My audiologist loaded a MyMusic program into my Oticon Real 1 hearing aids. I asked for it because the General program seemed very directional, so turning my head slightly completely changed the sound of music. The MyMusic program seems to have solved that.
I’m using that MyMusic program only for listening to music. But recently, the app switched to it by accident while I was driving. I don’t think I did it, but can’t be certain. Anyway, with the MyMusic program running and me driving, when I turned on the car’s turn signal, I heard the normal click from the relay, but the hearing aid also gave a loud extra CLICK after a few relay clicks. It was sharp enough that it might have been clipping, but of course, I have no way to know for sure. It was pretty consistent, too. After every few relay clicks, the aid would add another loud CLICK.
By luck, I looked at the app, saw that it was set to MyMusic, and changed it back to the General program. The extra CLICK went away. I switched back to MyMusic and the extra CLICK was back.
Do you have any thoughts on what might be happening?
That might be sound of feedback cancellation system? Feedback cancellation may be less strong or obselete in a music program. I guess a music program is more prone to feedbacks
It could be the MPO settings. Clipping does occur with my More whenever the MPO is too high for a given frequency (for me, usually around 3.5 - 4.5 kHz). If that is the case, you would need to tune the MPO down a little bit for the frequency that is clipping.
First off, your Real should not have been set to be very directional in the first place. The default Directionality Settings for the Real in the RealSound Intelligence menu is almost always Neural Automatic, and with the Oticon’s philosophy of the “open” paradigm, Neural Automatic should let you hear sounds all around you, almost as if you have Fixed Omni selected most of the times. Ask your HCP to check to make sure that your default P1 General program has Neural Automatic selected instead of Full Directional selected in the Directionality Settings in the RealSound Intelligence menu.
The MyMusic program has this Directionality Settings set for Fixed Omni. If you really want Fixed Omni for your default P1 General program, you can ask your HCP to do this for you, so that you don’t have to resort to using MyMusic even when you don’t listen to music. But I highly recommend you leave it at Neural Automatic in your General program to reap the full benefit of the automation the Real has to offer.
As for the clicking you hear when in MyMusic but not in the General program, it may be due to MPO like @e1405 suggested, because I notice that the MyMusic gain curve in the Loud section of the Fine Tuning menu tends to have higher gains compared to that of the General program, so there’s a greater chance that you’re saturating sooner and clip in MyMusic, especially if listening to music at a louder level than normal. You don’t post your audiogram in your profile so we can’t really tell how easy your amplification can go into saturation/clipping in the first place.
If you hear several rapid consecutive clicks, as if it’s kind of a fluttering sound, it may be the feedback management mechanism at work. But usually MyMusic has FM set at Low, while the General program has it at the default Normal, so it’s unlikely that this is the feedback cause in MyMusic but is not a feedback cause in the General program.
Thank you all. That’s very helpful. I’m a little concerned about posting medical data, so didn’t upload my audiogram. Am I being too paranoid?
So it really could be clipping. I think of clipping as a really bad thing because it generates a huge amount of very high frequency energy, which might cause transducer damage or ear damage. Is this me being paranoid again?
I will ask my Audiologist about Neural Automatic vs Full Directional in the General program. I don’t have access to the config, so really don’t know what’s set.
When I asked the Audiologist what the music program does, she didn’t know. For info junkies like me, that was concerning. Is it realistic to expect an Audiologist who sells multiple brands to know all of the Opticon settings and what they do?
It depends. If you use your real name as your ID here (which you obviously don’t as user1115), then there may be cause for worry ONLY IF you think a potential employer whom you’re trying to apply for a job with may check you out on social media and have a bias on giving you a job if they know you have a hearing loss. Otherwise, I can’t really think of anything too damaging to share this info with others on this forum because it can only help more than it hurts.
Severe and frequent clipping indicates that your receiver is undersize for the amount of amplification you need, and yes, I think it can lead to premature failure. Receivers do go bad all the times and it can be frequently as well depending on how hard they’re being driven.
It’s not reasonable to expect an HCP to know every single details of every brand/model they dispense. However, I think it’s reasonable to be able to expect the HCP to be able to answer your question “in general” about how a music program or a speech in noise program in generally is different than a default program, because those are very common programs that are added by HCPs to their patients.
For example, a general answer for what a music program does would be basically to minimize the amount of signal processing done to allow for a more open and authentic sound listening experience. Specifically, it would be set at the omnidirectional setting to pick up sounds from all around you, deploy as minimal the amount of compression as necessary only so that the dynamics of the music can be as broad as possible, noise reduction turned off to avoid unnecessary of sound suppression if any of the musical sounds are interpreted as noise, and maybe other features used for speech specifically, such as frequency lowering for speech clarity would be turned off to preserve the authenticity of the musical sounds and pitch. Also, technology that suppresses sudden sounds (different from noise suppression) would also be disabled as not the mute off the dynamic of the music too much.
A speech-in-noise program would generally have maximum noise suppression for sounds that are considered non-speech, is usually set with some kind of directionality by way of beam forming as necessary to focus toward the direction of the speech. Beside noise suppression, sudden sounds can be set to be suppressed as well for more comfort in a challenging and noisy environment.
