Headphones over hearing aids

Hearing Aids
#41

@Volusiano Last week I had my follow-up appointment at Costco, and I asked the fitter about the telecoil program. When she initially fit the aids, I asked her to install the telecoil mode with the microphones turned off. Instead, it turned out that she had installed the Telephone (M) mode, which I assume means the microphones were enabled and the telecoil was turned off! She switched it to Telephone (T), which should be telecoil only.

Unfortunately, when I got home I tested out the new telecoil mode, and now there is a loud, unchanging low-frequency hum whenever I switch into the mode that makes it unusable. The hum persists unchanged regardless of whether I’m using headphones or not. Any suggestions as to what might be causing the hum? Unfortunately, it seems clear that the Costco fitter has no idea how to set up the telecoil mode.

One other question: any idea what the difference is between Classroom (T) mode and Telephone (T) mode, and which would be better suited for use with headphones?

#42

I’m sorry to hear that you have a hum problem. I assume that it’s just in your house only, and you don’t hear it at other places, right?

The principle of how the telecoil works is to pick up on the electromagnetic field of the surrounding nearby area and have it induced onto the telecoil to convert to sound signal. Unfortunately, just like sound pollution in the air that can be picked up by the microphones, if there is electromagnetic field pollution in the environment, then the tcoil will pick it up just the same. Apparently, you have some kind of stray electromagnetic field generated by some kind of device in your house or nearby your house that is picked up as a hum by your hearing aids’ telecoils. Many people have reported the same issue when they use the Tcoil mode as well. It’s most likely from some big transformer somewhere. If there’s nothing in the house that can cause it, it could be an electrical transformer nearby your house somewhere as well.

Unfortunately, unless it’s some device in your house that can be identified and turned off, like if it’s a nearby electrical power transformer or something, then you’re stuck with the hum in the telecoil mode when you’re at your house. Of course you can use that mode elsewhere away from your house, like when you’re at work or at the mall or in your car driving around, or even if you walk away from your house and the hum diminishes.

I can only guess that the Telephone (T) mode might be set to be less sensitive when picking up the electromagnetic field, because the telephone speaker is right at your ear so the electromagnetic field is probably stronger, while the Classroom (T) mode is probably set to be more sensitive because the electromagnetic field generated by the big loop in the classroom is probably weaker because the loop is not located right near your hearing aids. So I would guess that the Telephone(T) mode would be more suitable for headphones than the Classroom(T) mode.

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#43

If you have profound loss in one ear, then feedback will likely be an issue with full circumaural headphones.

Depending on your platform, you MIGHT find an app that will tune your audio in your device to your Audiogram. Barring that, I’d look for an equalizer you can put between your headphones and your computer/tablet/phone.

If you are on an Apple iPad or iPhone of recent issue (last 4 years or so) and running the latest OS, you can input your Audiogram into the HEALTH app and all the audio on your device will use that Audiogram for playback THROUGH APPLE AirPods Pro or AirPods Max (and I think some Beats models as well).

#44

I have an iPhone 13 Pro which was released in 2021, but I don’t see anywhere in the HEALTH app to use my audiogram.

Regarding headphone use, I use a Sennheiser Game Zero over the ear gaming headset and they sound very good. I also have an adapter to plug them into the headset jack on my landline phone and they work very well for phone calls when not using my iPhone.

#45

I’ve added the bit to my post about needing to use Apple AirPods Pro or Max to get the benefit of adding your Audiogram. And without a headphone that works, there may be no way to add the audiogram. But try this - in HEALTH App/SUMMARY, Favorites comes up. There’s an EDIT button top right. Click Edit and scroll down to see if you see AUDIOGRAM under HEARING in FAVORITES. Push the little STAR to make it show on your HEARING page. If it does, click AUDIOGRAM, and then hit ADD DATA in the upper right. From there, you should be able to manually input your audiogram data.

Alternately, under SETTINGS/ACCESSIBILITY/HEARING, choose Audio & Visual. Here, you will NEED headphones that work with Apple (like AirPods Pro or Max, or some Beats models). Hit HEADPHONE ACCOMMODATIONS/CUSTOM AUDIO SETUP and from there you can choose your audiogram.

Here’s a page from Apple’s page about it…

PS, using the stanadard tools in Apple’s Headphone Accommodations (if you don’t have compatible headphones for your audiogram) can get you pretty close to using your headphones with a customized profile that should get somewhat close to your loss slope. I’d suggest playing with that, particularly for gaming, if you want to avoid extra hardware.

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#46

Thanks, that explains it. I only use wired headphone or stream directly to my Starkey hearing aids.

#47

This works with many other Apple & Beats products. I was surprised to even see EarPods (wired) on the list.

Customize headphone audio levels on your iPhone or iPad

Transparency/conversation boost is limited to the ones you mentioned, I think. I don’t have much experience with them, but I use 2nd gen AirPods (not pro) all the time.

WH

#48

Yep, that’s the link I posted above and is a complete list as far as I know. I am using AirPods Max and I love them.

#49

Thanks for the response! I’m familiar with electro-magnetic fields, and in fact have an EMF meter that I use to monitor EMF fields in my apartment. Such fields are certainly present, but they are not unusually strong (at least, not unusually strong for an NYC apartment!)

I hear the hum in telecoil mode everywhere in my apartment, everywhere in the public areas of my apartment building, and everywhere in the streets within a 4 block radius or so - I haven’t checked further than that. It does sound as though I’m picking up EMF fields - the signal is strongly directional, and if I tilt my head so that my ears (and the hearing aids) are parallel with the floor or street, the signal generally nulls out and the hum disappears.

I’m wondering whether there is some sort of filtering setting within the telecoil mode that is improperly set - it’s hard to believe the telecoil is working properly since the hum makes it unusable in practically every public and private space I’ve tried them in.

#50

If you get the hum everywhere in the streets within a 4 block radius, then I can’t imagine that even if there’s a power transformer nearby that it would have such a strong EMF for the hearing aid to pick up within a 4 block radius. It makes me wonder now whether perhaps it’s from a device that you always have with you, like your phone or whatever. You’d never think that such devices can emit EMF that strong, but I don’t know, just grasping at straws here…

I know that Oticon aids (and most likely Philips aids as well since they’re close cousins) use NFMI (Near Field Magnetic Induction) to transmit and receive data between the 2 hearing aids themselves. They do this because this technology consumes very little power, so it seems ideal to use it between 2 hearing aids that are only about a foot apart from each other when worn. But NFMI communication is always going on between the 2 aids and shouldn’t cause this kind of hum, or else the HA mfgs wouldn’t have designed both technologies to co-exist.

I’m not sure what else to suggest, except that next time you’re at the Costco HIS’s office, if it still produces a hum there, then it’s very likely that something is wrong with the hearing aids. So maybe they can try to replace the aids for you to see if it solves the issue or not. The onus is on them to solve this problem for you because it’s not supposed to be like that.

Another thing that maybe you can try at the Costco HA booth if you still hear a hum there is to have them program another brand of hearing aids there and use the telecoil mode to see if those other brand’s aids also produce a hum or not. If they don’t, then it’s the Philips aids. If they do, then maybe there’s EMF at Costco as well.

#51

A update on my original question…

yes…headphones over my hearing aids are working perfectly fine…great actually. Not one single issue.

If anybody wondering, I’m using Astro A50x…(wireless)… these are solely for gaming. For streaming music or tv, I use the steaming feature on the app for music and tv adapter and I absolutely love it. no issues there either.

I also like the way it sets up in they way where because its direct to my ha… I have two volume controls…one for the streaming…one for surrounding sound. I can basically shut the outside sounds out and just stream. When at lunch in the the massive café my work has…its like being in a movie where everybody mouth is moving…but all I hear is music…lol

love it!

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#52

I have Costco KS8 Behind the Ear Hearing Aids. I wear Sennheiser HD 650 Headphones. I have no problems with that setup. Probably because the cushions are quite thick and the HP has a good stand off from the ears.

#53

You, sir are an Audiophile!!
I have the 6XX, (Drop version of the 650) Love them.
They bring out the best in music detail with my Oticon OPN/More/and now Intent HAs.
I created my own custom Music Program, because Oticon’s is poorly implemented.

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#54

Yes. I use HP over my Oticon OPN S1 and my new Oticon Intent 2 although I find the OPN S1 to sound better with music. I also told my audiologist I do this and she said it will cause no issue for the aids and is actually the best way to do it. The aids will only help to improve the experience.

#55

Hopefully this won’t be too off-topic.
I understand most hearing aids have automatic noise compression to manage the problem of high noise levels.
To my mind, that would mean that wearing hearing aids under hifi headphones would result in reduction of the dynamic levels of the music that the wearer is listening to? - is this a worthy topic for its own thread?
(Ignoring some popular music recordings which are already highly compressed).

#56

Usually the noise handling in hearing aids is specific to speech in noise contrast improvement. The hearing aids have to detect the presence of speech before they decide to suppress the noise. Because of that, in the context of listening to music, usually the content is received as is and no noise suppression is activated.

There is also a difference between listening to contents on headphones vs listening to surrounding environmental sounds. In the earlier case, the headphone speakers are right on top of the mics. In the later case, the environmental sounds are further from the mics and get picked up by the mics with localized information on where the sounds come from analyzed by the hearing aids. So the way the hearing aids process sounds from these 2 scenarios are probably different as well.

Another thing is that sound compression is different than noise suppression (you call it noise compression, but it’s really noise suppression here). So don’t get confused that the 2 are the same thing. Hearing aids use very specific algorithm to determine what is noise, then suppress it in a variety of different ways depending on the hearing aid brand/mfg. Meanwhile, sound compression is applied to all sounds as picked up by the mics and is not targeted at “noise” only.

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#57

Holy moly, this is the 3rd Oticon Intent Music complaint I’ve read today!!
It’s true, the Oticon MyMusic program is a POS!!!
Hey @Volusiano we need a sticky for MyMusic issues, right? Didn’t we have one a couple of years ago with the spudster?

@Tom11 please do a search on the MyMusic topics, and you’ll find some solutions.

Where are you Oticon reps?? HELP!

#58

Yep, MyMusic definitely deserves a sticky the MORE and MORE Oticon INTENTionally force MyMusic down our throat for REAL!

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#59

Alert: I had a brain fade in my posting about 3 posts up. I really meant to say:
“I understand most hearing aids have automatic sound compression to manage the problem of high sound levels.
To my mind, that would mean that wearing hearing aids under hifi headphones would result in reduction of the dynamic levels of the music that the wearer is listening to? - is this a worthy topic for its own thread?
(Ignoring some popular music recordings which are already highly compressed).”
Apologies for that.

#60

Thanks for the clarification. It’s better understood now. I don’t think you’d need to worry about it in general because most people won’t tolerate a louder volume level when they put the headphones on. If the headphones sound too loud when they are put on, most people would automatically reach out to the volume knob/slider and dial it down to a comfortable volume level for them to hear. So there should be no worry about a reduction in the dynamic level due to the hearing aids operating in the Loud part of the fitting formula that might cause the volume compression to kick in more aggressively.

Now if the content of the music is very dynamic with sometimes very faint passages and sometimes louder passages, then of course however the compression setting is in place, it’ll kick in and operate not any differently than if you were to listen to live music without headphones on. But usually, unlike live music which can be a lot more dynamic by nature, pre-recorded music most likely has been pretreated with compression more or less to some level already in order to make the content more palatable to the listener, so listening to pre-recorded music through headphones shouldn’t be triggering issues with such wide dynamic level changes anyway.