Jeffrey, what do you do when your hearing aids have feedback?
Feedback management is still on in my Universal setting and other non musical settings. So far feedback hasn’t been an issue in the music settings–knock on wood. I have custom ear molds.
Did you have a real ear measurement verification?
I’m taking notes on everyone’s recommendation about feedback management custom ear molds check the compression for the musician program… Will see my Audi this afternoon Friday, January 7
I’ve been searching for the past two years and have tried about seven or eight major brands. Prior to current trial of Signia I tried Widex Moment.
In 2010 my Audi recommended Starkey S series level 11– highest and most expensive. For five years I had not played acoustic piano then in 2015 as I begin reworking major classical repertoire at a 6 foot ground I found no hindrance between the hearing aids and sound representation of this instrument… but they’re 11 years old!
I took two articles of Chassin and Baumin so Widex could be programmed with no compression… Close to former Starkey but had weird clunk at initiation of piano sound where the key is initially depressed…!
I’m finding that the more generally clever current hearing aids are in eliminating environmental noise to hear speech, these digital improvements are not syncing with requirements for representing piano instrument sound as one plays— but I’m still pursuing.
My programming for the signia went well yesterday January 7 with both rep and Audi. On the musician playing instrument program rep deleted Feedback management. I asked Moore about possibilities of changing compression ratio and she informed meSignia uses“ adaptive compression.”
Can anyone explain the difference between adaptive compression and general compression?
Trying the new setting at my grand piano the feedback management turned off was definitely a step in the right direction. But now I’m quite sure there’s a problem with tweaking the compression.
That’s really good, it’s a good start.
This is something she should of explained at the time, but honestly this is quite complex, maybe best to read the white paper from Signia to begin with, then reach out to the Pro’s on here, or wait till you get back to see your audiologist, this will be a trial and error thing to be worked out over time, more linear or more compressive fitting (XFix only I believe) dynamic range, compression knee points, compression ratios, attack and release times, oh man it gets really complicated, for the pros only 🥸
See here
Just to add to the mix…
I am a pianist too, and have higher frequency hearing loss.
I have been using the KS10s for around 6 months and find they are fine (beneficial!) when playing the piano.
As recommended by others, I have a custom program with ZERO feedback suppression, zero noise/wind reduction and low compression ratios. Generally this works very well. On the few occasions I get some feedback - which I suspect it is due to interaction with room acoustics depending on where I am playing - I simply turn down my HAs a notch or two - this has not failed me yet…
The Big picture is that there is likely to be a solution that will work well for you unless you have unusual or profound loss that is hard to fit.
Thank you TenKan and oz-tack for directing me to dig into the compression mishmash and advice from a pianist actually playing and using hearing aids!
I found a video explaining adaptive compression from Oticon (I think). I began watching it then got swamped with the details so I’ll try again because it seems user-friendly if I’m just patient to listen to it all. I feel really productive about working with this rep from Signia.
May I ask what are the hearing aids he referred to as K-10’a, oz-tack?
The KS10s are the Kirkland brand from Costco. They are made by Sonova who are the parent company to Phonak. They are almost identical to the Phonak Audeo Paradise P90RTs. I have a great Costco Audiologist who is ‘on-side’ with me and happy to work to get the aids programmed appropriately for both hearing spech and playing/listening to music. As others will reiterate here, the key is getting an audiologist/Hearing aid fitter/specialist who is knowledgeable and who you can work with. Good luck!
Thanks everyone for your generous observations. But I’m still trying to understand the term “adaptive compression” because I want to be aware if it’s something that could interfere with the musician playing an instrument program on the Signia Pure that I am trialing.
All that I’ve read about it so far is that it optimizes speech within noise so the hearing aid user can pick up the soft and not have the louds too much.
I’m not at all sure about adaptive compression, so take the following with a grain of salt. As a rule, compression programs that are oriented towards speech in a variety of environments, or speech in general, don’t work well with music. It’s possible–but I don’t know for sure–that this is another program that needs to be disabled for playing. You really want unfiltered compression for music. You don’t want a program that aims to focus on the decibel range of speech, that’s far more limited than what a good music program allows.
Thank you thank you Jeffrey you are spot on! After I watched a video on this topic of adaptive compression it seemed overwhelmingly focused towards speech perception and a variety of background noise and whether the speech was soft or loud…That has not to do with the environment of live music being played on my piano! So when I see my Audi and the rep again I’m going to double check this speech beneficial style of compression is turned off in the musician playing an instrument program.
Yes, turning that off may do the trick. I was amazed at how turning off feedback management instantly cured the issues I was having. I don’t have adaptive compression on my musician program. Best wishes! It’s a very good thing when aids work well with your instrument!
also: most audi’s don’t understand programming for a musician. And what’s needed for that goes against everything they’ve been trained for and what they usually work with, namely, making aids work for speech recognition. Two Signia audiologists and my audi didn’t understand what I needed to make my aids work. The Signia reps in particular were nearly offended at my wanting to turn off features that are a selling point for their aids. However they were able to do what I asked very easily. It was a matter of working with them politely. And it worked out in the end. over on the Adult Musician site, one hears this story over and over.
Hello to all.
No, I’m not a Signia wearer, but a Phonak Paradise 70 wearer.
I would say that for any musician, turning OFF all feedback management (Phonak = “Whistle block”) is a MUST.
I tried everything else, which didn’t work.
Even minimum 1 out of 10 in the “Whistle block” parameter, produced very audible artefacts.
But the next job was to lower the gains in the G50 (ie. Phonak’s gain applied to inputs of up to 50dB) bands where feedback had to be attenuated to elimination.
My 6’ 8’ Bechstein grand piano now sounds completely different and amazing.
The partials, or harmonic outputs of notes in the 2 to 4kHz area, that used to be “seen” by the “Whistle block” algorithms as feedback, are now amplified in Hi Fi and heard in all their majesty.
Yeah but the thing is it should all ready be off, as this is the default for music anyway, also another thing is to actually turn it off, you have to have frequency lowering enabled in music program, unlikely you would of asked for that right, but I guess your audiologist could of done this, frequency lowering is known to give audible artifacts for some people.
Default in Xfit (rationale) is
‘More Compressive’ so this is dependent on which rationale you have been fit with.
One more thing is you get 3 different music settings in the HD music program.
- Recorded music
- Live music
- Musician Setting
So these all give a slightly different fit, try them all with a recording of your piano in the office. If that doesn’t work,then have a look at doing DIY and make the adjustments on fly
You need to demo Widex hearing aids. As a musician I find them to be superior to others I’ve used and demoed: Phonak, Starkey, and Oticon.
I have already tried Widex moment hearing aids. Keep in mind that the modern grand piano it’s a very complicated sound. I very very much wanted theWidex to work out but it did not represent all of the natural sound characteristics of my 6 foot Grotrian-Steinweg Grand piano. Most conspicuously it had a nasty clunking sound at the very initiation where the hammer strikes the string. I have to complement their rep working with my Audi as the rep set up three sample music dedicated programs.
As I’m ending the trial This Friday of the Signia pure
HA, i’m also very disappointed it cannot produce the same natural representation of grand piano sound as my 11 year old Starkey S Series Aids…!
I graduated from conservatory school , played lots of chamber music with violin and
ello, so I have a very thorough background when my hearing was normal of acoustic piano sound.
Maybe the Oticon is next to try?
FYI, I’m currently wearing the Oticon More.
I don’t play piano, but a close friend does, and his playing is very clear and concise to me.
Attached is Oticon’'s tech paper on their MYMusic program rationale.:
72873uk_tech_paper_music_program.pdf (199.1 KB)
Definitely, and why not ReSound as well, I don’t have any doubt that you’ll find the HA your looking for, keep everyone updated on progress, the end result will be interesting for sure.