I am recently bimodal (cochlear implant on one side, resound nexia on the other). Because of the way bimodal works, I can only use resound to pair with my Cochlear brand implant/processor (for life, pretty much). I recieved the Nexia in February, and it has been in 4 times for repair in no more than 6 months, although I am drying it every night in a dryer with desiccant. About every 4-6 weeks, the microphone stops working (outside sound doesn’t come through unless I use the “hear in noise” program) and I have to visit my audiologist and trade it in for a replacement.
is anybody else having this problem?
is there possibly something else I am not considering as the problem?
is anybody “in the know” if this is a problem and if resound is working on it?
Perhaps you don’t say enough about all your equipment for folks to figure out what might be wrong (I know next to nothing about CI working with HAs myself).
But your statement, "…outside sound doesn’t come through unless I use the “hear in noise” program is the reverse of a situation I created with my ReSound Omnias by damaging both left ear HA body microphones on the ReSound Omnias.
I have M&RIE receivers with my Omnias. Those have a third microphone on the end of the receiver that sticks out of the ear canal, next to where the receiver wire is attached.
In the All-Around, Outdoors, and Music program modes in quiet and moderate noise level environments, ~all the sound input to the ears is through the M&RIE microphones, not the HA body ones.
So, when I damaged my left HA body microphones in a sleep-deprived state, it took me a week or two to realize what I’d done. Only when I switched to the Front Focus mode, which might be akin to the Nexia Hear-in-Noise setting, did I hear nothing in my left ear, and the Front Focus effect was completely lost because the left and right body mics couldn’t do their Front Focus beam forming (the M&RIE on-the-receiver mics are not used in Front Focus mode).
So, perhaps if your Nexia has an M&RIE receiver and your settings, as mine, do favor the microphone on the receiver in low and moderate noise level environments, it’s that microphone that’s breaking down. And if your HA body mics, unlike mine, are OK when you switch to Hear-in-Noise, then you hear sound. If you just have standard HA bodies, the M&RIE microphone vs. the body microphones idea would not pertain.
In your desiccant setup, are you applying heat, or is there any dust to blow around?
I do have an M&RIE. My audiologist said she checked the receiver and it was not that piece but was the actual main piece. She took it out of the room to a shop room, so I wasn’t able to see how she checked this, however, I do know that during previous repairs (from the prior 3 times this happened), they changed this out to check it, and it hasn’t been that in the past.
Also- the past time I had it repaired the turn around time was too quick to have actually repaired it vs just sending a new one. (Friday to Tuesday).
Perhaps your experience with ReSound’s and your audiologist’s feedback has been better than mine. On ReSound Quattros, I had quite a few microphone failures, but with the Nexia, other than accidentally damaging my left HA body microphones, I’ve never had a problem. But with the Quattros, I’d ask for a failure analysis on what went wrong - ReSound would always just warranty replace a failed HA and never say blip.
So, if you got some actual, real feedback on your previous returns, that’s far better than my experience. But maybe they’re just doing the same with you and not digging very deeply into what went wrong.
My disclaimer that I know nothing about how HAs work with CI is that although I might imagine your M&RIE experience is the inverse of mine, I’m clueless about how an M&RIE receiver works with the regular programs and the Hear-in-Noise program with a CI. Do you wear M&RIE receivers in both ears, and the HAs just feed the HA output to your better ear? Since, AFAIK, the Omnia equivalent of the Hear-in-Noise program requires HAs on both ears to work for beam forming. So your setup is a CROS or BiCROS situation besides the CI? (my complete ignorance is showing here).
If the problem were that the M&RIE openings on the receivers were just clogged as GrayGhost suggested, it might be very easy to fix that by just changing out the filters. The circular dot below the receiver wire in the linked picture of my M&RIE receiver is the M&RIE microphone filter.
I replace my M&RIE mic filters ~every 6 months, although I see no ear or hair debris in that region in my daily HA cleaning. I do apply a VERY light coating of olive oil to my molds to ease their insertion into my ear canals, but I wipe my fingers on a Kleenex before inserting the molds to avoid getting olive oil anywhere near the M&RIE mic openings (the sort of possible contamination problem that GrayGhost suggested).
If you only hear sound through the receiver in your better ear, I guess it’s always possible that something about the circuitry in that HA is failing rather than having a M&RIE mic problem.**** If you wear two HAs and you have the problem again where you only can hear using the Hear-in-Noise program, you might try to see if the sound that you can hear is only coming from receivers on one ear or both ears. In my inverse situation in the Hear-in-Noise equivalent, I could only hear sound coming from my right ear, and I could hear nothing coming from my left ear. That made me realize I’d destroyed my left ear body microphones in my half-asleep cleaning of my HAs a few weeks earlier (I stuck my Jodi-Vac needle into the left ear body microphones and on the 2nd one “came to” and said to myself, “What the H---- am I doing?!” But I thought I hadn’t damaged the mics, not realizing that the body mics normally only come into play for me in the Hear-in-Noise equivalent program.).
**** Note: theoretically, the way your audiologist would check receiver function vs. HA body function is by swapping your receiver(s) onto Nexia HAs that she knows work properly and verifying that sound is transmitted to the receiver ~normally in the regular programs like the All-Around (or whatever it’s called with the Nexia). Conversely, she could put a receiver(s) she knows is/are good on your HA body(ies) and see that no programs other than Hear-in-Noise work even with your receiver replaced with a known good receiver. Still, from what little I know, it seems likely that the circuitry in the HA body that takes sound input from the M&RIE microphone and sends it to be processed and sent to the receivers has become defective, as the difference between Hear-in-Noise and the other standard programs is whether the M&RIE microphones are employed (other standard programs) or the body microphones are (Hear-in-Noise program). It’s hard to avoid that distinction when thinking about what went wrong, whehter the problem was in your HA body or receiver.
ReSound has been replacing defective HAs recently because of a problem in manufacturing as I understand it. They supposedly found the problem lem and know there has been an issue. I would contact your audiologist. I heard you say you recently got this hearing aid. Good luck!
I got mine from Costco…after a few months I noticed one night we were in a noisy environment and using the hear in noise setting did nothing. Went back to costco hearing technician saud he couldn’t find anything wrong and made it seem like it was jyst me…went back again 2 days later and saw a different tech and he put a stethoscope on them and said no wonder…internal mics werent picking up anything…so they replaced them with new ones. Several months later now I am starting to have issues again where my hearing is getting worse again and have to use the hear in noise a lot mire now…wondering if this pair is starting to gave issues now too …
As a follow up, I was upgraded to the Nexia 9 back in August from a Nexia 7. As a side note- I will say that I actually can tell a difference in the sound especially in background noise when I compare the 2. So all was going well, then this week my Nexia 9 had the same problem again. I went to my Audi and they now have case replacements for the HA- which fixed the problem. Ends up, for some reason the external microphone barrier/guard (not the M&RIE) is not able to release the moisture in this model. Apparently the tiny mic hole in the top of the HA has a filter, but it easily gets clogged. So now they can swap out the outer casing of the HA, which has that filter built into it to protect the actual microphone. My Audi did this and it worked again right away. Atleast we now have a remedy for the future if this keeps occurring. Does anybody know if buying a can of compressed air could help clear this out?
Well that’s debatable, I mean it can get clogged but over time, it’s not like the wax filters or anything, very easy to remove the housing and clean with a soft brush, the ones you get supplied with will be ok, just be careful, definitely don’t do the compressed air system!
