Hello Volusiano,
I doubt you remember me, it’s been about three years. My insurance allows a new set every three years and it’s that time again. A number of things have changed over that time and not just my hearing. I’ve moved from the east side of Michigan to the west, my insurance has changed (I’m now forced to use TruHearing) and my very excellent audiologist is now three hours away and does not participate with TruHearing. Oh well that’s life.
Have been wearing the Evoke 440 which I got because of the way they handled music which is terrific. But over the past year they have not been meeting my needs for SIN. Noisy environments have become impossible. Best thing about the Widex? Music is fabulous. Worst thing? Their feedback manager sucks. I wear fully closed domes or molds or have to put up with an oscilloscope strapped to the left side of my head.
Anyway, after lots of searching I’ve finally found an actual audiologist in a hearing center, Hearing Life, that participates with TruHearing. Hearing Life is owned by Damant so, though they will fit any of the major brands, they do try to fit Oticon and I’ve been trialing a set of More 1s for the last week and a half.
I’m putting this post to you because of your obvious knowledge of the whole Oticon program and I have some questions to go with my initial impressions of the aids. First, music is better with the Widex. OK that’s out of the way. I am hearing significantly better with the Oticon. At home I can hear my wife speaking to me from another room. I am not missing fricatives nearly as much and so I don’t have to be looking at someone to pick up all they are saying. In simple environments I can hear people at my side and even behind which has been missing for quite some time. But I still struggle in complex environments. They are better there but not great. Noise suppression, at least as they are presently set, is wanting. I do understand Oticon’s open concepts, my first hearing aids were Alta Pros, and I don’t think that is the issue. Speech enhancement is superior to my current aids but the complexity of loud environments is still very difficult.
So educate me if you will on settings for that environment. What should I be looking at when I start asking the audi to modify things.
- Neural noise suppression. I’ve seen where you suggest maxing that out, 5 easy and 10 hard, if I recall correctly. I have the speech in noise program. Do these settings effect that or are they applied only in auto? If auto only I assume they are, or can be manually set to max in the speech in noise program.
- Virtual Outer Ear. What does this effect and how is it to be maximized for speech in noise if that applies.
- Sound Enhancer. Same as above.
Thanks in advance for your help.
I do not have a printout of my current test but if you take the current one in my info you can, on the right side, drop everything down around 5 decibels across the board and flatten the midrange peak, and about the same on the left but 8 to 10 decibels at the high frequency end.