Fine tuning suggestion that helped me

Hearing Aids
#1

I found something, by accident, that helped me and I wanted to pass it on in case it works for anyone else.

I bought the Costco Kirkland 10.0 (similar to Phonak Paradise), and they just didn’t have the same pop as my old ones, Phonak B series.

I was watching tik-tok one day and there was one with a guy with a tone generator just to see where your hearing started and stopped. He ran the tone generator from very low tones to very high.

Well, started off fine but then around 1100 my hearing dropped off to basically nothing between 1100 and 2300. Well, no wonder I can’t hear as well. I was missing a big chunk of the speech range.

I knew I had some dead spots but I must have more than I thought. We looked at the settings and even though Sound Recover (Hi Frequency Protect) was turned on, it was not moved down far. We moved it all the way down to 800, and the 1100-2300 range re-appeared.

I downloaded a tone generator and verified I was getting all frequencies up to around 7000. The subject range was definitely there, but lower than everything else. So, we raised just that range to the point that all frequencies seem to me to be about the same volume.

That made a world of difference in my speech understanding.

Using a tone generator app allowed me to see where I had some holes in the tuning of my hearing aids, and gave me something specific to give my fitter.

15 Likes
#2

You probably need to see an AuD, not a hearing aid technician, they can help you far better and you should look into CI and perform a CI Evaluation, you are a prime candidate for one

#3

Is this on a iPhone or Android?

#4

I’m just a little surprised that your audiologist didn’t mention dead spots to you

1 Like
#5

@Don: Isn’t this sorta the tail wagging the dog? Isn’t it supposed to be the HA guy that tells YOU that you have dead spots, as @hass5744 has already suggested?

3 Likes
#6

Yeah. My audiologist pointed out to me right away that the machine was no longer able to read my loss since it was so bad. That was two years ago. I now have a hearing test scheduled for Friday. Since I’m not looking to buy new aids right now, if nothing else it should be amusing. But at least he’ll let me know

1 Like
#7

Thanks for the tip. I’m a DIYer and have so far relied on the built in media within Phonak Target.

I spent half an hour playing about with a tone generator app and managed to fine tune SoundRecover far better than I’ve been able to with the built-in sounds.

On a depressing note I’ve now realised how bad my higher frequency hearing really is. My wife who is the same age as me can easily hear sounds up to about 14kHz, even with hearing aids and SoundRecover I max out at 7kHz. I do find that a little weird as my hearing loss in my left ear is quite mild but even so it can’t hear anything in the real world over 7kHz aided or unaided.

3 Likes
#8

Thanks for sharing.
@Dani has used his piano in a similar way to much improve music.
CI mappings are done similarly with good results as well.
Good to see you posting, been a while.

1 Like
#9

This is a very helpful tip. I wondered about how to do this also. I’ve got a couple dead spots - one at around 4200 and another around 6000. I’m just not sure how to liven them up. I suppose I’ll experiment with Target. Wouldn’t stretching sound recover all the way down to 4000 introduce unwanted artifacts?

#10

Did you test your hearing on tone generator app without hearing aids or with hearing aids?

#11

Lowering Sound Recover 2 (SR2) to aronund 4000 Hz is still pretty mild settings. Still SR2 can often turn the “s” sound into an “sh” It takes playing around with the settings to get it right and even if properly adjusted there is no guarantee that you’ll like it or it will help your speech understanding. I’d start with Phonak’s recommended settings and adjust from there.

2 Likes
#12

This is interesting. Is it sine wave form that we’d use to test?

Using that I just went in intervals of 100 to see how this works. With my Philips on the General program at the default/zero volume setting I couldn’t hear anything below 400 Hz even with the tone generator set at 100 percent volume while it drove my spouse out of the room. At 500 Hz I could easily hear when the tone generator’s volume was at 25 percent.

What I’m wondering about is sound distortion-- which I noticed at 900 Hz and the volume of 7 percent. Then at 1300 Hz the sound was kind of warbly, though very easy to hear the high pitch at low volume (7 percent). 1400 Hz sounded warbly too. 1500-2500 sounded like mild vibrating in the tone. At 2500 I switched my aids program to Speech in Noise and the reverberation and high pitch was almost painful.

At 2700 to 3000 Hz (when I stopped testing and decided to ask here about what I’m experiencing), the sounds had resonance like a bell.

I’m assuming this isn’t the way the sounds are ordinarily heard but if that’s the case what is wrong? I’m also wondering if testing through each frequency range and noting these things is worthwhile in figuring out what needs to be changed on the aids.

Addition: Just had my normal hearing spouse listen to 2500 Hz and 3000 Hz to see if warble or resonance is what she hears. It’s not. Just steady tone. Same for me when I listen to it without my hearing aids.

@Neville would some of this distortion or extraneous sounds I’m hearing have to do with the dual vented open domes I’m wearing? In the OpenBass domes post you suggested custom molds–which I intend to get–but that will take more than a month and in the meantime I’m wondering how much of this is the aids themselves and can be remedied (or not) with fitting.

#13

Why use a tone generator? I use the AudiogramDirect in Target program.

#14

I don’t have that program. Tone generator online is available to me.

I’ve downloaded Philips HearSuite but it can’t connect to my hearing aids until I get NoahLink. I’d rather not get that far into DIY unless I have to. Which I might, but I don’t have that kind of hearing knowledge yet.

2 Likes
#15

Looked it up and AudiogramDirect is a Phonak program. Anyone know if there is a Philips equivalent?

#16

I don’t think they are the same thing. Phonak’s AudioDirect is a feature in the Target software that effectively performs a hearing test using your HAs as the signal source. I, and others here have reported, have found that I can get a more pleasing First Fit outcome using my AudioDirect results (from 5-10 db worse) than my Audiology Hearing Test results. After that, the tone generator is helpful in finding flat spots across the hearing range that suggests where to tweak the First Fit outcome. For example, for me, I had a flat spot at 4,200. By moving SR2 one notch (from 17 to 16) I was able to greatly improve the flat spot to where I could hear it to about 80% compared to each side of that spot. This has definitely improved speech understanding. Very slightly more “sh” instead of “s” but well worth the trade off.

But I should add your audiogram shows a lot more severe loss than mine so YMMV.

1 Like
#17

In-situ audiometry is the Philips HearSuite equivalent of Phonak’s AudioDirect.

2 Likes
#18

My audiogram in my profile is from Audiogram Direct and in a hearing test I can definitely hear 7kHz but when played on a phone’s loudspeaker I can’t. My wife can hear everything the phone plays up to about 14kHz and my kids about 17kHz and my cat from its reaction at least 20kHz.

If you look at my audiogram my left ear should be able to hear above 7kHz but at the volume produced by the phone it can’t hear anything. Again these tones are definitely being produced at a reasonable volume as the rest of my family can angrily attest to.

SoundRecover2 has improved the situation but left me pondering why I can’t hear these tones outside of a hearing test, i.e in the real world.

#19

Might be the dB.
Hearing tests and audiogram direct for example get pretty loud whereas out in the environment finding that frequency at the needed db might be difficult.

Using frequency lowering do you hear birds?

#20

So your left ear 8K frequency is No Response?