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Phonak and Music

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I have had my Ultra I90 Spheres and Titanium cShells for 6 weeks and I am very impressed with there performance. The one area that disappoints is music using the AutoSense Music program.
Music via the TV Connector + mic and Bluetooth + mic sounds much better. Is the processing of music via the hearing aid microphones and the TV Connector and Bluetooth handled differently?

Perhaps mics are processed digitally and TV Connect and are analogue processed?

Is the answer to my problem a Roger or BT music microphone?

Any suggestions on a microphone I should try?

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@John_G said:

The one area that disappoints is music using the AutoSense Music program.

The first thing to check is how your default music program is set up - in general, best practice is usually to turn most if not all of the sound-processing features to either zero or something close, so you get amplification but not much else. It’s also a good idea to have a linked manual music program set up, so you can force your Spheres into music mode even if AutoSense disagrees with your taste in music. (My impression is that AutoSense has an extremely stodgy idea of what is and is not music.) This way you can be sure that you’re really getting the music program when you want it.

Once you’ve got that much done, you can see (or hear) what problems, if any, remain to be solved.

I have the none Utra Spheres now for about a month. I find the music is wonderful compared to the INTENT1 aids I have worn almost 2 years. I haven’t used anything but the autosense of my aids. I find that live music as well as streamed music sounds really good compared to the INTENT1 aids. But to be honest I don’t have any concept of what music should sound like.

Good advice. The music channel is a necessity and there is actully a difference between streamed music and live music. I find the Phonak TV Connector pretty good. Music channels do not want most of the sound processing in normal settings. A good audiologist knows how to do it. I do my own final tuning by running scales on a piano.

I have the Roger ON3 and it provides the TV streamer when I need it.

What does the “+ mic” mean in your post? TV Connector would just be (digital) streaming, non? Do you mean the hearing aid mic for ambient room sound? If so, is there a noticeable delay/slapback/echo for the room sound versus the TV Connector? Or is the TV muted in the room when using TV Connector? This is research for me, thanks.

This is a subject dear to my heart. I have the spheres and have a music program on them. At first I found music too shrill and lacking in bass. I tried using the app to correct this but it isn’t fine grained enough to achieve what I wanted. So I set to work with Target. I liked the settings for music streaming so I cloned these to my music program. From there I tweaked specific frequencies or groups of frequencies in order to get a good balance between bass, vocals and instrumental on pop / rock that I mainly listen to. I sometimes use my laptop to make adjustments whilst listening to specific tracks on my hifi system. I make notes of any issues whilst listening and keep a record of the adjustments that I make in Target. I think I’m in a good place now but this is a work in progress and entirely subjective.

In reply to @grantb5

The Roger ON3 is a microphone that is very versatile. It can be a personal mic, a table microphone, a microphone I can point at someone talking to hear the person better and the base plugs into the TV by the fiber optical audio cable and when the microphone is plugged in it .functions as the TV adapter while charging.

Have your provider custom program an AutoSense music program for you. Also, have you used your auto base program to program your own music program? Remember to adjust the equalizer. I have a few different TV programs and made adjustments to my music program. My provider also added some base.I will work on a bit more clarity next week with him.

ng.

Hi. What exact situation are you trying to make better here? are you trying to walk into a room for example and hear music playing on speakers? or are you trying to stream music to your aids using something like the TV streamer?

If the former, I would suggest:

set up a dedicated music program, don’t rely on auto sense. Toggle to the program manually with your phone.

Ask your audiologist to turn off or really limit feedback management in that program

Use the equaliser with your phone to mess about with bass mids and treble to get a better sound.

Make sure the audi also turns off any other processing. this should be off anyway in the music program but just check.

Hearing aids all sound fairly rubbish with music at least in my opinion. If you stil hate all of that, you could pick up a roger device and stream directly to that, roger on V3 is really really good for this and you can stick it in a USB socket on the computer or else stream to it with a 3.5MM jack or optical cable. it will cost, but it’s by far the nicest way of doing it. If you stream from a PC you can even adjust equalisation and balance settings to get it sounding exactly how you want it.

In reply to @grantb5

@grantb5 said:

What does the “+ mic” mean in your post?

The streaming programs are all “+ mic”, which means that ambient sound picked up by mics is mixed in. You can change the mix to more stream by using the up button on the HA (default setting) or mix in more ambient sound by pressing the down button. Alternatively you can use the slider in the program adjust in the myphonak app. This applies to Roger, TV Connector, and streaming programs.

I tend to either mute the mics (also available in the myphonak app, although a button can be programmed for that if you like) or reduce the mix to minimum ambient with the buttons. Someone wondered if there is a difference between mute and reducing the ambient mix. There is, but it is very minor. I used. BT streaming and ran the water in the bathroom sink full bore. Just a little difference. The noise was down in the weeds.

WH

Thank you. Very interesting. I wonder how they time align the two audio paths. I guess if the latency is very similar then it wouldn’t be noticeable. I’m not sure how many ms of delay is needed before echo/phasing/flanging starts (or lip sync for that matter).

Edited
@grantb5 said:

I wonder how they time align the two audio paths. I guess if the latency is very similar then it wouldn’t be noticeable. I’m not sure how many ms of delay is needed before echo/phasing/flanging starts (or lip sync for that matter).

There is Phonak whitepaper about it from around 2020 in Evidence Library | Phonak5 .

However, I don’t remember what they have written in it.

@John_G said:

I have done all that and adjusted the equalizer presets but can’t get music to sound anything like as good at it does via the TV Connect. I will keep trying.

How would you describe the difference now?

There may be some improvements that can be made - although it’s also possible that you may be running into some limits of a device (and, in particular, the microphones) that was optimized for speech rather than music.

In reply to @John_G

@John_G said:

hanks for your reply. I have done all that and adjusted the equalizer presets but can’t get music to sound anything like as good at it does via the TV Connect. I will keep trying.

You are not going to get good sound until you have your audi activate the manual Music Program.

No amount of app adjustment is going to override all the Autosense nonsense which is present in the automatic one.

I have set up manual music programs with copies of Music from Adaptive Digital 3.0, Adaptive Digital Contrast 3.0, DSv5a Adult, NAL-NI 2, NAL-NI2 Tonal and AutoSense Media music + mic. None of them approach the music I hear from the TV Connector. I have have messaged Phonak Technical Support via MyPhonak and asked what the difference is between AutoSense and TV Connect. I haven’t told them I using Target. No reply as yet. My next appointment with my Audi who is outstanding and aware that I am making my own adjustments is in 10 days time. Hopefully she will be able to help.

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