Modify DSL or Adaptive Phonak Digital


I am looking for a little help from programmers who have more knowledge than I do.

I’ve been wearing Infinio 90-Sphere for one week. I have tried NAL NL-2; Adaptive Phonak Digital 3.0 and DSL v5.0 for adults. Overall I think APD performs the best for most situations I’m in; at home watching TV, streaming audio, conversations in the car. However when in Spheric mode, ADP doesn’t seem to have the punch that DSL v5.0 does. The complaint I have with DSL v5.0, it’s horrible in Calm Situations for soft speech, i.e. television, face to face soft conversations

I considered altering DSL v5.0 so that it’s better in Calm Situations or adjusting the gain on ADP for noisy environments.

I created two charts using MS Excel to compare the gains at each frequency for G80, G65 and G50 for both DSL and ADP; for Calm Situation and Spheric Speech in Loud Noise. This is the only way that my little brain could understand which algorithm out performs the other at a given frequency and gain level. At each given frequency, are 3 pairs of values; G80, G65 and G50. The legend at the bottom of the chart might help to clarify. The DSL value is the “left” value of each pair.

Because I like the way ADP performs, I am considering increasing the gains for ADP for the Spheric Speech in Loud Noise. Looking at the charts, DSL exceeds ADP gains between 2 Khz and 8 Khz for soft, medium and loud sounds and I don’t understand why. Is this why DSL seems to perform better in loud environments?

I am thinking that when you increase a gain, whether it’s for G50, G65 or G80 - you not only increase speech but potentially background noise, is this correct? Earlier this week, while in Sphere mode and programmed with ADP, I did adjust via the app gain, noise block and I got flustered and it was a mess.

Am I heading in the right direction or am I way off.

TIA

I would do this as you only have to adjust Calm Situation.

Either way, you could adjust both fitting formulas and see how they sound as you’ve a DIYer.

One thing you can try ( I found this by trial and error). Since you already have played with Phonak Target , run a simulation , with your audiogram or in-situ sensogram but tell Target that your hearing aids are paradise 90. That will bring the old Phonak fitting curve . Look at the simulation and see how it compares with DSL5 and the other fitting formulas. I found the old formula is a better fit for me than the new one (I still prefer DSL 5 with Phonak , but my hearing loss is different than yours).

Fitting formulas are that , formulas based on statistical analysis for a very wide range of hearing loss and there is no agreement in the literature about which one is the best approach. This is why audiologists have to tune these devices , sometimes even more than ten times.

it is perfectly fine to play with the values until you find an optimal fit. I lost track of how many times I’ve tuned mine but for sure, more than 50. The only manufacturer I’ve found that gave an almost perfect fit “out of the box” is widex with the high frequency boost option and their sensogram .

Bottom line: you are on the right track