Hello. I’m new to the forum and I’m wondering if anyone could provide some insight on an issue I am having with one of my Oticon OPN 1 hearing aids. A few months ago the right aid went out completely. It turned out to be the receiver, which I had replaced. When I got it back it sounded much louder than it did before and I realized that the receiver had probably been in the process of dying for a while. Now for the last week or so I have been experiencing a new problem with the left aid. When I first turn it on in the morning the volume is low. About half an hour later it suddenly bounces back to full volume, and then it seems fine for the rest of the day. I am leaving for a 2-week vacation on Saturday and will be out of the country, so I am a little concerned that it could die completely while I am gone. Has anyone had something like this happen and if so, did it turn out to be the hearing aid or the receiver? Thanks!
I have kind of a strange update. I decided to forget the device and re-pair my hearing aids to my iPad. I listen to music on my iPad all day at work. After re-pairing I was unable to stream music to the left aid. They are both connected and paired, and I can see them both in the Oticon ON app. I tried pairing just the left aid and then streaming to hearing aids was no longer an option in Music. I have tried every suggestion I could find online and nothing has worked. I tried streaming music on my iPhone 6 (iOS 12.4.4) and that worked perfectly. I have no idea what the problem is now, or if it’s two separate problems both involving the left hearing aid…? The timing is terrible because I don’t have time to see an audiologist before I leave.
If you have an old set of hearing aids, take them as back up. I have my audi update the programming on my old set from time to time so that I have them for back ups for our frequent travel.
Regarding your second issue of not being able to stream on the left aid but OK on the right aid on your iPad but not the same issue on your iPhone, it’s happened to me before back in 2018 for a period of a couple of months, but in my case, it happened on my iPhone 7 Plus but not on my iPad or on another iPhone 6. No matter what I did to my iPhone, rebooting it, forget and re-pair, etc, it did not help. Then all of a sudden it worked again for a week or so, then it happened again. I had a feeling it was something with the iPhone and not the OPN. Then after a while the problem went away for good, and it never returned again throughout subsequent firmware updates of the OPN.
Back then there was a lot of reliability issues with the connection between the OPN and the iOS. I could never really find the real cause of the issue. I just had to chalk it up to some kind of random buggy thing between the iOS and the OPN firmware that eventually got cleaned up, not necessarily on purpose but possibly just cleaned up inadvertently.
On your other issue about the left receiver sounding low on volume and bouncing back to full volume for the rest of the day, I never had anything like that. But being a hearing aids user long enough, I’ve had plenty of occasions when I had hearing aids acting up randomly on my, gradually to a point of total failure in a week or two, only to find out that it was a wax build-up issue that, depending on the humidity level in my ears, may clog and unclog intermittently until eventually it got fully clogged due to further wax build-up.
So the first thing I’d check on your left receiver is to see whether the wax filter looks good or not. If not, then replace it.
I already have my old hearing aids in my bag. I’m hoping it won’t come to that but it would be better to have them than nothing.
I was wondering if there was any chance the problem was with my ear. That would actually be preferable. The time it takes for the volume to come back up has been fairly consistent though. And it comes back suddenly. I guess I will see what happens. If it’s the receiver I’m sure it will die eventually.
I have an update on the streaming issue. I tried it again last night and it would still only stream to one aid, but now it’s the left side. It seems much more likely that it’s an Apple issue and not a problem with the hearing aid. My iPad is an iPad Pro 9.7" running iOS 13.3. I know there have been a lot of hearing aid-related issues with iOS 13 but I haven’t seen anything about 13.3. Maybe it’s confined to the iPad Pro? I just hope that an update fixes it soon. My very expensive iPad is pretty much useless to me right now.
Oh and I did replace the wax filters. That didn’t seem to help at all, but I have custom power molds and I think there is another filter inside that I can’t replace myself…?