Thank you for the tone generator links, very interesting.
No aids - 4900
No SR - 6500
With SR - 11.000
Best proof of SR I’ve seen.
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I’m impressed that you were able to hear sounds up to 11,000 Hertz.
What hearing aids are you using if I may ask?
These are Phonak V90 312T which I have had from the beginning which was Sept '16.
Reading the comments below the tone generator was interesting. Some can hear very high pitches.
I found another interesting web site that can be used for testing the Speech Rescue function:
http://hearbirdsagain.com/sound-samples/
This one is a bit more down to earth, at least in my case since it is bird songs that are pitched at relatively high frequencies. Some of these birds I just can’t hear at all normally but now with my Oticon OPN aids and the Speech Rescue function I can hear all of them (but at lower frequencies, of course).
The web site is actually for a special device for bird watchers that does a similar thing by shifting high frequencies down to a lower range - that is why the recordings have several different parts where they shift the frequencies lower down. Thanks to my hearing aids I don’t need a device like that.
I have a question about Genie 2 here for folks who’ve been using it for a while now.
When I copied the general P1 program into P2, the Automatics page (as seen below) is lacking the Binaural Broadband option (the last option). The first page you see below is for P1. The second page is for P2, which is a copy of P1. I just use the Copy function in the Program Manager page to copy P1 into P2. All the settings seem to copy over properly except that this Binaural Broadband option is missing from the P2 copy.
Don’t worry why the Transient Noise Management have different settings between P1 and P2. I manually changed the value myself.
Does anyone have any idea why? Thanks.
That’s the same observation I had with my setting. When you click on the help bouton on the right top side it explain you about binaural interaction. I guess if you activate or deactivate this option it will transfer the setting to the other programs.
Thanks, I think you’re correct there. There must be no option to have it on for one program and not on for another program, so they only give you that option in the default program to avoid confusion.
Thanks for sharing your tips! Eager to get started tomorrow on self programming and tweaking my current programs.
The post below is from forum member @gkumar from another thread that is better posted here under this title. Since the moderator has closed the other thread, I’m taking the liberty to move this post here so we can continue the discussion of this post and its subsequent continuation in this thread.
From gkumar:
I finally received and set up the mini pro. I am happy that I can manually trial and error adjustments and save multiple sessions like a changelog to see what sounds better per programmed iteration.
These iterations are eons better than what the initial audiologist had programmed and the help website for Genie is illustrative. Curiously the audiogram provided by Costco and the algorithm that maps to that audiogram has resulted in better sounds than that of the initial Audiologist’s audiogram.
Also, few questions that perhaps you guys can elucidate.
1 I’ve manually selected entire blocks of frequencies that I increased and decreased gain to ensure balanced gain on both left and right ears. This has resulted in 3 or 4 clicks of overhead volume that I can increase to as needed. However I’d like to ensure that the default level and the overhead volume click gains are well within safe parameters and not too loud. One thought was to ensure the target line is always slightly below than the fitted line. (Unsure of nomenclature here). Is this the best way?
2 I’ve a program for autophone in T or telecoil mode. However it doesn’t seem to help as much as listening directly to the phone handset or speakerphone. The phone used is Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus which has a telecoil. Is the autophone program really that underwhelming? I’ve yet to try it in theaters. What an I missing?
3 The speech rescue automatically chose certain frequencies to transpose speech. Volusiano and others have reamrkes that the default chosen frequency settings may not be the best one. How does one deduce the best frequency level? By maximum dynamic range area (area between Target and fitted lines)? I’ve manually listened to the sample phrase provided by Genie in the bottom left and compared/contrasted across all frequency levels in both left and right ear, and ended up choosing the default as that sounded the best.
4 @Volusiano, why do you need P2? Isn’t P1 sufficient? Where TNM low, SR off, NR on. Is it to hear the thwock of tennis balls being hit more clearly?
Also why does Speech In Noise sound different still from my P1 when setting TNM medium, SR on, NR maxed out, seemingly identical between my P1 and P2?
Is there a benefit in having SR on in music program nice?
My programs are as follows and I’ve a strong inkling to replace P3 with something else.
P1 default program: TNM medium, SR on, NR maxed out to 3 and 9 db each
P2 Speech in Noise; TNM medium, SR on…similar to P1 but it sounds louder than P1 slightly
P3 Autophone telecoil in Right, SR on, TNM medium, left reduced by 6 DB
P4 Music: TNM medium, SR on, NR off.
5 I hope to be more scientific in adjusting the each frequencies gain levels based on what times I can hear via the frequency generator websites few have referenced so that all the times are normalized at the same volume. Is this what others have done? Is there a better way to ensure fitted frequencies are valid like testing normalization across frequencies?
More adjustments to come. Once again, I’m super excited and looking forward to sharing tips and thoughts in the coming weeks.
And below is my post in reply to gkumar’s post above:
To answer your question 4, I want to have P2 which is a copy of P1 because in P2 I turn off Speech Rescue while I have it turned on in P1, just so that I can tell which sounds I hear are a result of Speech Rescue by doing A/B comparison between P1 and P2. Also, sometimes when I’m outdoors playing tennis, I don’t want too many distracting noises of crickets and bird chirping, so P2 without Speech Rescue will not have these sounds being heard by me. I also set the Transient Noise Management to Low in P2 (I have it on Medium in P1) so that I can hear the tennis ball pop more fully without being muted. Finally I set the Transition help in P2 to Low while I have it on Medium in P1 because I don’t want the max noise reduction to kick in too soon while I use P2 when I play tennis.
On your question 1, I’m happy with the default volume levels and balance of both my HAs so I don’t mess around with it. Hopefully somebody else who plays around with it more can help answer this question.
On your question 2, did you buy the OPN 1 with T-coil version? If not, then the Tcoil setting won’t work/be applicable for your OPN 1. If your phone has T-coil, be aware that it’s only effective if you have one of those traditional handset phones where the handset has a magnetic-type speaker to carry out the electromagnetic induction process. You need this magnetic type speaker because it creates an electromagnetic field when the speaker is energized/exercised with a sound signal, and this electromagnetic field that represents the sound signal in turn is induced into the nearby Telecoil of the hearing aid, which in turn, from this induction process, reproduces the original sound signal that was sent to the handset speaker back onto the hearing aid end.
But note that the speaker from most smart phones nowaday doesn’t use a strong magnet like the traditional telephone handset speaker. So most smart phones nowaday cannot induce an electromagnetic field from the phone to the HA’s telecoil. Most headphones, on the other hand, still use magnet type speakers, so the headphones may induce the magnetic field to the telecoil better.
You can tell whether a speaker you use (either from a phone handset or a pair of headphones) has a strong magnet or not because you’ll hear a two tone chime from your OPN when you apply that speaker right up against the OPN, denoting that it detects a magnetic field from that speaker and therefore automatically switches the OPN into the Autophone mode. How the non-tcoil version of the OPN picks up the magnetic sound wave better in the Autophone mode compared to the regular mode without a telecoil is beyond me, however. I just know that it sounds pretty good.
In my personal experience, every time I apply a pair of headphones against my OPN (Bose QuietComfort 3 NR), I definitely hear the Autophone chime telling me that my OPN detects the magnetic speakers from the headphones. The same with my Plantronics Voyager Focus phone headset, I hear the Autophone chime. However, when I apply my iPhone or Samsung Note 4 against my OPN, I don’t hear the chime. That’s how I know that the smart phones that I have don’t have a magnetic presence from their phone speakers.
Most people use the Tcoil to pick up the induced magnetic field generated from an induction loop they wear around their neck (connected to a sound source), or to pick up the induced magnetic field generated from an induction loop placed inside a room or a theater. For smart phone usage, people don’t use Tcoil for that as much anymore because direct streaming from the iPhone or Android phones via a neck streamer is the new way to do it now.
On question 3: Genie 2 selects which Speech Rescue configuration you should use for each of your OPN. In my case, because of my asymmetrical loss, it picks a different default configuration for the left ear (config 1) and for the right ear (config 7). You can tell which is the default Genie 2 picked out for you because it has that “power” icon above that configuration. I don’t know exactly what criteria Genie 2 uses to pick out what it thinks is the best configuration. I was surprised to see that it picked configuration 7 for my right ear which has severe to profound loss in the high end. The only reason I can think of is that it sees that my hearing is hopeless in that source band for configuration 7 but the destination band for config 7 is still salvageable (amplifiable), so it selected config 7 for my right ear. And it probably picks config 1 for my right ear because my loss there at 6-8 KHz actually improved compared to at 4KHz, so it probably wants the source band on my left ear to be around the 4KHz area.
While Genie 2 may think that it’s complementary to set Speech Rescue to have different configuration in each ear to cover the most high end range transposition, I, on the other hand, find it distracting to hear the same lowered sounds in different destination bands. Sometimes it feels like Speech Rescue works only on one side for me, so I prefer them to have the same destination band and I override the default Genie setting to do so. I think the configuration selection for Speech Rescue is very subjective and personal, and if what Genie 2 picked out for you sounds good or best, then leave it there. Otherwise, feel free to pick theconfiguration that you like the most. I don’t think there’s a wrong and right configuration in Speech Rescue.
Below is the 10 configuration bands again for reference in this discussion.
Why would Speech in Noise program sound different if you set everything in P1 identical to the Speech in Noise? I’m not sure, but you’re not seeing everything (all the parameters) in Genie 2. One noticeable difference is that P1 is based on the General VAC+ rationale, while it’s not sure which rationale is used for Speech in Noise. Maybe it’s a variation of the VAC+ specifically for Speech in Noise and not the General VAC+ like in P1. Maybe that’s why it still sounds different to you. Have you compared their Compression Ratio tables to see if those are the same or different? That may be another source as to why they sound different.
Is there a benefit in having SR for the Music Program? I really don’t recommend adding anything, let alone Speech Rescue, in the Music Program. This will add a lot of unnecessary colors to the music you’re listening to. Generally you’d want the music to sound as pure and unadulterated as possible, with minimal processing of any kind. You’ll probably notice that the compression ratios for the Music program are also much smaller than the other programs.
Do you really find Speech Rescue helpful for your loss? That’s because your loss is so flat that it’s pointless to lower any sound to the lower frequencies because your loss at the low frequencies is just as bad as the higher frequencies. All SR will do in your case is to unnecessarily add more sounds in the low end that you can already hear just as well in the high end, so it’s kinda like double trouble in this case, you’re hearing a same sounds in 2 different places where you can hear equally well.
Regarding your P3 -> Autophone telecoil, I didn’t see that as an option in my Genie 2 menu, but then my OPN does not have a tcoil in it. Nevertheless, I can still enable Autophone on my OPN, I just don’t need a dedicated program for it. It’s like the TV Box program, it’s there but is an add-on program to the existing 4 programs.
On your item 5 -> I wouldn’t be too gun-ho about adjusting gain levels at various frequencies unless it’s to fix a specific issue you have like overdrive/distortion/saturation at certain frequencies where you may want to pare the gain down in those frequencies. If you start adjusting them for no reason just to see, sometimes you’ll alter the intended purpose of the fitting rationales selected and used for the program it’s designed for, and mess things up for the worse as opposed to improving anything. Gain normalization across frequencies may not be what Oticon wants to do in the first place. There’s still a lot of things unknown programmed by Oticon deep inside of Genie 2 not seen at the surface. So be careful with Genie 2 because it’s like getting a hold of a loaded gun, you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot playing with it.
Apologies for the delayed reply to many of your earlier posts. I too would like to confirm that the Speech Rescue works like a charm for me. I can hear up to 9000 Hz with SR on, and only up to 7000 Hz without SR on. My SR defaults higher frequencies to the auto-selected 2.9-4.1k Hz range. So this is a clear indication that SR is doing its job!
Curiously, when I tried hearing tones stepwise at various frequencies to mimic the audiogram axes (125, 250, 500, 625, 750, 1k, 1.1, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2k, 3k, 4k, 5k, 6k, 8k), the loudness of my default program’s output where SR is on varies by frequency:
- 125 Hz is very very soft and barely noticeable
- Then it gradually increases 250 through 1.75K Hz
- Plateaus at 2K - 4K Hz
- Softens gradually from 5K through 8K Hz, where 8K Hz is soft but not as soft was 125 Hz
- 9K to 10K Hz are softer than 8K Hz, where 9K through 10K Hz are almost as soft as 125 Hz
@GeekMan So overall the loudness perception for me is like a rough parabolic function (like the shape of a lower case letter n). Is this normal? Have other people experienced similar loudness perception that varies across frequencies?
I too follow a similar syntax @pvc
I have this:
YYYYMMDD_Initial/RefinedProgramming_Changes1_Changes2_Changes3_…
So for my iterative programming, I’ve something like the following: 20171012_RefinedProgramming_SROnP1_TinnitusOnP2_NRMaxP3_…
While the comments may become very long, I have a clear understanding on what changes were made over a period of time. And using the tricks to expand the arrow to see individual items, I can quickly look up the programming or revert as needed.
As a follow up question, does anyone know what the difference is between “Transient Noise Management” in “Automatics” section and “Open Sound - Transition” in “Open Sound Navigator” section?
I’m unclear on what effects are made in “Transient Noise Management” and what “auditory focus” means in the latter. I can only hypothesize that in “Transient Noise Management”, sharp sounds like tennis balls being hit are dampened. I’m still clueless on what “auditory focus” means as per the description of “Open Sound - Transition”.
Transient Noise Management is essentially fast compression with fast recovery on loud noises to shave off/smooth out the very loud and quick sound spikes that may startle you. Some example of such noises are like the banging of dishes, loud pop of a tennis ball, the sound of ice cubes being released from an ice maker in a fridge, gun shots, etc. Some of these sounds you may not care to hear then you may want to set it to High to soften up the sound and remove the spikes. Other types of these sounds, like the pop of a tennis ball struck by a racket, maybe desirable to hear in its full entity even if it’s a loud pop, because such a sound may carry characteristic of how well the ball is struck by the racket, in the sweet spot or not, which you can’t tell anymore if its fullness is dampened by TNM.
The OpenSound transition is an entirely different thing altogether. The terms OpenSound there denotes it being a setting for the OpenSound Navigator, which is the main signal process engine for the OPN, in regards to balancing and noise reduction. The “transition” here refers to the changing of the noise reduction setting as the listening environment may transition from a simple listening environment to a complex listening environment or vice-versa. In a simple environment, you’re only allowed to have up to -3dB of noise attenuation max. In a complex environment, your max noise attenuation can only be up to -9dB max (for the OPN 3 it’s crippled to 0 to -3dB max respectively). This is what you see as “settable” in the OSN screen in the lower left and lower right side.
If this is how you have things set, then a “midway” listening environment, halfway between simple and complex, may incur a max noise reduction value of -4.5 dB, if you set the “help” (with auditory focus) profile to Medium. When you set it to medium, you can see the gray area of the noise reduction transition progressing in almost a straight line. This means that at the simplest listening environment, 0dB noise attenuation is given to the sounds. If the listening environment is right in between simple and complex, the noise attenuation will probably be around -4.5 dB (halfway between 0 and -9dB). Below is what the Medium Help profile for the OSN transition looks like, with the grey area denoting the max noise attenuation as it progresses from simple to complex IN A STRAIGHT LINE.
If you select “Low” help with the transition, you can see that the max noise attenuation is increased very slowly, as the gray curve you see goes up VERY gradually. If you select “High” help with the transition, you can see that the max noise attenuation is increased up to -9dB VERY quickly (as denoted by the top outline of the pic above). Halfway through the transition scale, you can already see that the noise attenuation is not at -4.5dB linearly, but more like at around 8.5dB instead.
But this graphical illustration only pertains to the noise reduction aspect of the Noise Removal module that is settable by the programmer in terms of the max level of noise reduction. This picture doesn’t illustrate the other transition help carried out as it pertains to the Balance module. If you recall, the Balance module uses directionality to attenuate well placed noise sources. In simple listening environment where the sound level is low (or medium) and the signal to noise ratio is high, the Balance module is constrained to give the response equivalent to that of the pinna of the human ear (Pinna Omni). In complex listening environment where the sound level is higher and the signal to noise ratio is lower, the OSN is allowed to rebalance the sounds the most to maximize the noise attenuation effect of its directionality system.
As you might have heard mentioned before, the OPN works in concert with the brain hearing. While the OPN depends on the brain hearing to provide a lot of auditory processing for the most part, the OPN DOES pitch in to give valuable “help” with rebalancing sounds (through the Balance module) and removing diffused noises (through the Noise Removal module), to “help” the brain hearing maintain its “auditory focus” as you “transition” from one listening environment to another ("simple" to “complex”). As you might have noted, I’ve bolded and underlined the keywords used in the programming picture above to form and include them inside a sentence, to help make it easier to relate. So if you select “Low” transition help, the OSN will provide less help to the brain hearing and the help won’t increase until later in the game when you’re already almost in a complex environment. If you select “High” transition help, then the OSN will provide more help to the brain hearing up front, even if you’re not too far into a complex listening environment yet.
I know this is a lot of wording but hopefully it explains it enough to understand.
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Thank you @Volusiano for moving our posts to this thread and continuing the discussion. Thank you as always for the detailed responses.
1 HEADROOM: Regarding frequency normalization and headroom adjustments, I plan to visit an audiologist (even that person is 40+ miles away) to verify my programmed settings and ensure that my frequency adjustments are safe and logical. The distance and hassle may be worth it, but this audiologist received multiple recommendations. I also hope to find out how to increase headroom from 2 clicks to maybe 3 or 4. I tried adjusting the MPO levels to a higher value as per the screenshot below, but saw no changes in the gain levels (area where there are four arrows with a label of -2.5db, 5db, 7.5db, or 10db next to the charts in Fine Tuning section). If anyone has suggestions on how to increase the headroom and have an idea for safe parameters, happy to hear folks’ thoughts.
2 TELECOIL: Yes I did buy the miniRITE-T version, which has a telecoil. It also has a double volume rocker for separate volume up and volume down actions, which was the primary reason why I opted for that model over others. My old Altas and Epoqs did activate a telecoil automatically with cell phones and landlines that had these magnets. However, with the landlines - specifically the CaptionCall telephone - and my cell phone - Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus, the telecoil does not activate automatically for some unknown reason. Until I get an iPhone, I will have to rely on the telecoil and will have to figure out how to activate the telecoil automatically, so as to remove the Phone telecoil program and use it for another more useful program. I tried setting the programming for an automatic switch by going to “End Fitting => Accessories => Autophone” section as per the below screenshot, but I still don’t have this automatic switch when using telephones. Does anyone know if this automatic switch to telecoil is a programming feature that needs to be enabled?
3 SPEECH RESCUE: Your explanation and the previously linked whitepaper were helpful, particularly in showing the 10 different frequency bands as options. What is unclear is the algorithm on how Speech Rescue chooses a band from the 10 available frequency band options. I was automatically chosen band 7, which is fine, but I wonder if it chose that band by taking the max of the integral or area between the target and similated insertion gain curves (see highlighted yellow section below). If that’s the case, then the automatically chosen bands are correct because from eyeballing, band 7 covers the max area between those two curves.
Regarding the second point on why my initial Program 1 (Default) and Program 2 (Speech in Noise) were different, your suggestion in that the compression ratios being different were indeed correct, hence even with NR, SR, TNM settings being identical, sound output were distinctly different.
Regarding your third point, yes SR was indeed useful because I am able to hear high frequencies that I couldn’t previoulsy hear as noted in this below linked post. I agree with you that Music should contain unmodified sounds (a subjectie preference) so I turned off SR for that program.
4 My program settings are now as follows:
P1 default program: SR On, NR Med, OST Med, TNM Med, Open Automatic, Tinnitus On (Ocean 3 wave)
P2 Speech in Noise; SR On, NR Hi, OST NA, TNM Med, Full Directional, Tinnitus Off (similar to P1 but it sounds louder than P1 slightly)
P3 Lecture: SR On, NR Med, OST Hi, TNM Med, Open Automatic, Tinnitus Off
P4 Music: SR Off, NR Off, OST Off, TNM Off, Pinni Omni, Tinnitus Off
The rationale for choosing for these programs were as follows:
P1 The default program sounded great, but sounded better when adding more NR and having Tinnitus on for soothing/relaxation means
P2 Speech In Noise seemed especially useful in noisy restaurants and pubs where the target audience is most likely ahead of me, hence the full directional and high NR mode
P3 Lecture mode seemed more useful than the Phone telecoil mode, particularly in corporate boardroom settings where speech is more finely attuned with high NR mode
P4 Music for raw, uncompressed sound output for concerts and wireless streaming from iPad (I tried it on my father’s iPad and it sounded fantastic, just like the TV Adapter). I put it in Pinni Omni mode since the target audience is probably in front of me, but didn’t want to lose the omni 360 degree mode. This seemed like a nice compromise.
Legend: SR = Speech Rescue, NR = Noise Reduction where low = 0 or -5 dB/Med = -1.5 or -7 dB/Hi = -3 or -9 dB, OST = Open Sound Transition, Directionality = Open Automatic/Pinni Omni/Full Directional, Tinnitus On/Off
Regarding the wireless streaming options with TV adapter and iPad, is there a way to use a particular program such as Music or does it always use P1 the default program?
5 MANUAL FREQUENCY ADJUSTMENTS: After consulting with the recommended Audiologist, I hope to be more scientific in adjusting the each frequencies gain levels based on what I can hear via the frequency generator websites. I agree with you that Genie is a tool that must be used carefully in which one should not deviate too much from the prescribed curve fittings. However, fine-tuning (by manually increasing the gain) of certain frequencies that I find difficulty in hearing such as 125-250 Hz range or the 6K - 8K Hz range may improve my audio recognition. I’ll share my findings after consulting with the audiologist.
Thanks again all for hearing my thoguhts and your invaluable responses. Looking forward to keeping the dialogue going! Cheers.
On the headroom, I’m no expert but I’m guessing it’s a function of the size of the receiver and your hearing loss. If you have a bigger receiver you get more headroom, but if you have a big hearing loss then that will eat up your headroom. So my personal opinion (not professional opinion) is that you can’t automagically increase the headroom anymore than it already is because the size of the receiver and the loss or your hearing are fixed, resulting in fixed headroom. The only way to increase headroom is to go to a bigger receiver, but if I remember correctly, you’re already at the max 105dB receiver size.
Very helpful. Thank you!
I’ve read that some people attaches an extra magnet on their cell phone to help activate the telecoil in the HA. However, what I don’t understand is that even if you do this to fool the HA into the telecoil mode, the cell phone’s speaker does not generate a strong enough electromagnetic field for the HA’s telecoil to pick up, then what good does that do?
The Autophone on/off box selection is only available on OPN wihout the Tcoil option. For those with the Tcoil option like yours, it’s not OFF/ON anymore but it’s Off/T/M/MT like you showed in your picture. Any of the value T/M/or MT would imply that Autophone is ON. I would presume that the M option would be equivalent to the non-Tcoil OPN’s ON value for Autophone.
If I were you and own a Tcoil OPN, I’d set it to the MT value to enable both the Mic and the Tcoil together. That way, for cell phones with weak or non-magnetic speaker, the Mic would pick up the sound. And for cell phones with a strong enough magnetic speaker, the Telecoil will pick up the electromagnetic sound field.
Yes I am at the loudest receiver size of 105 dB.
Excellent idea. I’ll test this first thing in the morning.