybe not related. But I also found the gain in the streaming programs far too high. I’d ask your audi to reduce the gain in streaming + speach and streaming + music. It at least gives you more headroom to adjust the volume in the phone.
Mine sound great. No distortion. Can you identify which frequencies are affected? Your audiologist can adjust individual frequency ranges for the streaming program. Make sure they are adjusting the streaming program and not the Autosense programs. Their comment sounds like they dont know how to adjust the streaming program (there is one for streaming speech and one for streaming music).
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An update: I’ve made some progress by turning off “reduce loud sounds” hearing protection on iPhone. The music isn’t loud, set at minimum volume on iPhone, but interface seems to think it is loud? I guess it does compression, and some music is already pretty compressed to begin with. Still needs equalization and gain still seems off, so fine tuning likely the next stop. I thought I tried this switch before but maybe not long enough or on enough music. Thanks for the ideas - still wonder if there is another “switch” somewhere or if it’s just negotiating fine tuning from here.