Piano and Phonak Naida L30-SP

Hearing Aids
1

I have an acoustic upright piano that I’ve been playing for several years.

I’ve started trialing Phonak Naida L30-SPs this week.

This is going to be a bit hard to describe, but I’ll try:

I notice that when playing notes on the piano, there is a bit of a warbling, ringing sound attached to the note sound, fainter than the note sound itself. This is present in all my programs on the hearing aids (music, speech in noise, AutoSense).

First I thought, okay this is a cheap, old piano and maybe it’s always been there, I just never heard it until now. So I asked my wife if this is the case - nope.

Then I thought, oh oh, maybe this is hearing aid feedback triggered by the piano playing? But the warbling/ringing noise was still there when I lowered the HA volume way down, or pressed the piano keys very lightly, and seemed to lower in volume in lockstep with the volume level of either method, not necessarily something that would occur if it were truly hearing aid feedback.

I tried recording it on my iPhone and playing it back (on the hearing aid streaming program). The warbling/ringing was still there, but not as prominent.

So then I tried playing a digital screen piano on my iPad (GarageBand) using the iPad speakers to further pinpoint if it is the acoustic piano or my hearing aids, and the warbling/ringing was still there, which would indicate it is my hearing aids.

Then I switched to the streaming program on my hearing aids instead of the iPad speakers and played the iPad digital screen piano again, and, viola, the warbling/ringing sound disappeared!

Any experiences and/or advice on what this faint warbling/ringing is when playing a piano live?

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Issue is the feedback control.

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Thank you Zebra. I’ll bring this up with my audiologist. Hopefully the feedback control can be brought down a bit without enabling too much feedback.

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I had this exact problem with my KS10s when playing guitar as well as keyboard. Even DIY-ing to turn off all feedback controls and other annoying features in the Music program, I was unable to completely eliminate it even following Marshall Chasin’s recommendations. They’ve just come back from a ‘refresh’ at Sonova under warranty, so I’ll reprogram them and try again to make this go away.

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Thank you! What were Marshall Chasin’s recommendations?

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In a nutshell:
First, be sure to select hearing aids that have 20-bit or 24-bit architecture to allow for a higher input level. Then start with the optimal “speech-in-quiet” program for the patient and make adjustments from there to create a custom music program.
Dial Down Compression
A low compression ratio of 1.7 to 1 (or a maximum of 2 to 1) is best for music.
Disable the noise reduction system for the music program.
Turn Off Feedback Management Circuit
Turn Off Frequency Shifting

Google Dr. Marshall Chasin, he has many extensive articles online on the subject.

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You can find lots of information here.

https://grandpianopassion.com/category/hearing-music/

https://musicandhearingaids.org/

And Mr Marshall Chasin.

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Here is a little twist for FYI purposes that maybe someone can add a little insight to.

When using the streaming programs on my hearing aids, the feedback control issues are not present, and hence there is no warbling/whistling effect. Maybe this has something to do with the mics being bypassed for the streamed audio.

Of course, this would mean I would need to use a digital piano that allows me to use these programs (probably via a TV Connector) if I want to play a piano without that issue with this as a solution.

I also noticed that when using my iPhone voice memo app to record an acoustic piano, it would actually record the warbling/whistling so that even my wife can hear it upon playback. At first I was puzzled as to how this could be, before I realized this was because the iPhone was using my hearing aid’s mic to record the sound rather than the iPhone mic.

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How do you actually do this in Phonak Target. I’ve found some workarounds, but not how to turn it off.

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Feedback management is the “Whistle Block” , reduce Whistle Block by pushing the lever to the left

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I do that as a matter of course. I set it as low as possible. The method I use is cupping my hand to induce feedback, then remove the hand. If the feedback stops that’s where I set it. However, that doesn’t switch it off on the initial programming

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Great to see such insights here - and the mention of Dr Marshall Chasin. That’s a guy who plays music and uses his ears. Must save up to buy his book!
From what people on Hearing Tracker report, and my own long journey (UK) from ‘tinny’ to acceptable speech and music, I suspect his perceptual gifts are relatively rare among the people who design our hearing aids, not to mention (should I?) those who devise audiology training. I would guess the ‘average’ audiophile can show more musical sensibility, though of course not a comparable knowledge of the ear’s intricacies. There is progress now beyond very clever speech-in-noise… but could it not be quicker?

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Hoping that Apple will find a way to carry over their fantastic music sound in their AirPods Pro 2 into a new amazing hearing aid! Wouldn’t it be great if they were already working on it?? Maybe if they think the money’s there…