Otter.ai app mutes my ReSound ENZO hearing aids

With close to universal mask-wearing in effect, its become a really tough world for people with a hearing loss. My method of coping is to use Otter ai to caption peoples words in real time. The app is incredible, especially with a clear speaker with no accent, but one problem I have is that when I turn it on it mutes my hearing aids. My aids are Resound Enzo’s which bluetooth to my iphone. I can get around the problem by turning off bluetooth on the phone, but then I have to constantly reconnect my hearing aids to the phone once i am done with Otter, not to mention the fact that I can’t take bluetooth phone calls when I am using Otter. Has anyone else encountered this problem? If so, how did you get around it without turning off bluetooth?

Wild guess, you’re on android phone which is restricted that only one thing can use mic at a time. So when you use otter, it takes the mic and that’s why it won’t worth during phone calls, no matter if you want to listen through BT or speaker. It’s the same reason why phone call recorder apps don’t work anymore. Google blocked that option.

Second part about why otter kills your aids… My guess is that it doesn’t mute them per se, but it might be that it kicks in with some streaming (of silence) and your aids switch to streaming mode (and receive nothing), and depending on your setup for streaming it might sound like being muted (if you have very little mic sounds + a lot of streaming sound type of balance).
This ‘stream of silence’ could actually be just ongoing notification. Check options for that notification and kill its possibility to send sound.

Wild guesses, since you didn’t say which phone. And since I don’t know how exactly your aids work concerning the BT since I don’t have them.

1 Like

Thanks Blacky - some good suggestions. I have an iPhone XR. I will look for notifications and try to turn them off