Cancel out background noise on Paradise Mics

Hearing Aids
#1

Hi all,

I used my Paradise Naida BTE hearing aids almost exclusively to dial into MS Teams meetings, and to talk and hear.

I used to always go into a quite room to have such video calls, and today tried to take a call in the office, and was told that people on the other side of the video call couldn’t hear me as the Naida Mics were picking up background noise. And to my amazement, the hearing individuals explained that they have special “noise cancelling” headphones/mics which cancels all noise out except their own voice.

Can the hearing aids/Paradise Naidas do this? I have noticed funnily, if I pull a beanie down long enough and cover the hearing aids, people have said its easier for them to hear me in noisier places! Hopefully there is a more professional solution though.

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#2

Check the my phonak app.

#3

I couldn’t really see any options actually.

#4

I’m no tech expert, but maybe you could use a noise cancelling headphones with mic, where the headphones go right over your aids and the mic doesn’t pick up ambient noise as much? Were you just doing the video call seated in front of a computer, or were your Naida BTEs paired + conneccted to it for streaming audio on the call? Hope you get some more suggestions here.

#5

This helped in my case to reduce background noise. You need to ask your audi to change the these settings:

image
image950×534 27.4 KB

In Phone call + mic:
Noise Block: OFF
Soft noise reduction: OFF
WindBlock: OFF

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#6

Are you on a laptop or desktop? If you’re on a laptop try configuring Teams to use the internal microphone on the computer. If you’re on a desktop you’d have to plug in an external mic or headset. The hearing aid mics work pretty well for phone calls (in my experience) but aren’t going to be as good at rejecting background noise as a microphone dedicated solely for picking up sound from close by.

The other advantage to using to changing input sources is the hearing aid will switch to A2DP to stream the output back to you which is superior to HFP (Bluetooth profile for both input/output used by phones…meant for headsets).

#7

Yep got it. Yes I ended up just using a stock standard headset which has an amazing noise cancelling microphone. Then in teams configured it so my hearing aids are used as the speakers.

But having said that even on phone calls in shopping centres I’ve been told I come across as very noisy. Is that always going to be an issue I’ll face in noisy backgrounds?

#8

Did you do this? Massively helps your situation!!

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#10

The fix here isn’t to turn off the noise reduction features, but rather to reduce the mic attenuation. Your screen shot shows it at “-1”. Default is “-6”. The mic attenuation is how much the microphone pick-up is reduced when on the setting as compared to your regular setting. Phonak (and most manufacturers) default it to -6 for phone calls, so more emphasis is given to the phone call and less to the environment, helping you to focus more on the call. But since the Phonak aids rely on the mics to pick up your voice to transmit to the caller, it can also unintentionally reduce how well the caller will hear you. By changing it from -6 to -1, you’re increasing how much the caller will hear you by 5dB. That’s probably why it’s working better for you. But, if you’re in a noisy environment, it will also increase how much you pick up those sounds as well. Thus you should leave the noise reduction (Noice Block, WindBlock, Soft Noise Reduction) turned up or even increase them to counteract how much you’re hearing ambient noise. These features address steady-state noise (i.e. wind, fans, etc.) and generally don’t affect speech. Hence, by having these features still turned on but by changing the attenuation from -6 to -1 or even 0, you will increase how much the caller hears you but minimize how much ambient noise they hear.

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