In-situ is found under Client DAta/Audiogram/start in-situ audiometry. I’ve done one in the past.
Looking at our relative MPO’s they are about the same from 2K to 8K and only vary by 3 dB. From 125-1100 hZ I’m -15 dB lower than you, from 1250-1400 hZ -9 dB and from 1500-1700 hZ -5 dB. I’m guessing these are based on the loud noise comfort limit test I took which is a bit arbitrary. Not sure if this is the source but the lower range is where the guitar’s fundamental frequencies are along with some of the lower note harmonics. I could bump all of the MPO values up temporarily to see if it make a difference.
Now comparing to the Widex is a different story. The Widex MPO from 125 to 625 hz is 5-19 dB higher and then about the same up to about 1K where the Widex is less than Philips by as much as 11-22 dB. So I wonder if I should just try to match the Widex in MPO to see if it makes any difference.?
I don’t see any harm in maxing out the MPO on the Phillips for a test, as long as you don’t play your guitar very loudly. It would be just temporary to find out whether the distortions you hear are related to a low MPO. It’s also easily reversible; you can simply go back to your previous session and save it onto your hearing aids again.
Here is the “input/output 2cc” curve for 500 Hz and MPO of 108 in my music program.
So I tried to set the MPO values to match Widex which is mostly lowering them except 125-500 hz where the Widex is larger. The program will not allow me to change those enough to match so I went to the limit but there are not any insertion gains that low for me since my hearing is pretty good down low. Will test when I get back from my haircut. Trying to reduce the Widex hair noise which is much louder than the Philips and driving me crazy, lol
OK hair cut and matching the MPO seemed to have zero effect on anything. I’m just going to wait for my Widex Audi appointment tomorrow and see what can be improved or sorted out on the Widex. No tweaks needed for music at least.
I’ve run out of suggestions lol. And you’ve got me thinking about what I might be missing out on, music-wise, with my Oticon hearing aids! Best of luck with the Widex!
I realize this response is not about music but thought that maybe it will help explain some of the issues with a steeply sloping hearing loss. I have Oticon Intents and found after initial REM I still had the occasional word that I was not understanding. Based on my Speech Mapping I kept trying to increase the high frequencies especially around 4K to get up to my right ear threshold. After applying NAL-NL2 REM which boosted my insertion gain by 9 dB and switching to more closed domes I found that all speech was distorted and that the overall loudness was too high so I kept having to adjust it down with App just so I could stand to wear hearing aids.
After doing some more research I found this paper which confirmed what I was hearing and that I needed to go back to open vent domes and VAC+ fitting formula which sounds so much better. Still have occasional problems especially speech in noise but now realize my expectations were likely too high and that with open venting I will not obtain the maximum benefit available from noise reduction and directionality. Like you I think at some point I will try and obtain a second pair of hearing aids so that each can be optimized to specific conditions but right now my hearing aids work great for the majority of the time I’m using them. 2017-Audiology Online-Complex versus Standard Fittings_ Part 2.pdf (1.2 MB)
Have you tried out the Speech Rescue frequency lowering technology? It may help improve your speech understanding without having to boost up your high frequency amplification too much.
Thanks Tim, makes sense. Oticon/Philips open bass dome work really well and almost cover my entire range of loss. The Widex open domes are much more open and so prone to feedback. I did try the open bass domes on the Widex and while they seemed to fit snuggly I did have a tough time getting them to snap on. The receiver ends are both different and don’t know if I’m risking leaving one in my ear.
Like you I have made peace with the fact that I just can’t get used to prescribed levels of correction. It becomes extremely annoying and wind noise just howls as well as other noises like the road noise from my car. With Philips and their open bass domes I found their fit4speech rationale to be comfortable and Philips noise reduction work really well. However my guitar sounds terrible and the Widex is just the opposite, great guitar sound but terrible noise control. The Widex fit rational is supposed to be like the Philips Fit4speech but it’s just way too intense. I’ve been running the app at 2-3 where 1 is off in volume! What is the this VAC+ fitting (Oh I see it’s Oticon and probably like the fit4speech of Philips)? And yes NAL2 is just too much for me. I don’t care if my hearing of speech isn’t optimal but it’s like being water boarded all day long if I tried to run the Widex at 100%. I don’t think my audi wants to go in the direction of open domes at all and started me off with vented sleeve. Tulips are not as occlusive but work but if the gains were lower then open domes might work for me.
My goal with the 2nd set of aids was for music and that works very well. I think for mnt bike riding I will have to use the Philips for the their wind and noise reduction. And in my car if I have the Widex on I will have to lower the mid-freq of the EQ control way down and maybe make a program out of it. That is exactly where the road noise resides and can be controlled and probably the wind too. I’m going to impress on my audi tomorrow that I love the music sounds and can’t stand the intensity of the overall Widex hearing aid experience.
Thanks for all your advice. I’m going to try to explain all this to my audi tomorrow, lol. I don’t envy him but I think with my particular loss I’m NOT as easy fit. I still have 6 weeks to go to trial the Widex.
I looked at your audiogram and you have a very normal ski slope loss and your loss on both ears is quite symmetrical, so I don’t think that your case is an atypical case that would be hard to fit. If your audi can’t make it work for you, at least don’t blame it on yourself having a hard-to-fit loss, because that’s not the case here at all from what I can see.
I have not tried the Speech Rescue frequency lowering because I love listening to music with the Oticons as they are now. I wanted to minimize the amount of HA processing so as to prevent any potential distortion or other affects. I did try speech rescue with the Phonak Lumity during my trial period and felt that maybe it was distorting sounds a bit, but it could have also been due to the fact that I have never worn hearing aids before so that the high frequencies were just not normal for me at the time.
I really like the Oticons, except when I’m in a noisy environment. I find that boosting the high frequencies even just a little with the brightness (2 dB) seems to increase the amount of noise considerably thereby decreasing my speech intelligibility instead of enhancing it. I do not find that increasing the NNS helps with this issue. I have an appointment with the audiologist next week to return my REM completely back to the original VAC+ target and will know for sure then if I can get back to the original speech intelligibility I had at the beginning.
You can selectively enable Speech Rescue for just the main program and not in the music program so that you are not stuck with Speech Rescue when listening to music in the music program.
The Phonak Lumity uses SoundRecover 2 (not Speech Rescue, which is an Oticon name only for its kind of frequency lowering) for their frequency lowering technology. The Phonak SoundRecover 2 uses frequency compression to lower the high frequency sounds, while the Oticon Speech Rescue uses frequency transposition and composition for frequency lowering, so they are 2 totally different approaches to do frequency lowering. You can’t just assume that because you don’t like the Phonak approach, you will also not like the Oticon approach just the same. You should really try it out to see if Speech Rescue will help you with speech understand before you judge it based on a totally different frequency lowering technology from another brand of aid (Phonak in this case). If you try it out and still don’t like it, at least you’re not cheating yourself out of not trying it out simply because you made some incorrect presumption that they’re all the same thing across the brands.
I personally find the Oticon Speech Rescue to not distort the musical tonality at all, because it’s not a frequency compression scheme. So I don’t have any problem using it even for music listening. But like I said, you can enable it in one program (your main program) and disable it in other programs (like the music program). You can also make a copy of the main program and not have it in the main program but add it to the copied program, this way you can do A/B comparison on the fly to judge the difference for yourself before you make a final decision on whether you want to use it or not.
Instead of boosting the highs manually causing an increase in noise that hurts speech understanding, one thing you can try is to use one of the standard fitting rationales like DSL or NAL-NL2 instead of VAC+ to see if it helps. Those standard fitting rationales were design with speech clarity in mind so they may work out better for you than using VAC+ then boost up the highs in the VAC+ formula.
Agreed at some point I will likely try Speech Rescue but for the present time my primary focus is to get back on the VAC+ target.
I did not elaborate on my full series of fitting rationales. After starting with default VAC+ (which seemed to work the best in hindsight) I started on the speech understanding via increase of higher frequencies which included the following:
Increased the sound perception brightness by one step - definitely noticed increase in frequency but no real noticeable improvement in speech understanding.
Add Oticon NAL-NL2 as second program - still having occasional problems in understanding certain words from my wife. Lound restaurant setting mostly able to understand my wife but had to concentrate intently on the conversation. Tried Speech Booster but no noticeable improvement.
Audiologist suggested trying NAL-NL2 as fitting target from Natus Aurical Freefit. This was likely due to my understanding that most HA fittings are underfit based on a couple of research efforts. Almost immediately I knew that this was a mistake due to artificial sound (excessive high frequencies) lots of “s” and “sh” and people on radio sounded like they were lisping, a large increase in noise level that resulted in headaches at end of day, and occasional feedback prevention issues especially in wind that I had never experienced before.
That is when I started research on possible answers and found paper provided above. Had audiologist reset fitting rationale to VAC+ in a rush and it seems that the Aurical NAL-NL2 programming is still present in some manor because I notice a jump in the gain curves between 4K and 8K that was not there during initial program fitting. Now waiting for next appointment to correct issue. I plan to then just use the default program for a month or more before trying any additional changes. Primarily because I’m a bit exhausted from all of the effort put in so far.
Hopefully that clarifies the process that I went through and answers your questions.
I just want to say Tim, I feel your pain and exhaustion, lol. Saw my audi today and while he made a slight change that helped in mid-freq (reduction) still had to lower the vol to survive the ride home. The road noise sounds like an off station AM radio. And when I lowered the vol in the app to about 3 (nom is 5) it’s OK and I still hear road noise but it’s the actual tire noise and not this digital craziness. I have the same issue even in a mild breeze and the these SmartRIC’s are supposed to be vastly improved in wind noise…haaaaaaah! Again bad AM radio noise and the actual wind noise is not that annoying.
Audi also says “why are you focusing on your voice” when I tell him I HATE how loud boomy my voice is. He says the tulips are not vented and that’s why with my good low freq hearing. But their vented solution is the vented sleeve which won’t stay in my ear and their open domes will feedback according to him. But when I tried the Oticon open bass domes on the Widex they did not feed back at all. I’m very frustrated and feel at some point I will need to DIY the Widex to get what I want from them.
Whenever this “Wind Reduction” mode, I presume that is, kicks in, the sound becomes clear and hollow, and can hear a conversation 15feet away as if the people stood right next to me. Perhaps an effect of cancelling the wind noise frequencies. Maybe this can be reduced or turned OFF altogether by the Audiologist I really don’t know. I have not had the same observation with Road Noise (asphalt and gravel) however, or at least not to the same extent that it becomes over powering and annoying. I have to count myself lucky, the fitting seems pretty much very good from the start to the point I don’t know what I’d want to change if anything. I wish there was a way to see what sound scape mode the HA are in (not what program) at any one time. Right now all one can do is guess. At the very least it would be nice to be able to manually control the active sound scape so that any given sound scape settings can be tweaked/optimized to one’s fitting and preferences rather than making an individual program with My Sound. I do wonder if the list of soundscapes shown in the My Sound application is the same than what is used with the Universal program. I don’t see a “Windy” soundscape for instance.
Wind reduction is either on of off and Compass says it reduces the noise by up to 8.4 dB with wind. All I get if it’s windy is am radio static or what I call bacon frying sounds…probably from the wind running over the microphone but that is supposed to be very improved…so I would hate to see how bad it was in the std moment 440, lol. And I get the same noise conversion in the car above about 50 mph and it get worse as I approach 70. Mostly on grooved cement freeways and not so much on asphalt. Lower the volume or mid freq is all that helps. Cut my hair pretty short on the sides because the hair artifact noise was all day long. Still get some noise, scratchy (bacon frying again) with movement but better now. Philips 9040 do this too but much more muted and wind is lower volume too with the philips and absolutely zero road noise at all…just the normal tire noises and ZERO AM radio, bacon frying from the Philips. But tested again with a philips adjustment and Widex wins hands down with my guitar playing.
All OOB modes, IME, on Windex have low level noise level gain set too high. Dropping those gain levels for a flatter profile made a world of difference for me.
My 2¢ is it’s worth taking the time, making them work for you because they are the only option for musicians. I stick with the pure over music program because the zero delay is that worthwhile. I passed on Lumity and More after trails, with Windex I can hear the difference in setups and strings, even different sounds from the wood/grain in violin soundposts. I passed on the excellent Limity Stereozoom for the Widex sound quality.
I am thinking the same thing that the gains are just too high. They do have low-freq stabilization on which has 125-630 hz grayed out. That was the fitting from the vented sleeves. Now I have tulips which have not been REM’d. I can see that the insertion gain at 1K is 13-17 and yet by Audiogram is 25 dB or very good at 1K, after which the ski slope drop kicks in. Will try to measure the road noise freq spectral analysis to see if it matches the air cleaner which peaks around 5-600hz but is still high almost out to 2K.
While I like Puresound the noise control is even worse and it wants to feedback sometimes. It is different and more clear but found even the Universal is very good for my guitar playing. Music program is not as good and a bit too shrill and bright. I have this weird thing (and only with the Widex insertion gains not the Philips) where the gains between 2 and 4K are 7-8 dB higher for the left ear vs the right and that ear does have more issues with sound being too loud along with more noise and distortion.
Getting the low level gain settings dropped resolved the chronic feedback issue I experienced early on. That was with open domes.
I’m on tulips too now. Simply because I was in-between sizes of the the base open domes, , but tulips are a real nice balance of openess and occlusion. They’ve got to be especially nice for a steep slope like yours.
The main thing with tulips is that they stay in,lol. The vented sleeves worked too but would not stay in. I had open bass domes with the Philips and no feedback issues. I even tried them on the Widex and they didn’t feedback. I doubt my audi would put open Widex domes on me, lol. I wish I knew where the noise was coming from other than mid EQ freq but with a 3 band equalizer that is a very wide band, lol. Low and high adjustments have absolutely zero effect on the noise.
For music and with my Oticon hearing aids, I’ve come to realize that the ‘acoustics’—meaning domes, tulips, and molds—are nearly as important as the music program itself. It’s likely that you’ll only achieve the best of both worlds (general use and music) with custom molds.
, but tulips are a real nice balance of openess and occlusion. They’ve got to be especially nice for a steep slope like yours.