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Intermittent loss of sound and crackling with Oticon More — has anyone experienced this?

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I use an Oticon More model with a 105-power receiver and a custom closed acrylic earmold.

For the past 1–2 months, I have occasionally experienced a strange problem: after removing the hearing aid and leaving it outside my ear for around 20 minutes, it may produce little or no sound when I put it back on, sometimes with crackling or popping noises. The sound gradually returns to normal within about 2–3 minutes.

The hearing aid was recently repaired, and the microphone was replaced, but the problem has returned. Interestingly, a loaner Oticon Real, used with the same receiver and earmold, exhibited a similar problem once as well.

Has anyone experienced similar symptoms with Oticon RIC hearing aids? Any ideas about what might cause this or how to resolve it?

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If it's a rechargeable model, both the Real and the MORE Li-ion products have known reliability problems due to moisture ingress that cause them to have a higher than desirable failure rate. That is why Demant switched to a a fully encased battery compartment with Intent RIC-Rs and Real -R devices.

It’s the power receiver: they have issues if they are over driven. One client of mine had to switch to a different manufacturer for specifically this issue: the receivers would typically last 6-9months, then just deteriorate and start sounding ‘blown’.

I’m not 100% sure if it’s a failing in the actual receivers used (badly specified/tolerance/or physical failure) or the breakdown/tolerance drift of the output stage of the aids. Or both.

There’s various things that can be done with receivers to mitigate against the effects of things like this, but they all carry some complications. Just making the devices ‘balanced armature’ protects against physical shocks while there’s reams of stuff done to stop them waggling and physically clattering within their housings; including neat steps like ‘Ferro-fluid’ damping the reed. That’s before you get into electronic shenanigans.

The Oticon guys just seem to run theirs a bit ‘hotter’ than other providers: which can be a great trade off for a lot of users (especially if the motor can drive a usable audible response at 8KHz without distortion), but for some it does shorten the life: particularly if the aid is used right at the edge of saturation for long periods of time.

Thanks, that’s very interesting. My symptoms are a little different, though. The sound doesn’t deteriorate permanently or remain distorted. Instead, after the hearing aid has been outside my ear for around 20 minutes, it may produce little or no sound with crackling/popping when I put it back on. The sound then gradually returns to normal within 1–2 minutes.

This has happened with both my Oticon More and a loaner Oticon Real, using the same 105 receiver and earmold. Could this still be consistent with a receiver being overdriven or beginning to fail, or would the temporary nature of the problem point more towards an intermittent electrical or contact issue, possibly affected by temperature changes?

@leedsender said:

The sound doesn’t deteriorate permanently or remain distorted. Instead, after the hearing aid has been outside my ear for around 20 minutes, it may produce little or no sound with crackling/popping when I put it back on. The sound then gradually returns to normal within 1–2 minutes.

Are you leaving them turned on when you take them off for about 20 minutes.

I suspect that this may not be device issue. It would be really interesting if you had slight middle ear effusion bubbles that can be popped with amplification from your aids causing increased vibration of the eardrum and ossicular chain. Consider entering your into your profile so we can get an idea of how loud your hearing aids would need to be. Wideband is probably the best way of measuring this.

Edited

This is most likely due to an overload of the air-zinc battery.

Hearing aids consume a significant amount of battery power when activating the feedback suppression function.Using a 105 receiver gain generally results in relatively high levels → When removing the hearing aid without turning it off, feedback is very strong → The hearing aid consumes significant computational power to control whistling → This leads to continuous high power consumption → Air entering the battery through vents does not increase → The air (oxygen?) in the battery...Supply-demand imbalance → Batteries cannot stably output high capacity to meet the demands of hearing aids → Hearing aids fail to function properly,After re-wearing the hearing aid, the feedback decreases → the computational power required to control whistling is reduced → power consumption drops → after 2-3 minutes, the battery's air supply-demand reaches a new balance → power supply to the hearing aid stabilizes → the hearing aid resumes normal operation.

In reply to @menglxs

Thanks for the explanation. I tried another test: I removed the hearing aid, opened the battery door, and left it outside my ear for 20 minutes. After putting the battery back in and wearing it again, exactly the same problem occurred: almost no sound with crackling, followed by a gradual recovery over just over two minutes.

How would your battery-overload theory explain this, given that the hearing aid was switched off during those 20 minutes?

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