Oticon Genie 2 Questions

Hearing Aid Self-Fitting and Adjusting [DIY]
#1

Sorry, newbie here. I read several posts and searched but couldn’t find these specific answers.

I just got my first set of hearing aids a couple months ago. Oticon More 1. I’d like to be able to adjust them myself (maybe) and understand from this forum that I can do that with the Oticon Genie 2 software and a NoahLink Wireless device.

I don’t have the NoahLink yet, but I installed Genie 2020.2.1 to see what it’s like. I’m using “Simulate” mode since I can’t connect to the hearing aids yet. I added myself as a client, but how do I enter my audiogram data?

On the “Selection” section, under “Audiometric Data”, the “Audiogram” won’t let me enter anything. I can see “AC, BC, and UCL” but they are grayed-out. The Measurement Method is “Pure Tone Audiometry” and the Test Tone Transducer is “Headphones” but that’s the only two things on that page I can change. Clicking around on the audiogram chart doesn’t do anything.

Also, once I get the Noahlink Wireless and connect my hearing aids, if I load the settings from my hearing aid, but don’t change anything at all, and only save the setting data to the Genie 2 database (to back up original settings), will it change the timestamp on the setting file in the hearing aid? I understand that if I save the file back to the hearing aid that it will change the timestamp even if nothing is changed, but if I don’t change anything at all will it still change on the hearing aid if only saving to the database? I want to just load all the settings and see how it’s all programmed before messing around with it. Plus, I don’t want my audiologist to know that I’ve done that if I don’t change anything.

Thanks.

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#2

Yeah sure it will, the timestamp changes as soon as you connect your HAs. But why would you worry about that?

#3

I just got the hearing aids a couple months ago and I have free adjustments for next three years. Not sure if it would affect the service I get from them if the timestamp doesn’t match their database. Of course maybe I won’t need anything from them if I can do it myself.

#4

@Roadster Once you create the user in Genie 2, Click on the Client ID and on the left under “Select Client” you will see “Audiogram”. You can then enter your information on right area under the iCons for “Client”, “Welcome”… etc.
You may also want to get the document from Oticon - “Optimal Fitting of Oticon More”.
By the way, on the left of the Client ID is an “Arrow (Triangle with peak to right)”, click on it and you can see all the sessions you have created. The topmost session is imported from your HAs.
Regards,
RJ

#5

Thank you very much.

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#6

There are “oo” -symbol to link/unlink between programs P1 and others. What it actually links or unlinks ?

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#7

It’s basically a time saver so that if you enable the link between P1 and P2, whatever you change in the Fine Tuning section in your example while you’re in program P1 will have the same changes made in program P2 to save you time. If you don’t want this (you want changes you made to P1 only affect P1), then unlink before you make your changes.

Not all sections allows you to link between programs.

You’ll also find links between the left and right section so that whatever changes you make to one side will be applied to the other side as well if it’s enabled.

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#8

Thank you. I suspected something like this, and tested this with gain settings, but didn’t manage to reflect setting to another. Maybe I did something wrong. Must test again later.

#9

Hello,
This is my second week with Oticon More 1 and these are my first hearing aids ever.
Just a little background. I was a system admin, and nowadays I am an acoustician and a home theater designer. This to say that technology does not scare me.
Yet I am a bit wary about what i intend to do and that’s why I am here.
I have installed the latest Genie 2 software and have just received my Noah Wireless connector.
My objective is to fiddle an fine tune my More 1 for my needs.
I do not think my audiogram truthfully reflects my hearing loss as the test provided by my medical insurance is rather basic. It probably serves its purpose for 99% of the case. My case is a rarer as i was told (?!). My hearing loss starts at around 2kHz and plunges pretty deep. The audiogram shows a regain at around 4kHz but I wouldn’t trust that. And my principal objective is to use my More 1 for listening to music in a dedicated and totally soundproof room. My secondary objective is to use them when in noisy environments for human voice.

At the moment I connected the More 1 to the Genie 2 only to view my settings.
I am concerned especially about the REM that was performed at my audiologist. I do not have neither the knowledge nor the the equipment to recover the REM data.
So in light of that how should I proceed?
How should I start experimenting and yet not stray too much from the settings implemented by my audiologist?
I know for sure that for exemple she barely made use of the broad 24 band equalizer, or the many special features available. My intuition tells me that she will use a very “conservative” setting, the More 1 is “too” advanced I guess.

I will wait for your insight please.

#10

Don’t worry about it, this is the least of your worries at the moment, anyway once you get them set where you like what your hearing with your own programming, you can always find a sympathetic audiologist clinic to redo your REM, it’s not the holy grail of fitting.

Great I like this, go ahead and experiment all you like, no need to stray to far from your original settings at the moment tho, you know just use the KISS factor (keep it simple stupid)

Others with the “More” will chime in to help you on your journey to better hearing.

Good luck

#11

You will find lots of info on Programming with Genie here.
Your best friend is the seach function at top right.
Search on self programming the Oticon OPN.
It works the same for the More.

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#12

Hi Bernard, I’m certainly no expert and haven’t adjusted any settings yet. But thanks to this forum - if you haven’t see the posts from others yet about this - the first thing I did was load the settings that are on my More 1 to the Genie 2 software and saved them as Client “Original Settings”. This gives me a master file of the original Audiologist settings and theoretically would allow me to “reset” the hearing aids back to the original Audiologist settings if I totally mess up. I did this with two client records just to make sure.

I went a couple steps further. Then I exported all clients to a file on my desktop for a backup in case something happens to Genie2. I also put a copy of that backup on Dropbox in case my Laptop dies.

Probably a little overboard, but I also made screen prints of each setting page from Genie2 of the original settings. There were 42 screen prints in all. But if something goes wrong with the backup files I have a solid roadmap to reconstruct everything.

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#14

@bernard.danino All great advices so far for you. The only thing I have to add to them is that once the REM is done, it’s already inherently built into your Fine Tuning gain values so as long as you store the original version after your audi had adjusted your hearing aids with the REM adjustments, then it’s still in there and you won’t lose it. As long as you build from it and keep an original copy to go back to, then it should be fine.

If you create a new General program by copying from the default Program 1 which assumably already has REM adjustments made to it, then the REM adjustments should carry over to the new program. But this is just my presumption, and you should double check by looking at the gain values in the Fine Tuning section to verify this.

If you create a new program not from copying but by making the selection from scratch, then it probably won’t retain the REM adjustments, even if this new program has the same fitting rationale as your original default Program 1. But again, check the Fine Tuning gain values of both programs to verify that my presumption here is true.

Of course if you add new programs (not copied) that are from the built-in selection (like Music, Speech in Noise, etc), the presumption here is that the gain values will come directly from what’s programmed in Genie 2 and won’t necessarily carry over the REM adjusted values. You can check the Fine Tuning control values to verify this. Again, this is just an assumption from my part.

One last thing is that if the default Program is selected to have the Oticon’s proprietary VAC+ fitting rationale, but your audi had already made REM adjustments to it based on the NAL-NL2 target (or whichever standard he chose) because there’s no VAC+ target available to use (since it’s proprietary), your default Program, even though it’s said to be based on VAC+, will most likely now inherently have the characteristics of the NAL-NL2 rationale because that’s what it’s targeted to. So if you truly want a pure VAC+ program with intrinsic VAC+ characteristics, you’ll probably need to create a brand new secondary program with VAC+ as your selection. You can again verify in the Fine Tuning gain values that they look different because again, this is only my educated guess.

#15

@bernard.danino

The default settings for the More 1’s Neural Noise Suppression (which is the max value only), as far as I can tell, is very conservative. As you can see in the screenshot below, with the “rotary knob” icon indicating the chosen default values, the Neural Noise Suppression is set to 0 dB for Easy and 6 dB for Difficult Environments. But the More 1 can go up to 4 dB for Simple and 10 dB for Difficult. So if your audi leaves them at their default values, she’s effectively and probably unknowingly crippled your More 1 to the capability of just the More 3.

Selecting the highest possible value here is NOT being aggressive, because the online help clearly states (as seen in the second screenshot below) that “The selected level is the max level of applied noise suppression. In situations with less background noise, less noise suppression will be applied.” So since it has the smart to judiciously apply only the appropriate level, why limit the max value to something less than what it’s capable of? If you do this, then in VERY noisy environments where the most noise suppression is NEEDED, you’re only crippling your More 1 capability to a lower max as if it were a second or third tier model instead of the premium first tier model.

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#16

And how can I check if the REM was done based on NAL-NL2 even though I see VAC+ all over the place? (I am just citing from your post, I actually have no clue what it is about but it looks like it’s important)

#17

I set max values on my main program. I’ll check that. Thanks

#18

You can’t check yourself. If you really want to know which standard target rationale your audi used when performing the REM adjustments for you, only your audi would know because he/she decided which standard rationale to target to. I just threw out NAL-NL2 as a target because it’s a very common standard rationale used, but your audi could have used NAL-NL1 or DSL v5.0 Adult or whatever else that suits him/her.

If you have no clue what a fitting rationale is, it’s a complex set of equations developed to determine that if your hearing loss at frequency X is so much, and your MPO at X is so much (as inputs to the equations), then the gain set should be set to so much (as the result from the equations). They have rationales and goals on what they want to achieve in terms of what the compensated gain should be. But there is not just 1 standard out there. NAL-NL1 is “a” previous standard but rationales/goals get revised/improved and NAL-NL2 became the newer standard. DSL is another standard, and apparently it has progressed to version 5.0 already. And there are 2 flavors of DSL, one for adult and one for kids (pediatric). All of these standards are available in Genie 2, along with VAC+, for your selection.

But very often, many major HA mfgs decide that they can do better with their own proprietary fitting rationale that works best with their hearing aids, and works best based on their own research. For example, Oticon came up with their own proprietary Voice-Aligned-Compression (or VAC+). It’s been said that they also tweak it to make it work better for revers ski slope hearing loss, among other things. Some of the controls on Genie 2 like the Sound Controls Brightness Perception and Soft Sound Perception are only available for the VAC+ rationale and will be greyed out if you choose a different/standard rationale.

Because VAC+ is a proprietary fitting rationale to Oticon, they don’t release it to the public so the HCPs can adjust REM based on the VAC+ target. The HCPs only have access to the standard rationales, so they can only use these as the target. But in doing so, they effectively altered the VAC+ “sound” into a different “sound”, that of the standard they use as the target.

Below is a description of VAC+;

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#19

So much info… so much. I had to read it twice… and yet…
So what do you suggest?
Maybe I could simply ask my audi which rationale… formula… or whatever she used when she’s done my REM?
And after I get her answer… what’s the incidence on what I can or cannot or should do as a self experimenting patient?

#20

Maybe I prematurely jumped the gun and opened up a can of worms by bringing up the issue of using a different/standard/non-VAC+ fitting rationale as the target on REM on a Genie 2 program that uses VAC+. Whether it’s really an issue or not and applies to your situation or not depends on different scenarios.

Scenario 1: If your HCP uses external REM hardware/software to do manual REM adjustments, then he/she cannot target to VAC+ because it’s proprietary and the HCP simply does not have access to it as a target when using external hardware/software to do REM. So the HCP would have to pick a non-VAC+ rationale for a target. In this scenario then you should be aware that the target gain and the produced (actual) gain are not only different due to the fitting factors (your ear canal, open or close domes or custom molds, HA performance, etc), but can also be different due to the

Scenario 2: If your HCP uses REM hardware that’s compatible to interface with Genie 2 and uses the REM Autofit feature inside of Genie 2 as the REM software, then I think this should give her access to VAC+ as a target because Genie 2 is the Oticon proprietary software and it should know how to calculate the target for VAC+, and will even do autofit for her to automatically adjust the actual gain to match with the VAC+ target. You can read the online help some more on REM Autofit

So what you can ask your audi is which scenario above applies to your case? Did she use REM Autofit inside Genie 2 to do REM, or did she use completely external hardware and software to do REM. If the later, which standard rationale she chose for your target.

If you have more than 1 programs in the More 1 (it can hold up to 4), then did she apply REM adjustments on all programs, or which one(s)?

The ones she apply REM adjustments to, you want to document their original values in the Fine Tuning/Gain Control carefully so you can reset them to these values if you tinker with things too much and don’t like it and want to return to ground zero again and reset.

If you copy these programs, then their built-in REM adjustment should carry over to the new program. This is based on common sense logic, but it should be verifiable by comparing the gain values in the Fine Tuning -> Gain Control section.

If you create/add a new program without doing a copy, there’s a good chance that these newly created programs don’t have REM adjustments done one them, unless Genie 2’s REM Autofit is smart enough to preserve the REM adjustments somewhere and automatically apply these adjustments to the newly created program. This part I don’t really know and I can’t find any documentation that says one way or the other. It would be something you can ask your audi. The way you can ask without revealing to her that you plan to DIY is just to say “Every time you add a new program for me in the More 1, do you have to run REM again on that program? Or is the software (Genie 2) smart enough to apply the previous REM adjustment to the new program?”

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#21

Hello all,
I have been experimenting for a month now using the Genie 2 software. I kinda understand what all the features do and can tweak different programs for different circumstances. The only thing I don’t like is the feeling of doing trial and error with the curves in the Gain Control. I wish I could do that more “scientifically”, based on my audiogram. Sometimes I overshoot the target and here many sounds like tin cans, or S and Sh sounds sounding like a distorted flute. And sometimes I am maybe too low and sounds are maybe giving a sense of comfort but in second thought are actually lacking highs and sound dull. Also I tried to target the right frequencies using videos of different kinds of voices and playing with a high resolution equalizer, to see which bands actually needs boosting to make the voices clearer to me. Is that a good way to do it? Because in the end something is always wrong.
I bet some of you went through this learning curve and can share their light with me.