I posted an update on my hearing aids in another post:
Anyway, my question relates to the dome type, as I have moved from open to vented. Does anyone have experience with this. I am still in that awkward “brain adjustment phase - shouty and bright” with the new hearing aid programme and change in domes, but my impression and research is that the vented dome doesn’t allow as much natural sound through and this will compromise the receiving of the lower frequencies and how that impacts on music.
I did question the audiologist on this and she advise that music would sound better with the vented domes and adjusted programme (I use the music programme on my Phonak HAs). What are thoughts on the dome technology on users with hearing aids @davidhendon and co? Am I better to go back to open domes and accept that the speech function may be less than optimal from a technical perspective, but better for music? I have some of the open domes left, so could swap them around, but apparently the programme setting would then need adjustment, making a comparison difficult.
It’s very difficult to comment on this question Mike because the answer depends to a large extent on what sort of hearing loss you have.
Most commonly people develop high frequency losses as they age, but you can get a very different type of loss from infection or from other progressive disease processes.
If you need the gain now and assuming age-related or noise-damaged high frequency loss, then vented rather than open domes are necessary, otherwise you will suffer from feedback (whistling) or from hearing the artefacts caused by feedback reduction systems stopping feedback. Such systems have real trouble with music, which can seem like feedback to the processing in the hearing aid. So it’s best to avoid feedback with music by having domes that are less open.
So I think you should go with the new vented domes and let some time go by while your brain adapts to the brighter sounds caused by the extra gain. But you can certainly ask your audiologist to back off the extra gain a bit. It depends how ready to do that without a big fuss your audiologist is. Also presumably your Phonak phone app has tone controls? Have you played with those?
My own experience is that I used to spend a lot of time getting my audiologist to tweak the settings in my aids to my changing needs and wishes. But now I am set up to tweak the electronic settings myself and it’s all a lot easier to get it right for me.
However DIYing your own hearing aid settings is too involved to discuss here. I could point you at another forum if you wanted to think about that.
Hi David, thank you very much for the detailed response. Yes, my hearing loss is above 1kHz and quite a bit worse on the left ear. The Phonak Audeo has volume and tone controls, so will play around with those. Otherwise a case of enduring the brain readjustment phase for the time being.
Ok so, a couple more comments. People hear bass as much through skull conduction as via their ears and that is why even quite occluding domes don’t necessarily affect the bass heard, although bass is a problem for streaming directly into the hearing aids. So in your instance, changing domes will not necessarily affect your perception of deep bass.
Secondly hearing aid tone controls affect both ears and that may be why you would ask the audiologist to reduce the added gain in your left ear by a couple of dB. To put dBs into perspective, 1 dB is often quoted as the smallest change anyone would notice, but I know myself and could introduce many people from the forum as able to perceive a lower change than that! 3dB is doubling or halving the actual power level in the sound waves. So 2dB is probably a good number for a tweak…
Thanks, that reassuring about the bass. I’m having a Friday evening session, and happy to report that bass is fine.
On the gain, the Phonek app has the option to adjust each ear - but as it happens, I’ve always struggled a bit with getting a centre image with music with the standard programme based on my hearing test and have a little extra gain on the left ear built into the programme as a result (as much as the audiologist was happy with). Some of that might be psychologically mind games for all I know.
They all have separate gain for each ear, but I think it’s true to say none of them have tone controls that allow the user to change one ear and not the other.
But what you may not know is that you can have different gain curves in the music program from what is in the general use programs. This has to be set by the audiologist, but it’s completely possible to have more or less of any frequency in either ear in the music program. So if you think the changes are good for talking to people but bad for listening to music, then get the audiologist to lower the worse ear just in the music program and just at the frequencies that you think are too loud. This is trivially easy for them to do and there is no reason why they would not agree to do it.
That was an interesting video thanks. He doesn’t cover hearing aids as such, other than saying a lot of his customers use them. The thing that always amazes me is the level of the new technology and the amount of compensation the brain makes - the difference the brain adjusts when using aids is quite extraordinary, way beyond faffing around with system changes.
Yes it’s very interesting indeed. The brain is like the universe. Hard to understand. The brain control center needed input signals from the world around it since it otherwise would be stuck inside a dark skull. So it added sensors for sound, smell, vision and taste in order to control the body.
I’ve had a few hick ups at this stage unfortunately. Straight after the hearing aid algorithm was updated with my hearing test, the right hearing aid started to drain very quickly. It got to the stage where it would drain flat from a full charge in 2 hours. It had to be sent away for repair and I had a replacement aid (the next level down in the Phonex range) for a week. I had just starting adjusting those when the repaired aid came back. Unfortunately that stopped working the following day, so I was just using the left hearing aid and had it repaired last Thursday with a replacement receiver. I’m now back in the harsh and shouty phase that I experienced when I first got the hearing aids - I had hoped it would just be a few days to adjust with a changed programmed, but it’s not there yet. AI tells me it can take a few weeks to adjust to a change in programme and dome types, so I guess I should just carry on for a while and see (hear) how it goes? Do you have any experience with that @davidhendon?
The audiologist thought that the receiver and reliability issues I have been having relate to water in my ears - I get this from swimming in the warmer months, so will pick up some swimming ear plugs to help with that. Obviously moisture and sensitive electronics are not a great combination…
Mike, my immediate reaction is that your audiologist should restart your period of acclimatisation on the ear that has been without the hearing aid for a while.
Also presumably you are using a music programme when listening to your Naim? If so then you can ask for that program to be adjusted to be not shouty and then adjusted back after a few weeks. And if not, then you should be!
Cheers, presumably I can just lower the volume through the app to acclimatise? It was only a day or so without the hearing aid in my right ear. Likewise, with the music programme, I can use the EQ feature to ease back the high notes - I recall doing that with the temporary hearing aids for a while. I know it requires patience and I’d rather not go back to the audiologists again… its been 3 times in 3 weeks now.
Yes of course you can do that. But if after a week or two you have settled on settings in the app that suit you, then your audiologist should be able easily to correct the basic settings.
Still working away at this. I saw the audiologist last week and she has reduced the gain on the automatic setting, she used an adjustment the phonak software can do based on how much I was manually reducing the gain across different environments and that seems fine now - reducing overly load background noise and the harsh shouting and crunchy sounds.
Music is still a bit of a challenge. I have been using the standard music setting and we wound this back 3dB but didn’t adjust anything else, as I thought it was okay. Now I’m not so sure, as some music is still a bit glassy and shouting on some recordings and I’m picking up annoying background noise in the music room (my computer sound, and outside sounds like wind) that seem disproportionately loud. What I have done so far is adjust the music setting in the app, reducing treble and middle by 1 notch (3dB) each and this addresses the glare, increased noise reduction by 25% to remove some background noise, and reduced dynamics to reduce the shouty peaks. This seems mostly okay, but seems somewhat recording and source dependant. Off course my system is quite revealing, and with the adjusted programme after my last hearing test, there is much more detail to process. I think I just need to settle on a music setting for a while using the app.
It’s a bit mentally frustrating adjusting to this and I have thought as to whether I’m over invested in the system and should down size somewhat if my hearing and aids don’t do the system justice. I’m not planning anything drastic, though will try the Nova or Star in the music room at some stage with various sources and the NAP300 and see what difference I hear.
The middle and treble controls in the app are quite broad and what you may need to get her to do is to reduce one or more narrower bands, leaving the rest the same. But you need to work out whether you are hearing the glassiness in both ears, or one more than the other. Of course you can just cover one ear or take that aid out so you can do this. Also if you can work out what frequency is triggering it, then that can help too.
It’s quite common for there to be some non-linearity in how our hearing (especially when damaged) responds. For several years I found that I was hearing much more 2kHz than my prescription suggested I could hear and by reducing just that frequency handle (which means something like 1.8kHz to 2.5 kHz) by 6dB, music became much more enjoyable. This slowly changed with time.
Do you feel you are able to enjoy your systems fully with hearing loss and the use of hearing aids? I was always under the impression that they simply amplified the sound so it was audible to whatever natural hearing was available. Is this not a variable rather than a fixed solution? It’s fascinating to hear there are several on here that use aids.
Thanks, I think I’ll need to see how I get on over a few weeks. Going back to the audiologist isn’t ideal, as I need to test the results with my system. At least with the app, I can hear the changes directly whilst listening to music - so should be able to narrow things down. I think some psychology of it all is at play too.
Usually, yes, but it does take some time for the brain to adjust to processing the new auditory presentation. Once adjusted there is no sensation of amplification in the ear, you just sense receiving sound directly from the sources. It’s quite fascinating technology really. But I’m currently adjusting to a new programme based on an updated hearing test, and it hasn’t been straightforward, but I know it’s worth persevering.
Ironically, the brain also compensates for hearing loss and you don’t really comprehend what you are missing out on until you start using aids and then you wonder why you didn’t address you hearing before doing various upgrades. All a bit frustrating to be honest, when music is such a source of enjoyment.
So it appears that I’m a bit of a numpty. The left hearing aid went very dull today and when I checked the ceru wax protector it was almost completely blocked. After swapping in a new one normal business has resumed and things sound fine on the default music setting. Lesson learnt.
