Phonak Marvel 30 Voice issues during Bluetooth Call

Perhaps I’m misreading the original post, but it seems as though when the hearing-aid-wearing OP is making a Bluetooth call, the person whom the OP is calling is unable to hear the OP’s voice. Forgive me, but I don’t think any physical adjustment to the hearing aid is going to help with this. I think it’s more of a phone issue since the phone is not picking up the hearing aid wearer’s voice and transmitting it to the user during the call. I could be mistaken, but I didn’t think the hearing aids transmitted any information to the phone, but instead received it. The streaming-capable hearing aids with which I’ve worked have all required the user to have the phone within a reasonable distance of the user’s mouth so that the phone’s mic can pick up the user’s voice. Again, I could be misreading and/or misunderstanding.

It is a Marvel issue. Marvel uses the microphones on the hearing aid to pick up the voice of the hearing aid user when they are talking on the phone. The upside is that it gives the user hands free use of the phone as they don’t have to hold the phone near their mouth. But, if the mics do not reliably pick up the voice the caller at the other end does not hear or get good quality audio. That is why users go to these unusual antics to try and realign the hearing aids.

The Marvel use of the microphones in the aids, instead of in the phone, gets mixed reviews.

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Ah! Thank you for clearing that up. Learn something new every day!

The use of the built in mics…wonderful in quiet environments…is useless in any real noise. I know this from repeated efforts with the ones I am wearing.

Thankfully I don’t work in the real noise of your steel mill. The most noise I encounter is a noisy restaurant and my Marvel 90 works quite well in that environment.

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Yes… I have been a nightmare for Resound and Phonak and my Audiologist.

Yet,
They have all been Kind and gracious.

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Is it possible to use a RogerPen or an external mic for bluetooth phonecalls to improve the call quality?

You would need Roger receivers installed into your Marvels for the Pen to work.

Thanks for your reply, my wife will ask her audiologist to install Roger receivers, I’ll come back and will write about the improvements.

The Roger receivers aren’t free I’m afraid. They cost quite a lot for your Aud to install them.

I’m in the UK and they cost £500 each.

@Cologne I’ve tried to accomplish what you describe a number of times with no success. My devices include Marvel 13T * 2, Roger X03 receivers * 2, Phonak Pen 1.1 * 2, Phonak Select, and Phonak Table Mic 2 * 2. Although the Pens and Select will pair successfully with whatever Bluetooth device I choose, the Marvels will continually cycle between my default program, which is set to Autosense, and the Streaming program. This makes the Bluetooth functionality of the Pen and Select effectively useless.

Roger microphones are fantastic, in fact the best I’ve ever used, but my experience suggests they won’t work for your use case.

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I wonder if @RogerPM could help you with this issue.

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That’s what I suspected when posting my question. I Think the marvels perform bluetooth pairing with the phone as complete headset-device, consisting of speaker and microphone. And there may be no way to separate the microphone for example using the microphone of the phone.
I asked @RogerPM, if a “Roger Pen iN” could be used as a microphone input device for bluetooth phonecalls and would improve understandability.

The Roger Pen iN doesn’t have Bluetooth in it. Only the standard Roger Pen 1.1 has Bluetooth.

Unfortunately the Bluetooth implementation in the Roger devices does not play nice with the Bluetooth in the Marvels. When using Marvel it’s recommended to use the Bluetooth feature in Marvel and disable it in the Roger mic. The iN microphones does not have Bluetooth at all.

I’ve heard rumors of some users having success with placing the mobile phone much closer to the hearing aid than the Roger mic (it could possibly be the other way around), so they do not interfere as much. I have not verified this, so I cannot say how well it works. But it’s something that could be tried.

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Yes, I know. As far as I understand, the Roger Pen iN is able to connect directly to the marvels (Audeo M90,312T) by using RogerDirect Receivers, the Roger pen iN comes with 2 receiver licenses. My hope is, that the marvels (bluetooth-paired to the phone) are able to use the connected microphone as an input device for the call.

In the meantime my question was answered by @RogerPM.
… I’m sorry to say that Roger microphones cannot be used as input for phone calls with Marvel. You are bound to using the microphone in the hearing aids. …
Thanks to all for your answers and ideas.

On connevans.co.uk i think I saw them for around 600 gbp both, so around 300 each. Non edu versions.

https://www.connevans.co.uk/catalogue/5874768/Roger-radio-aid-receivers

Yup, was right. Price you mention looks more like that for the edu receivers.

Edit:
@Cologne
Oh, and in Germany, sites don’t mention which type they sell, but it’s around 600 eur each. However, price for select and select iN are roughly similar. Don’t ask me why. Don’t tell them :joy:
And Roger pen iN you cannot buy in Germany because they are not importing it. My audi called phonak and checked this. In front of me. Reason given: Germany isn’t big enough market. And pen 1.1 is roughly 800-900 eur. Add to that 2x 600 eur receivers (2000 eur), and you’re better off buying select iN and regular pen 1.1 (also around 2000 eur), since select iN already comes with 2 receivers and you get two mics for different situations.

Of course if you buy only select iN and then pen in uk/ebay, it will work.

However on this uk site select and select iN prices differ for roughly 600 gbp, eg price for two non edu receivers, so iN is around 1500 gbp.
However pen they have, based on description is first generation, not second (pen 1.1 is the one you want).

User RogerPM mentioned somewhere that better range for pen/select iN is due to the marvels hardware not that much due to the pen, so I’d say you’re fine with regular pen 1.1.

Plus it doesn’t make sense to pay for the receivers twice (in select iN and pen iN) because you need only two of them for 2 has, not 4 of them. Each gadget comes with 2 receivers.

If you buy in uk/ebay roger x receivers, they can be transferred into marvels using some device that your audi should be able to obtain from phonak. That is assuming that audi will want to cooperate :slight_smile:

Edit2: on the topic of separate mic and sound, one wired solution is to put mic+audio splitter at the output of the phone, direct mic output to the wired mic (headphones with mic should work as well, they just won’t receive sound), and direct sound output to the roger select/pen ordinary audio input (micro usb to audio cable) who will then wirelessly transmit sound to the HAs. That way you effectively stream audio, whichever it is, while having separate mic. However, wired mic in this case.

My case which I’ve tested is more complicated since it I wear only one HA (right), and I didn’t want to rely on bad ear only, but wanted to hear in both ears. So, one HA (right) and headphones with mic (left earpiece only) using homemade splitter to accomplish sending mic signal only to headphone and not select, while sending audio to the both (I won’t bother you with tech details, unless you want it). Worked perfectly, tested both indoors and outdoors (sitting on a bench with various noise nearby).

But it really is a ‘contraption’ :joy:

And yes, I’m currently looking at testing two HAs (will start next week), one reason being not neededing that insane contraption but maybe only simpler one. Another is to benefit from programs that utilise 2 HAs like speech in 360 and similar. We’ll see.

Your solution should be less juggling since you need equal sound source into both ear eg through HAs.

Also, if you want almost completely wireless solutions eg that your mic is also wireless and not wired, you might look at the BT device to plugin into that mic only hole and catch that signal with BT mic. But I don’t have experience with that part, so I can’t tell how it works.

Edit3: maaaaybe bt mic to the phone and marvels bt switched to audio only and not calls & audio. But I haven’t tested if they’ll work that way for ordinary and/or voip calls (I use WhatsApp calls, but forgot to test this yet). I mean, one way to test is to see if they’ll catch audio while you use phone mic as mic.

My trialling is focused on figuring out what exactly is wrong with my ear and how to set up HA to help me, and at what degree. Current suspect is that I either dead regions in cohlea at low frequencies or damaged nerve, so increasing the volume creates distortion and lowers comprehension, which is even harder to fit than already hard low frequency hearing loss itself. I might know more when I have more time to focus on gadget’s features and not on survivability only :joy:

I can’t see why you wouldn’t be able to get the Roger Direct set up and to use a Roger Pen 1.1 and take calls that way?

I know, right? Logically it should work just fine, yet it doesn’t when using Marvel’s Roger Direct.

Drove me nuts for a month, but I’ve finally made peace with it. :smiley: