Thanks so much. I will print this info before I go back in. As you can imagine, it’s been a little discouraging. But now I have some things to suggest.
Keep us updated, looking forward to good results. My HIS at one point went back to default settings and started over. As suggested, could be something to try.
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Thanks. I will definitely let you know how it goes with the audiologist. I do recall some issues with my previous aids getting too soft in background noise (e.g., while driving in the car) when I was initially fitted. We made some minor adjustment – I think we raised the noise threshold needed to activate that mode – and things got much better. Only rarely over the past five years have the aids gone into that mode.
So, I’m inclined to think noise reduction might be a good place to start.
Thanks again – I’ll let you all know what happens.
Thanks,
Isosceles.
post your audiogram.
Hi - Here is an update on my Phonak issues. I have been back to the audiologist a couple of times since I last posted. The speech-in-loud-noise program was disabled, and the gains were tweaked. This has helped some – I can hear fairly well in a quiet room, nearly equivalent to the old hearing aids. In noisy environments (restaurant, loud fans, city traffic) the speech still becomes muted and muffled. This did not happen with my old aids – speech tended to cut through the background noise. I suspect it’s a different program that’s automatically kicking in in those situations (comfort-in-noise, perhaps). I am trying to switch back and forth between the old and new in those situations so that I can better describe what is happening, and in what settings. If I can identify specific situations where they perform differently, it might give us a clue as to what is going on.
I was very happy with my old aids, and my goal was to have the new aids perform exactly like the old aids. But we seem to be having trouble even getting close (I realize the algorithms might be different, so an exact match might not be possible). We’re still missing something. Something is happening automatically in the presence of background noise that distorts speech.
Any ideas would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Isosceles.
Hi,
I am not a phonak expert, but those are my thoughts.
If speech gets muffled in loud situations, this can be
a) The automatic switching to some other program (which is what you guess)
b) the compression
With phonak Audeo V90, the standard program (number 1) is always the flow-program. This can have several sub-programs, and each of those can be set up individually.
a) can be ruled out if you copy the “normal” sub-program of the flow program to program slot 2. If you use program 2 and the problem is gone, it is shown that the automatic switching causes the problem. If not, consider b)
b) Compression means that loud sounds are amplified less than soft sounds. This is a good thing most of the time, because then you can understand soft speech without the loud noises blowing off your ears. But if you come to a noisy room, the compression regulates the aid down and speech becomes less clear. Also, many aids have a slow compression and a fast one. The fast one reacts immediately if a loud sound comes into the aid and thus protects you from loud sounds. The slow one reacts if a loud environment stays loud for a longer time (some seconds at least). It then regulates down the whole amplification and stays like that for some time even when the noise is no longer present. The problem is that you need to change the compression behaviour in loud environments, because the speech-area should not be compressed too much. Soft speech is around 50 dB, normal 65 dB, but in loud environments, people talk louder. So the area where speech stays uncompressed must be shifted up in loud environments. What I am trying to say: It is not necessarily a bad thing if the aid reacts to the loud environment and changes the compression. But it is likely that your aid is not set up correctly to do so.
When I looked over my audi´s shoulder, I saw that Phonak aids with all those endless features are really difficult to set up. My aids (bernafon Juna) have much less features, and thus are much easier to program. There have been other people here who complained about the sound-changing of Phonak Audeo V90, whereas others really love them. So my conclusion is that they are hard to set up.
Be patient, It´s probably not impossible !
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Can’t the audiologist copy the setting from your old aid and duplicate them as a second program. The first program always stays automatic to some degree.
Thanks for all the suggestions. I do realize that program 1 is automatic, but this is also the case with my old aids. I used the old aids almost exclusively in program 1. I do recall some minor adjustments were made to program 1 initially with the old aids – mainly because the volume would go down in certain situations (e.g., riding in the car with loud road noise). After the initial adjustments, that problem went away.
i have been wearing my new aids exclusively for the last few weeks. Today, I tried the old aids again and found them to be much better than the new ones in most situations. Back to the audiologist – hope we can figure it out.
Thanks,
Isosceles
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Looks like you have a great reason to save money and stay with the old aids.
Something smells fishy. I wish I could see the programming.
My V90’s usually help my speech understanding a great deal, and the blue tooth (voice and music) is simply outstanding. HOWEVER, I swear that sometimes* the automatic program “goes stupid,” and results in voices as least as muffled as with the HA out! (I remember thinking that if I had paid full price for them I’d be right pissed.)
*in a noisy garage etc.
I don’t have the Phonak but understand what you mean. It is quite rare for me. But a REALLY LOUD room can do it. I’ve always thought the aids were picking up way more noise than speech and weren’t picking out a talker well enough to recognize them. Usually it is in a room with no acoustics – a real barn.
I have the V90s also. In a noisy environment if there is no speech in the immediate vicinity they go into comfort in noise which mutes down all the noise. If anyone speaks nearby they switch to speech in noise or speech in loud noise and I can hear the speaker but also the background noise. If you have the automatic learning feature of the aid turned on then you can turn the volume up and this should increase speech and slightly reduce all other noise. Noise reduction is a fine art as it can impact on speech and each manufacturer has their version.
If you have not tried a reset and start again approach I would really recommend it. When I was trialing the Resound HAs it really helped to reset to ensure I did not get too far away from the prescribed settings. The audiologist’s can only guess at what you are hearing based on how you describe it so sometimes the tweaks don’t address the real problem. I also believe real ear measurements are essential. The V90s also have the audiogram direct option to test via the HAs to set them up and it works well.
All the high end digital aids require experienced programming to get the best results. The programmer really makes the difference so you could try asking for the Phonak rep to be present to reprogram them.
If you had good results with the old Phonak’s then you should be able to achieve even better results with the V90s. Good luck and keep us posted.
Good solid information. Thanks. Does “reset” mean power off/on or a trip to the audiologist? And if off/on, do both HA need to be rebooted or just one?
The reset I refer to is a reprogramming from scratch by the audiologist. It takes the setting back to the beginning so that any unuseful tweaks are no longer there but also any useful ones. If there have been a lot of programming tweaks you may get too far from prescribed target gains and lose the useful amplification you need.
If you have a minor temporary issue with the HAs being in a particular program then opening and closing the doors on the aids puts them back into their start-up program and let’s them do their thing and analyse the environment/choose the best automatic program etc. This can be useful if you have changed program manually and just want to get back to automatic for example. There are other ways to do this also depending on how your HAs are set up.
the answer that people probably don’t wanna hear is that there are better aids for hearing others in noise.
I have seen no trials which directly compare these aids to prove your repeated claims that one is better than the other. In fact I have not even seen a post yet by anyone wearing Signia Primax aids. You need to be very careful making claims you cannot prove and advising people based on your reading of manufacturers claims and “white papers”. These are not peer reviewed journal articles and are often little more than advertising. You write in a manner which may confuse new members into thinking you are a trained professional giving advise based on qualifications. I do not believe that is in anyone’s best interest.
The first time it happened was in a cavernous big box store. I believe my Audiologist boosted the priority(?) of “speech in noise” and that seemed to fix the problem in barn-like situations. This last time was in a loud echoey/noisy garage with a lot of banging and transients. I could not understand the mechanic who was no more than 4-5 ft from me. I had better hearing with my HAs out!
For the record I’m new to HA, but I do understand multiband acoustic processing, steered cartioids, and frequency translation and compression.
I suspect that a future advance in hearing aids will be sliding digital filters. (instead of fixed width bands, you can program them to narrow/bunch up where the slope of the audiogram is steep and widen a band out where the audiogram is flat)
I have not had many tweaks so I may first ask for another boost to “speech in noise” or perhaps a decrease in one of the comfort settings to keep things centered. I believe that my controls are programmed > button is my “home program,” and my toggle adjusts for volume. (to me gain=directionality)
But if I have to nuke the current setup from orbit I will (it’s the only way to be sure) I’ll ask for the Phonak rep to be there to start from scratch.