I believe mine was described as moderate to severe at mid to high frequencies
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Phonak updated their Android “Phonak Remote” app yesterday. Anyone else using it? My experience is that it’s now much faster.
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Even though I know about noise damage when streaming with earbuds or HA’s before the noise-cancelling headphones I was guilty of what I thought warneral was suggesting - turning up the volume a bit to drown out the noise and hoping I wasn’t overdoing it - I was usually pushing if not slightly exceeding the beginning of the red volume zone on my Android phone to drown out the noise.
In trying now to justify being preachy (besides thinking of my own recent past bad example), I was thinking of those folks out in Oregon and Washington State (and some also lurking over the border in B.C.!) that should know about vaccination but don’t believe in it no matter what. So even when it’s stating the obvious, it doesn’t hurt (too much) to preach the gospel and hope that people (like me) not only know about the ‘religion’ but actually follow it, like when fiddling with the phone button on their phone (or HA’s).
Oh please do preach from the rooftops…particularly to young people. But here…you’re preaching to the choir…on this point. I certainly enjoy your writing.
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I was of the understanding that the Marvels have a built-in volume protection mechanism that won’t allow a volume loud enough to damage hearing. I believe this information came from my audiologist, but now I’m not sure and I don’t find corroboration anywhere. Is this a feature of any HA? Comments?
That’s a good point and it might make streaming alone safer than a combination of over-the-ear headphones on top of HA’s.
My Quattro’s can deliver up to about 116 dB SPL output - I think that’s enough to be painful and damaging if sustained for a minute or two:
So when screwing around with the Android Tone Generator foolishly, barely knowing how the app worked, and moving the volume the wrong way, I generated a combined sound through my HA’s and also from the headphones direct to my ear drums so loud and painful that I ripped the headphones off to stop the hurt, since as I was too frazzled by the sound to undo whatever I did with the Tone Generator app in short order. I had trouble hearing for about a minute afterwards. So I think most premium hearing aids these days, Widex Evoke 440’s, Marvel’s, Opn’s, Quattro’s, etc., can put out that level of sound as part of the prescription even with just medium power receivers, which is what mine are. A gunshot or a firecracker at close range are around 160 dB - so looking at those, yes, a HA will not fully reproduce the loudness of those sounds, thank goodness. And most modern HA’s have compression for sudden sharp loud sounds to reduce the reproduced volume to tolerable levels-I’ve read that but don’t know how that works relative to the Maximum Power Output (MPO) of a HA, which is what the 116 dB level is.
Perhaps it’s like laser class 3A eye protection, which is based on eye aversion to visible laser light. An HA can put out 120 db max because no one’s going to tolerate that level of sound for 28 seconds but within a second or two, a wearer is going to do something just like me to stop it - put their hands over their ears, rip off their headphones, or HA’s or whatever. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can explain OSHA safety standards vs. HA output capability!
Sorry. Don’t mean to hijack the Marvel thread. Maybe all the posts starting from my reply to warneral about turning up loudness could be moved to a new thread - although the Marvel button feature to up streaming volume while lowering HA mic volume at the same time is pretty neat - so maybe the discussion helps point out what a helpful and hearing-saving Marvel feature that could be - perhaps somewhat on topic after all about the Marvels being marvelous!
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There are no hearing aids that cancel noise in the same way that noise cancelling headphones do. Jim is correct that the Marvel function that increases the streaming signal and turns down environmental noise is just attenuating the hearing aid microphones. Environmental noise getting into the ear around the hearing aid is unaffected.
Hearing aids do not offer hearing protection and in any situation where the average sound level is exceeding 80 dB SPL, hearing aids should come out and hearing protection should go in.
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Yes, it is a feature of all hearing aids.
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Yes, that is my experience. They don’t actually provide “noise cancellation” like my Bose Headphones do but in a somewhat noisy environment the ability to effectively eliminate the input from the mics and then adjust the volume on my iPhone to not be overly loud is a very nice feature. Yesterday I was having some physical therapy in a large room with many others present. At the end of my exercises, I was to get a “tens” electrical stimulation with ice on my back. Just before my PT person set me up I walked over to my iPhone on the shelf and started streaming music with the balance set all the way to audio and the volume where I like it. My PT person had no idea I was listening to music and she had to poke me to get my attention after the ten minute treatment was completed. My hearing loss is not that severe and like Jim I do have fairly good low frequency hearing, but the Marvels do a really good job of providing outstanding music streaming. If there are very loud sounds externally yes I can hear them somewhat, but generally the listening experience is very positive. I am going to post a couple of photos of my aids and “domes” so I can better understand what I actually have on my Marvels. Please help me understand what is meant by “Tulip” domes, “Power” domes, etc. and please tell me the proper name for my domes.
This makes sense to me😀. The two situations where I tend to “turn up my HA button” (to lessen outside noises) are when my husband is watching sports with low volume, or I’m in the minivan driving 65m0h and the road noise bothers me (but isn’t at a dangerous level).
My reply is to saratogaleft and Neville sorry
Thank you, Don! I listen to a lot of classical music and there can be a huge dynamic range all the way from a whisper to huge crescendos. I’ve been concerned that the loud crescendos could possibly damage my hearing even more than it is. It is never loud to the point of pain at all, but it can certainly get loud. It is reassuring to know that protection from damaging volume is a feature of all hearing aids!
Great reply to the noise consideration problem. It probably would eat up too much precious processing power but maybe someday in the future when there is “CPU” time to burn, HA’s will be able to warn the wearer that they’re being asked to spit out too much processing power or their mics are being exposed to dangerously high levels of sound for too long a time - maybe through a special beeping alert if the wearer begins to exceed some threshold of time-dB exposure - and it would be a user-configurable option so those people like the old-me just cranking up the volume a bit to overcome background noise could continue pushing the limits (but maybe a more extreme threshold limit further up the loudness scale to sound a full-red alert - “now your ears are really toast!”).
P.S. And when HA’s are made, straight out of the factory door, I am sure both their mics and their receivers are calibrated to spec. So HA’s know better how to accurately measure dangerous sound levels than we do. They’re made to perform to standard (or in part why they’re so expensive) - it’s just they have to learn to tell us what they’re hearing/outputting in terms of loudness safety.
My concern was with hearing protection while streaming music. Isn’t there volume protection from streaming music?
I think output would be limited by MPO, but I think that’s about it.
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Yeah, MPO. I’m very familiar with ReSound SmartFit, and from that standpoint, there’s no streaming protection — it assumes what the overall aid is set at. I am nearly certain the same is true for Phonak Target, though I have only tinkered in that software in a fake profile.
Well, let me back up. There is MPO which would specify how loud it could get, and that would protect against impulse noise damage.
But, if you have a consistent volume output of 85db, it is recommended not to have more than 8 hours of it, then have a 10 hour break. For 95db it is a lot shorter safe time (3 or 4 hours?). For louder sounds it is an even shorter safe amount. So you could exceed those guidelines and damage your hearing.
With speech it would be unlikely to get sound on the same frequency consistently, but for music, it is possible to damage your hearing with long, loud listening.
Where did you get the updated app? I’m not seeing it in the Play store.
I have auto-update turned ON and I was automatically updated on 15Feb2019. If you have already downloaded “Phonak Remote” you may not be aware of the update, so look in the update history when you click on the app in My Apps in the Play Store. Mine says updated 2 days ago.
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