I think it’s probably configured based on the patient’s audiogram. Since your hearing loss seems to be worse than mine, it does seem to make sense that mine default to 6 dB while yours default to 8 dB. That’s something new I learned today!
There are a couple more things you can do that I forgot to mention. Maybe on your next audi’s visit if the changes you made today are still not quite up to snuff.
One change is to go to the Fine Tuning → Sound Controls section and set the Brightness Perception there to Brighter, and the Soft Sound Perception to Detail, if not already at the right most max (see first screenshot below). I think the default values here may depends on the Selection → Personalization settings you chose when initially setting up the More (see second screenshot).
Another thing to try if still not successful hearing your wife in the noisy car is to ask the audi to add another program and have it prescribed to DSL v5 Adult fitting rationale (see third screenshot below). This rationale seems to help me because its target seems to be sharper than VAC+ and even NAL-NL2. But if you go this route, make sure to ask your audi to do REM again just on this program using the DSL-v5 Adult target so you can retain the true characteristic of it. If the NAL-NL2 is used as a target for REM on this DSL-v5 Adult, it’ll probably end up sounding like NAL-NL2 and not DSL-v5 Adult anymore.
If your audi did REM on your default program which has VAC+ (the Oticon proprietary fitting rationale) but had to use a standard target (because the VAC+ target is proprietary and therefore unavailable), and he picked the DSL v5 Adult as a target, then the suggestion above may become moot because your default program may already sound like DSL v5 even though its original is VAC+. But if he used NAL-NL2 for example as the target for the REM on your VAC+ default program, then the suggestion above may be worth trying because I personally found that the DSL V5 Adult a bit sharper than NAL-NL2, which is a bit sharper than VAC+ (I don’t do REM as a DIY person so that’s why my VAC+ is not colored into a different standard fitting rationale).
Finally, I assume that your audi already turned on Speech Rescue for you (see fourth screenshot below). If not, I highly encourage this to be enabled for all programs in your case. Use the leftmost 2.4 configuration and you can try different Strength value, starting at the default. You can leave the High Frequency Bands ON if you want. I have mine OFF simply because my high frequencies are already shot so I can’t hear those highs anyway even if amplified, so I turn mine off to avoid the potential of feedback in those high areas which I may not even realize if feedback occurs in that range.
While I suggested above that you use Speech Rescue for all your program, in the beginning, you may want to leave it out in 1 program that is a copy of your default program, just so you can toggle back and forth to do A/B comparison to see how/if Speech Rescue is helpful or not. A lot of the high speech cues like “s” and “sh” can be heard much better with Speech Rescue enabled, so if you don’t have it enabled yet, it’ll make it harder to understand your wife without hearing that part of the speech range. Once you have confirmed that it is helpful and you want it in all your programs, then turn it on for all programs. Your audi would have to walk through each program to enable or disable the Turn On Speech Rescue check box in each of the programs.
