#28

I didn’t know that there’s a way to control the mic directly via Genie at all. The only indirect mic control I know of is via the Directionality Settings in the MoreSound Intelligence menu.

What does the mic noise limiter do, by the way? Suppress the floor noise from the mic somehow? If there’s such a control in Genie, can you share with us? Maybe it’s in Genie 2 somewhere but I miss it. Thanks.

#29

Which setting is this? I’m trailling the Oticon Real and I’m having the exact same issue.

#30

The decision for more1 is already made. All i wanted to know was, wheter this is a defect, a known flaw or normal.
What may look strange to you is a is a typical German problem. In Germany everyone must (by law) have a health insurance. This is a good thing, for you get good medical treament regardless what happens to you. On the other hand this means, that i pay a fortune every month to the insurance company and since each treatment has to be taken over, they look for loopholes to get out of the responsibility. For example (with some companies), if you have a prescription for physical therapy and don’t start it within two weeks, it will expire.
A cost estimate has already been sent to the health insurance and now it may be some struggle to get the more1 instead of more2 or more3. If they find out, that i “abuse” the borrowed hearing aids they might as well get less generous.

Since i tried more3, more2 and more1 and they all had the noise more or less, it can’t be a normal defect, but perhaps there are “better” and “less” items.

Since i was patient for a decade with my phonacs, why not be patient for some additional weeks and then proceed.

#31

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#32

Thank you @Lostdeaf ! I didn’t see this option because I never had this option checked in my Preferences setting like you did. It’s great to learn something new today from your sharing!

@BernhardG → you should definitely check with your audi to make sure that this Silencer is not disabled (turned off) by accident for some reason.

I think Oticon wants it ON by default almost always (meaning that they always want to automatically reduce the microphone noise), so that’s why they even go through the trouble of hiding it so that it can’t be messed with (and why I never knew about it before), unless you really want to turn it off for a particular reason. Then you would have to check the Preferences to display that option in Automatics before you can turn it off.

If you don’t see that option, check the Silencer box in the Preferences to display that option to make sure that it’s ON. It should be ON by default per the Oticon verbage, but it doesn’t hurt to check and make sure.

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#33

OK, thanks for the clarification. Since you now revealed that you tried all 3 versions of the More and hear the noise in all 3, obviously it’s not a mfg defect then.

We have a lot of Oticon users on this forum and many of them also have good low frequency hearing, and as far as I can tell, you’re the first forum member who raises this white noise issue. So if it’s not a mfg defect (as established) and nobody else (with good low frequency hearing) ran into the same issue before, I sure hope it’s some kind of programming software/setup issue. The DIY route to continue to debug this is a very appropriate approach. Don’t forget that you’ll also need to buy the NoahLink Wireless interface in addition to getting the Genie 2 software.

I sure hope it’s the Silencer feature being turned off for some reason, because I’m out of idea by now.

#34

It’s called SILENCER CONTROL…see reply number 30 in this thread for more information.

1.5 years ago I switched to Phonak Aids partially because I have almost perfect LF hearing and the Oticon hiss (floor noise) drove me crazy.

Loved the Oticon sound - just not the hiss.

Good Luck!

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#35

I think I have this same issue with a Real 1. My audiologist claims I will get used to it. From what I’ve learned Oticon needs more expansion settings to enable this to be better adjusted. A skilled audiologist could probably still dial it out, but average possibly not. Perhaps we should email support@oticon.com or the international equivalent and nudge Oticon to work on this issue.

#36

In my experience with my Oticon More 2 hearing aids, the white noise feature is optional and something that my audiologist turned on for me specifically to help treat tinnitus. She was able to change settings in the Oticon app in my phone for me and make adjustments from her computer dashboard that optimized the white noise and sound level for treating my tinnitus. The name of the setting in the app on my phone is “Sound Therapy.” An audiologist might be able to turn that feature off permanentLy, but if not, l I like that I can easily use the tiny buttons on the hearing aids themselves to turn the white noise sound therapy completely off when it’s not helpful or gets tiring and also can use the buttons to adjust volume up and down to my liking as well. Hope this helps.

#37

After a looong telephone call to my audi, we enabled the silencer-checkbox and controlled the automatic-options-page.
Silencer is on.
Virtual ear is aware.
Directionality is neural.
Tinnitus-Mask is off.
… and the (low) noise is unchanged, although i’m geting so used to it, that - except immediately after putting my HAs in in the morning - i only get aware of it, when i’m listening.

So if everything else fails, i go to the extreme: “i try to think”: :wink::
oticon claims, that they split the input of each microphone (and the auxiliary input) to seperate 64 frequency channels. Since this is done by a signal processing chip, I think they use some sort of polyphase quadrature filter (this is the same procedure as the first step of mp3-coding).
I don’t want to torment you all with the mathematics of digital filters, but in principle they work by delaying the signal step by step and summing up scaled portions of each delayed step.
So if the addends are scaled, there will be an error in the lower bits, small but ubiquitous. A polyphase quadrature filter stacks and combines the output of several filters, what again adds some of this “quantization noise”.
So if in the end - after processing all those clever comfort features - if they sum up the channels again, they will sum up not ony the analog noise of the microphones (until now we only considered this) but also the mathematical noise of 3x64=192 channels. And since noise is a nasty fellow ('think i mentioned it :wink:, especially if you quantizise phase) it sums up merciless. This may quite possibly add several db of noise.
Of course this can be reduced by upscaling, but since there have to be a plethora of adders and multipliers, this increases the technical effort enormously (there are signal processors that work with float numbers, but they are expensive in terms of transistors per chip and energy demand from the batteries. And they would trade in quantizision noise for non-representability errors).

This is interesting, since real uses an even more advanced chip - but since it is almost a miracle to create a 64-filter bank that is delay- and phaseneutral enough to not sound like a drainpipe after re-summing, i guess, they did not touch it.

I’m afraid, as long as they do not employ Harry Potter as an engineer :wink:, we will have to work with existing physics.

So in the end:
Use the “mental signal processing” to just not percive the noise. Our head is still more powerful than any computational device!

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#38

Thanks for this detailed update, @BernhardG . What you explained sounds sensible in theory. However, in practice, I wonder why so few people (like yourself and @user490) have shared this problem on the forum. I know I do have a mild to moderate loss in the low frequencies, so it’s very possible that I can’t hear what you hear because you have almost normal low frequency hearing. But there are plenty of Oticon users on this forum with normal low frequency hearing as well, but I haven’t really heard from almost anyone complaining about this issue until now.

Also, you mentioned that your 12-year-old Phonak doesn’t have this problem. I’m pretty sure Phonak also use multi-channel signal processing as well, like almost everybody else in the HA industry. So I wonder why this issue is not observable on your Phonak aids.

I wonder when you were testing things out with your audi, whether it occurred to you to ask your audio to disable the Silencer to see whether you notice if there were any noticeable added white noise that you could hear even more than with the Silencer OFF?

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#39

Think i have to…
I’ll post again, when i have my own more’s and the Noah-Wireless.
Currently i’m working on correspondence to get the more1 - my healtcare will only pay for a maximum of about 4400$ (4000€).

#40

Don’t know, how many channels there were inside the AUDEO III (low budget!), but for fine-tuning only six (6) bands were available - with a range of +/-32. So let them have 8 or 16 channels - they had a broader transmission curve, so they needed a lot less coefficients. Compare the noise of 192 complex filters to 32 simple ones - the cost/benefit is shattering - although it was useful to put out the phonaks for concentrated work and plugging them in again when leaving my office - while i put in and forget the oticons.

<==>

#41

They should be available for that kind of money. Real 2 is a pretty good option too.

Someone in your region should be able to help: providing you don’t want to have an aftercare package.

I’ll swap you a pair for a RHD S500 R129 in good condition :wink:

#42

It does exist for people with normal LF. I’ve got a couple of clients who can hear the noise floor. I can hear it when I’ve demoed aids.

I suspect it’s something to do with the bigger sampling bit-rates of the latest aids combined with the machined silicone mics that appear to be in use. Historically, electret mic noise was down to around 20dB. The biggest issue with silicone wafer mics was that they struggled to get the noise floor below 30dB due Brownian motion impacting the low mass/high sensitivity of the diaphragm.

Looking at the mics in use today, there’s been a workaround implemented. However, it’s possible that the efficacy of the workaround hasn’t been as good as originally expected or the rate of improvement of the sampling/widening of the input band has jumped ahead of the hardware in terms of sensitivity. However it could be the case that the other engineering benefits of these mics outweigh the noise floor issues.

The fact that Oticon do have this (hidden) adjustment in their software indicates to me that they know there’s an issue, but didn’t want to apply a cut in sensitivity across all users.

#43

The riddle is solved!
As i mentioned, if all else fails, i go to the extreme - i try to think :wink:
And if this fails too, i read the manual!

Had i read the data sheet for the more series thorough enough, i would have found a clear specification:
Equivalent input noise: Omni: 21db, Dir: 29db (ear-simultor)
So it’s specified, that the more’s have a permanent noise like a breeze or low whisper.

This corresponds to our discussion:
As a result of the sophisticated signal processing we have a noise (microphone, variable preamp (“MoreSound Amp”), conversion, quantisation) of 21db - and as mentioned, the directionality will add another 8db.

There ain’t no free lunch - we’ll have to accept the devices own noise in exchange for its excellent noise reduction.

(Nevertheless i have ordered my more1s today. It costs me a fortune, but its worth it)
(And i will order a NoahLink Wireless too).

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#44

A possible upside of the floor noise is that it can sometimes help with tinnitus.

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#45

This seems to be in line with what @Um_bongo was saying earlier about electret mics having a 20 dB floor noise.

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#46

The strange thing is that the floor noise is a lot ‘louder’ in my right ear compared to my left ear.

I don’t seem to notice it at all with my resounds…

#47

Update:
The noise is actually coming from the microphones (and the PreAmps).
When i find the time to watch (=stream) a complete feature of 90min on tv, afterwards the waterfall rushes back into my ears. The streamed film sound lacks the floor noise, but contains all the ambient sounds, so for a while i forgot how to fade it out.
Btw: although streamed sound has no “directionality”, the MoreSound Booster works nevertheless.