Musician 72: There you are! I’m really happy to be in contact with you again. I think you are key to understanding what is going on with these Bernafons and why what I have done seems to work.
Here are the differences I think are significant:
- The 50, 65 and 80 dB curves have much more separation. I think this results in less contribution and coherent interference from the aids when it is not needed, particularly at high levels above 80 dB. As I mentioned in an earlier post, using the instant mute feature with the Bernafons I now detect very little difference at high levels, and definite improvement at lower levels. The treble is good and clear all the way down to 50 dB. In other words the listening dynamic range is improved.
- The separation of the level dependent response curves emulates figures 19 and 25 in my report, taken from Killion for the K-Amp. That means to me that the compression and frequency response adjustment with amplitude works more like the K-Amp, which is my ‘gold standard’ for good hearing aid sound with music.
- The response profile with frequency is much more linear on the log scale. I really don’t know if this contributes much to the improved performance, but I suspect it does.
Sometimes it really does not take much distortion in frequency response or compression behavior to have a very noticeable effect on sound quality. I am pretty fanatic about sound, and distortions that bother me may not produce the same negative response in others. It could be that I have just been lucky with this project to have hit the sweet spot, but there’s one way to find out: replication of the results by someone else. I really hope another equipped self-programmer can try out the procedure on Widex Dreams, Unitrons, or any other aid with high input level capability, and report back. I’m sure there is a friendly audiologist out there somewhere that is interested in good aid performance on music that could help out here.
You are welcome to send me your programming and i will certainly try out any changes you suggest. Thank you for your interest!
Paul