Oticon My Music for a Singer?

[snorkelfan]

@PianoJoy , thank you very much for sharing your experience with the Own IIC. It gives me a lot of hope that this is going to work out.

I picked them up this morning. The HIS was in a rush and I could never see his screen. He really wasn’t interested in going through all the setting options with me. He told me to try it as is, and if I really wanted to, I could come back in a few weeks. He said 99% of his clients are satisfied at the first fitting and don’t need to come back.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that I wasn’t happy. They are too loud, but they seem to be muting a lot of environmental sounds, distant conversations sound very quiet and distant, no advantage, no extra birdsongs…and my own voice is really loud. It’s especially too loud when I am singing, but it is always too loud.

When I was at the mall earlier, I kept taking the left one in and out. I couldn’t decide if it was better with it or without it.

I really want to sit with someone who will go through all the setting and features with me and tweak it to my liking. I suspect that there is a lot of noise suppression going on that is making me uncomfortable. I told him that I want to hear everything and decide for myself what I want to pay attention to, but I don’t think he understood.

I am really hoping once the noise suppression is removed, which I am assuming is the issue, I’ll get that new hearing aid joy. I’m hoping to find someone who will do this with me next week. I can’t take the time off to get it done immediately.

[snorkelfan]

@Volusiano , it is the IIC. There’s only 1 program. I still have hope that with the correct settings, I will be happy. I am hoping to go to the HIS that programmed the Nera Pro 2 that I have. I like how that sounds, and he will know exactly what he did there.

[Volusiano]

I don’t think we saw your audiogram before, until recently. You have a very mild loss on your left ear, and the right is not bad at all until 2 KHz.

Your audi should have programmed in the Automatic Adaptation Manager for you so that they don’t sound too loud to begin with, but over time, in phase 2 and phase 3, the volume can get programmed to be a little louder after you get more acclimated to the amplification. If your audi didn’t do this, you can still just do it manually by reducing the volume on both aids to a comfortable level for a week or few days, then increase it a little bit more for another time period, until you get used to the default volume level.

I’m surprised to hear that you find more sounds being muted than you think, given the open paradigm of Oticon aids. But then there’s no telling what your audi did for your setup to begin with. Does your IICs have a vent hole in each of them? How big is the vent hole? If there is a large enough vent hole in each aid to minimize occlusion, this vent hole should have also allowed the natural sounds to come in so that at least your left ear should be able to pick up a lot of these sounds naturally. It sounds almost as if there’s no vent hole, or the vent hole is too small, and this causes the natural sounds to be blocked from coming in naturally for your ears to hear, hence the subtle sounds might begin to sound too muted for you.

But I think it’s pretty preposterous for him to be claiming that 99% of his clients never come back for a second fitting. I guess it must be such a huge coincidence that you happen to be his only 1% unsatisfied more-than-one-fitting customers. What are the odds of that???

[snorkelfan]

I don’t even have a volume control…he just asked me if I liked how “A” or “B” sounded, and “A” sounded good in his office. But I really didn’t have time to think it through.

This is from [this] (https://www.oticon.com.au/-/media/oticon/main/pdf/master/opn/pbr/167372uk_pbr_opn_1_product_-guide_h1_2016_final-approval.pdf) page 39 of this document.

I’m not sure if Own has similar options, but I’m guessing I’d prefer Pinna omni.

The vent he selected is “Max”. I think it’s really amazing that he has such a high satisfaction rate…maybe he is just trying to discourage people from wanting to come back and tweak…

[Volusiano]

You don’t have a volume control due to the lack of a push button, but surely you can connect the aids to the Oticon Companion app on the smart phone to control the volume there, no?

How do you know he selected Max for the venting option in the Genie 2 software? But whatever he selected in Genie 2, it should match with the kind of physical vent hole you have on the hearing aids. Do you see an actual vent hole on your hearing aids? Do they seem big enough for you? Maybe you can take a picture and post it up here so we can see how big that vent hole is.

[snorkelfan]

Thank you for asking, I will do that!! I saw on the receipt when he placed the order it said “vent max”. But I have no idea, as you said, if he selected that in the software.
Yes, the left could go without an aid, but it feels unbalanced when I only have the right. I also think it fluctuates a bit.

Tomorrow I will be at work in my noisy classroom… that will be interesting!!

[Volusiano]

The top picture indeed shows a very large vent on the inside next to the receiver. However, the blurry second picture doesn’t show very clearly an equally large vent hole on the outside. I see the white plastic pull tab, and I see the battery door with a couple of tiny holes on the door, which I presume is venting for inside the hearing aids.

Then I see a very tiny opening on the end of the outside that I think is supposed to be the outside vent hole. That is a very small tiny inlet for the outside of the vent hole, so regardless of how big it opens up on the inside, the diameter of the outside vent hole equally matters and needs to be just as big. This tiny outside vent hole should let some sounds in, however. But it would have been better if the outside vent hole were bigger than that. But you gotta admit that there’s simply no room left anywhere to make it bigger anyway.

[snorkelfan]

I guess if I moved up to CIC then I could get a larger vent… I will first try adjusting these with the audi who took good care of me with the Nera Pro 2 adjustments.

[snorkelfan]

Maybe I should check out widex moment ric, or oticon reals… I am thinking that being able to adjust my own aids is really important, and the sound is really important… and the invisible aids aren’t really invisible either, anyway…

[Volusiano]

The Oticon Intent is the latest model with a lot of major enhancements compared to the Real, so you’d want to go for the Intent if you decide to go with an Oticon RIC setup. The advantage a RIC setup can afford you is that each aid has 2 microphones, so the directionality control is a lot more flexible than the single mic option in the IIC, not to mention push button availability to do on-the-fly program change or volume change right on the aids without needing to do it on the phone.

But I can’t imagine that you can’t do volume adjustment and maybe some other things like equalizer adjustments via the Oticon Companion phone app with your Own IIC. Have you tried installing the Oticon Companion app on your phone to do at least volume adjustment?

[snorkelfan]

The Own IIC has no connectivity, no app, nothing…today I am wearing my old Nera Pro, which isn’t quite enough for me in the noise. It’s lunch time, so I might try wearing the Owns for the afternoon classes. As of now, I just don’t think I’m going to keep them.

[Volusiano]

Hm, I didn’t know that. That would be very limited and would be a deal breaker to me.

[PianoJoy]

My Oticon IIC and CIC both also did not end up with a large vent even though my audi had written, as large as possible (again, I had them remade several times each time making sure it was specified). My Phonak vent is much bigger and nice and round, while the Oticons seems like someone manually cutting a sliver of a hole with a knife…

Also, for me (mild low conductive loss), I schedule to go into the audi to have my aid adjusted every two weeks for a total of 4 or so appointments. I have to have my aid set as the absolute lowest to begin with, and gradually adjusted up. Though I acclimate very well to louder/softer, the immediate loudness of the aid was not tolerable so this is the method that works for adjusting the aid for me.

I’ve also tried a Widex CIC (whatever their smallest ITE) and hated them, both fit and sound; don’t remember what the vent was like on that one.

[snorkelfan]

@PianoJoy I don’t think the combination of the small vent, plus one one program with no control, is going to work. Yes, the Oticon vent from the front looks like a sliver.

When I’m in the classroom, I do want a program with “help”. When I’m listening to music or out in nature, I don’t want “help”. I want to hear everything, with no filter.

When I’m at a social event, I want to be able to adjust to what is comfortable, depending on that event.

When I’m at home, I don’t really need to wear anything. But in busy situations outside of home, it will make my job go better for sure, at a minimum.

I may wear one at home and two when I go to work…and sometimes none at home. Not really sure yet.

Maybe I could consider Phonak IIC if they have phone controls.

One program is not going to meet my needs. I have already asked to exchange these for a trial of Intents.

Maybe he said most of his patients don’t need multiple adjustment appointments because Intents allow users to do their own adjustments with the phone app?

[snorkelfan]

@Volusiano it is turning out to be for me too.

[Um_bongo]

Ask for them with the Music program on as default.

This will kill off most of the automatic functionality and give a better sounding response. You can always wind up the Moresound navigation a bit to increase the dynamic filtering, but in reality you’re going to be getting more from your natural pinna effect as the aids only have one mic (with a T-filter) that is likely to block unless you’re pretty scrupulous.

Ignore the manufacturer’s spiel about dB in noise, most of that only applies to binaural twin mic set-ups. I think the 4dB is optimistic with Omni mics.

Given your weird loss, it’s possible that the less processed sound the better, anyway, as you’ll be comparing amplified and unamplified sounds in your brain. We fit a few Owns and have a few IIC kicking about. They’ll work, but it’s more a case that they’ll be filling the gaps in your hearing, rather than ‘ a whole new World’ experience.

[Volusiano]

What @Um_bongo says makes a lot of sense to me. The OP primarily needs to fill the gap on the high frequency loss of the right ear, and perhaps just a tiny bit for the left ear. For folks with very slight, limited range loss like this, I’d imagine that their hearing loss is not mainly causing speech in noise issues for them, but maybe simply more amplification is needed to restore the loss they have in a limited area of frequencies. So the less processing, the more hearing is opened up for them to help restore the audibility that they loss. What I mean is that this kind of loss still affords the patient a lot of dynamic room to discern the subtle nuances of various sounds in most frequency areas where speech matters, so too much noise suppression processing is not only unnecessary for them, but even detrimental by taking away their original hearing experience.

[snorkelfan]

@Um_bongo , “the less processed sound, the better”, sounds good. Except in the severe range, where I’m told there is no way for me to access a lot of that, other than through speech frequency lowering.

The music program as a default sounds like an excellent idea.

I am skeptical about staying with the Owns because of the small vent and the plugged up feeling. It’s not really “invisible” at all, either. It’s not visible at certain angles, but at others it is. There’s just no way to adjust it, which doesn’t feel good. Even with the Nera Pro 2, I have 2 programs and a choice between them.

Right now, with the Nera Pro 2, I’m able to integrate the amplified sounds into the rest of my hearing very comfortably. The open fit seems to be ideal for that.

[snorkelfan]

@Volusiano it is probably true that with all of the missing information provided, through amplification and speech frequency lowering, I won’t need much else in noisy situations. The untreated loss is causing “speech in noise issues”, though. In a lot of noise, missing parts of some words, I end up guessing and guessing wrong sometimes. A very noisy setting seems to make the loss affect speech sounds that are also near the affected areas on the audiogram, but not actually in the affected areas, for some reason. I’m not sure why that is. For example, I missed the D sound in “due” today.

This seems to be exactly true: “too much noise suppression processing is not only unnecessary for them, but even detrimental by taking away their original hearing experience.”

Too much noise suppression does make it harder for me to use of my natural hearing, so I end up not being helped. I actually got a headache on the left side of my head from wearing those aids. Today, I didn’t wear them more than 2 minutes, and I have no headache. My body was clearly rejecting them.

[Um_bongo]

The ‘plugged up’ (occlusion) is going to be an issue with any aid. In order to keep the gain in your ear before risking feedback/also physical limits.