Warbly Sound

Hello. Last Thursday I was fitted with a pair of Oticon Ria2 Pro Ti hearing aids. My audiogram is fairly straightforward, with excellent word recognition scores. When listening to music, or hear a pure tone sound like a text message tone, and some voices, I hear a warble quality thru the aid.

Has anyone else experienced this? What causes it? I’m not sure I’ll be able to adequately explain it to my audiologist, and it would be great if I could tell her what it is and maybe offer some programming recommendations if someone has experienced this and fixed it through reprogramming.

Other than this, I am very satisfied.

This might be caused by the feedback cancellation system. Sometimes it mistakes a tone or music as feedback and tries to eliminate it, causing a distortion in the sound quality.

Explain it to your audi just as you did here. I had the same problem with certain sounds. The open door chime on my car, and the oven timer. I told my HIS that it wasn’t really a problem, but I found it interesting and worth commenting on. He jumped right on it and made a few adjustments that pretty much got rid of it. Like rasmus said, it’s the feedback suppression. It doesn’t need to be turned off, just adjusted.

I have Bernafon Juna 9s and experienced the same issue (warble, tremolo, vibrato) with single tones above 2000Hz. Adjustment improved it only slightly. I have other programs I can switch to (music) that eliminates it when I need to. This program doesn’t use the feedback suppression.

Noticed very rarely and not during music so far. If I whistle in an enclosed space like the shower I might notice it.

Just had the real-ear measurement done at my follow-up appointment. Just as I suspected, the right ear was a little soft in the higher frequencies so she bumped it up a bit (the left was also a little low in the high frequencies, so she bumped that one up too but not as much as the right). Also got a music program, so hopefully that will fix the warbly tones.

Overall very pleased with how the Ria 2 Pro Tis are performing.

Given how relatively mild your loss is, the FBM can usually be shut off - Oticon’s one isn’t on by default, but there is some reverse phase management going on. You could also be aware (especially as your lower pitch hearing is practically normal) of the time delay between the amplified and direct sounds. This can give a bit of a ‘wobble’ in the reproduction of purer tones. Your brain will habituate to it to an extent, though a bit of tweaking may help.