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Best settings for driving

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Hello, I am testing my new Oticon Intent 2. I am having difficulty finding a good set up while in the car. The wind and road noise becomes really loud. What do people do while in a moving vehicle? Should I take the off?

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I have never used anything but the default general program. Sounds like you need to talk to your audiologist and tell the audiologist your issues and have your audiologist to make fitting adjustments to help you.

Though there’s little relief when driving while having a severe/profound hearing loss, a quiet car cabin can make a difference. Also, double-pane window glass for added soundproofing. Lastly, tires that offer a quiet ride.

Thanks, my car is pretty quiet already. My problem is that with the on the background noise from wind and road becomes lauder. Maybe there is no way around that, but I thought I would ask anyway. Thanks!

I have a severe hearing loss and love to have the winds down, I also ride a motorcycle while wearing a helmet and having my hearing on and in the default program. I have the Spheres as my primary aids and the Oticon INTENT1 aids as my backup aids. I have no issues with wind noise or road noise. If I want to hear the entertainment system I roll the winds most of the way up.

Often, though I can’t recall off the top of my head of oticon does one. It didn’t have directional beam forming, so if you were building a car program you’d mostly just cut the lows which is where a lot of the road noise is. You might be able to do that yourself with the app.

IMO your aids are probably doing what they are supposed to do, improve your hearing! Your vehicle may not be as quiet as you think! I remember when I got my first set of aids how amazed I was at hearing things I hadn’t been able to hear in years.

If you’re hearing your passenger, you may not feel the need for a remote mic like the connect clip or edumic but that is what I use in the car once we hit the highway and the noise increases. Also streaming music or podcasts directly and muting your hearing aid mics is also more pleasant although harder to hear emergency sirens or horns.

I have a pair of Widex Moment 440 which has a built in transport program. This seems to reduce the vehicle sounds to a level similar to my removing my hearing aids, and makes my vehicle sound so much quieter - like buying a more expensive model

If I want the full effect I can experience it by choosing the music setting - now very loud

The downside is that it seems to cut down the radio volume as well - I find i need to have that quite loud to make out what is on on the radio

My Signia Pure Charge & Go do a wonderful job of killing wind noise in the car & truck (windows always down for me- winter & summer). It works outdoors, too.

What the audiologist set up for me:
For hearing the radio, I tap a button on one of the devices to aim the aids straight ahead. It still picks up some from sides, but straight ahead is the primary sound.

I can also tap again to enhance the sound for better clarity, but it’s kind of synthetic sounding. There is another tap to ignore all sound from rear, but leave front and side normal sounding.

For hearing passengers in the rear seats, I can use the phone app to aim straight back- or partly back and partly right to also hear a front seat person- or anywhere in between.

Only front seat passenger? They can be aimed to right only (or I can turn off the left one which is easier than messing with the app).

Perhaps your devices have such helpful features. Ask the person who programs them for you.

Hoping For Success For You!
Paul

Hopefully the audiologist or fitter can program the Oticon Intent 2 with pre-sets that you choose with a press of a button on the device. (Straight ahead, crisp sound, etc.) The Intent owners here will know for certain.

Perhaps Oticon’s Companion app includes the adjustable direction feature . Might be worth exploring.
If it doesn’t, maybe experimenting with the Equalizer settings would provide some help. (Wish Signia would provide an Equalizer in their app. It would be quite useful.)
Paul

I have an Oticon Intent 1 and the hearing aids are “funny” inside a car for different reasons.

Road noise and wind noise can be reduced by increasing the ratio in More Intelligence. My default in difficult situations is 8db, but 10db works better inside a car. 8 db is enough for me though.

The other issue is listening to persons behind me (in the back seat), I find that my hearing aids think that I’m in a “difficult situation”, so it focus the listening to the sides and fronts, but persons talking to me behind me, I can’t hear well. I found that I need to have a specific program for this, instead of Neural Automatic, I need to have Fixed Omnidirectional. But this increases the car noises a bit, and I then need to have 10db of SNR for this …

In reply to @PJB12

Thank you for the information. The Companion App does not have an equivalent function for adjustable direction. There is the possibility to store up to four preset programs, but I am not sure what program I should ask the audiologist prepare (there is not a preset like “riding in the car”).

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