How to buy a mini Pro (USB 2.0 Hearing Aid Programmer)

The purpose is to limit the amount of ribbon travel into your hearing aid. The bump stops ribbon travel at the proper insertion length.

I see. I found that I was able to push the bump to the inside of the door as well if I have the door open far out enough. Now that I know this, I’ll open the door just a slit to slip the cable in without letting the bump slip in as well.

One other thing to comment is that there are a few ways to find out which com port the Mini-Pro is assigned to. I took the route of downloading the Hi-Pro Install CD content then install it and run it to have it tell me if it has the right com port assignment or not. Then if not, I had to click on an online link which tells me to go to the Device Manager under Com port to find the Hi-Pro device and look inside its properties to change the com port assignment to the right one.

Well in hindsight now, that step about downloading and running the Hi-Pro Install CD content can probably be skipped if you already know that you can just to straight to the Device Manager to verify it and change it if necessary.

@Volusiano said:

As for the mask values, below is my audiogram. If you noticed on the right ear, it has a couple of values (40 and 60) in the Mask Oppos field, whatever that means. The Genie 2 audiogram template has the AC and BC and below it is “m” field. I assumed that it was the same as the “mask oppos” field so I entered in those 2 values. But it totally messed up the simulated insertion gain. So I removed those 2 values from the Genie 2 audiogram and everything start looking and working much better.

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I figured out the reason for my confusion with the Mask Oppos value. If you look at my audiogram above, the Mask Oppos is right below the AC/BC fields on the template.

If you looks at the Genie 2 audiogram template below, they have UCL (Uncomfortable Loudness Level) below AC/BC (Air Conduction/Bone Conduction) values. The use the O and X for AC data points, < and > for BC data points, and m for UCL data points. So “m” here is just a special character that denotes the UCL value, but the parameter is UCL. But I mistook the “m” symbol for UCL here to be the “Mask Oppos” in my audi’s audiogram template. That’s why I added in the 40 and 60 Mask Oppos value in the wrong (UCL) field, resulting in and error in my Genie 2 audiogram.

I guess I did misunderstand.

Hope your equipment arrives soon as I know it is a pain waiting for something you would like to have.

@z10user2 said:

Have you found yet that you’ve been able to improve detail from what the audi last left you with?

I had another good example of detailed improvement from the last setting I had to share here. Transient Noise Management is a feature on Genie 2 for the OPN to suppress sudden loud sounds with fast recovery to preserve audibility. Based on the last session, I changed it from Medium to High because I figured who wouldn’t want to protect against sudden loud sounds, right? After all, that’s what the technology is there for, so why not use it and set it to the max? It couldn’t hurt, since I don’t like to hear loud dishes banging in restaurants or when washing dishes at home, or loud water sounds in the bathroom, etc.

Well, it turns out that after I changed it to Max, when I played tennis yesterday, I started noticing that the pop when the tennis ball got struck sounded a bit more muted. Normally I don’t like sudden loud sounds from my HAs, but this is the one sound I like to hear in its full glory, because it tells you how well the ball was struck and whether it was in the sweet spot or not. Had I not have my own programming device, I wouldn’t have been able to experiment with this to find out when to set this parameter to Off or Low instead of High. So now I set it to Low in one of the programs that I’d use for tennis, where I also turn off Speech Rescue so I don’t have to hear annoying crickets and birds chirping outdoors so I can concentrate better on my game.

Another example: the 85dB receiver is a little under power for my high frequency loss, so it tends to be over driven in the 4KHz and up range, and I can hear distortion sometimes when it gets overdriven. My audi used to fix that by reducing gain on the high frequencies. I now found a better way to fix it: with Speech Rescue turned on, it gives me the option of leaving the lowered sounds alone in the original high frequencies as well (so you have both the lowered sounds and the original sounds). But I chose the option to turn off the original sounds because that’s in the range where the distortion occurs. Since I can’t hear the original sounds and only hear distortion there anyway, I can now turn off the original sound because I already have the lowered sound. That would be something that I’d never know because the audi would never have told me it could be done. Heck, my audi probably doesn’t even know that it could be done herself, let alone tell me about it. But because I have the programmer now, I’m beginning to discover such available options myself for use.

Volusiano,
please tell us more of your experiences, it help us for programming with OPN. I also tried the OPN1 miniRite (85db) and got the same experience with plopping sounds like claps or hitting a tennis ball. Every automatics was set off.

In the other thread you wrote about Noise Removal module. Did you hear the same when you speak and clap your hands in the same time? Clapping your hands without your voice it sounds unnatural, but while speaking and clapping the claps sound natural. Do you hear sounds like glass or bells with vibration at the end? Or could you hear wavesounds like 1khz (www.onlinetonegenerator.com5) not consistently clear? I hear it distorted or uneven. Every kind of automatics and feedback managers was set off, tried with VAC+ and NAL2, but I hear loud sounds pulpy.
Soon I will test the OPN PP BTE.

@MDB said:

Volusiano, You make an excellent point about the audi not knowing about it. I would think it’s the very rare audi who really knows the full capabilities of multiple programming systems. Even if one doesn’t want to self program, I think it’s worth getting the software so one can explore the software features (if one is so inclined)

Very valid point, MDB. Even as curious as I am, just because I didn’t have the programmer, even though I did download and install Genie 2 way ahead of time when I got the OPN 1, I didn’t spend time exploring Genie 2 until I recently bought the programmer. In hindsight, I would have explored the software features sooner rather than later like you suggested.

Even before exploring Genie 2, I already knew about some of the features by reading through the literature and asked my Audi to enable them before she even knew they exist, like the Auto Phone mode, the 10 different configurations in Speech Rescue, the different noise reduction levels, the transition help options, etc. She told me I should go work for Oticon.

It was funny that the last time I mentioned to her that I was planning to buy a programmer to do my own programming, she gave me this dumbfounded look and told me that it’s not possible nor advisable to “hack” the system and where would I get the programming software in the first place? etc. like it’s a big no-no taboo. I just dropped the subject and because it was pointless to carry on with somebody who doesn’t even know that it’s something entirely doable by patients who are so inclined.

My hearing aid specialist was fascinated by my self programming. She was curious how I got the equipment and software and I do think she thinks I’m pretty quirky (she’s right!), but we have pleasant and respectful interactions. Perhaps part of the difference is that I shared as a fait acompli rather than a plan. I had enough credibility with her for her to know I wasn’t bs’ing her so I got the fascinated reaction.

Volusiano,
I will get the new OPNs on Thursday and promise to share my experiences with a you. First I wondered that you get clear and natural sounds with your OPN, especially in loudly situations, but maybe the OPN 1 miniRITE (85dB as a demo version with firmware 2 with limited function) I tried was too quiet for me.

@Haens said:

I’m sorry you misunderstood my description of “too quit”: I meant that loud sounds aren’t loud enough, don’t have dynamics and sounds like a mash. I can hear fine differences in quiet sounds, but the more the sound increased in volume its quality decreased. I hope the OPN BTE will give me new experiences!

I think the problem you have with your 85dB OPN 1 trial pair is that the 85dB receiver is barely enough for your right ear’s hearing loss. Because you have pretty bad hearing loss on your right ear already starting at 250 Hz throughout the rest of the frequency range, with the 85dB receiver, even though its fitment fits into your hearing loss, it barely fits. That means that your own dynamic range of your impaired hearing is already VERY reduced/narrow.

Below is an example of what the dynamic range of an impaired hearing person looks like. You can see on the left side, the normal hearing person has the full hearing dynamic range between 0 to 120dB for all the frequency ranges (all the squares are in red). Project that to a hearing impaired person on the right side (this is just an example, and everyone’s hearing loss will have a different dynamic range), you can see how “reduced” the hearing impaired person’s dynamic range is. And it also varies across the frequency range depending on what their hearing loss is at each frequency. As you can see, soft sounds need to be amplified toward the hearing loss’s threshold, but loud sound will need to be compressed to within the comfortable listening level.

In the Genie 2 software (see the second picture below) for your setting, if you click on the CR (Compression Ratios) button in the Fitting tab where the graphs are on the top, you’ll see the compression ratio values assigned to the setting you have in the program selected. You can see what the values are for different types of sounds across frequencies. This is the WDCR (Wide Dynamic Range Compression) setting Genie 2 assigns to the OPN for my loss. Yours will be different of course.

So, with your hearing loss, your reduced dynamic hearing range is already pretty narrow in the first place. Coupled that with an 85dB receiver on the OPN 1, which can barely fit your loss, the actual dynamic range that can be produced may get reduced even further due to the 85dB receiver being barely adequate for your loss. It’s even more pronounced and noticeable in your case because your loss is bad across the board at all frequencies, even across the low and mid frequencies, where a lot of the sound energy carries through. The end result is that you can hear OK with the 85dB receiver but the very narrow and limited dynamic range you have left, as a combination of your severe hearing loss and the barely adequate 85dB receiver, leaves you unsatisfied resulting the loud sounds being noticeably more muted.

When you move to the OPN PP BTE, the built-in receiver is 105dB, so I would think that you’ll be happier with it because the bigger receiver has more amplification power to help open up your severely reduced dynamic hearing range a bit more than the 85dB receiver can. Do note that the OPN miniRITE also has an option for a 105dB receiver that will go into your ear canal instead of being placed inside the casing like that of the PP BTE. So instead of trying out the PP BTE, you can also just swap the 85dB receiver assembly with the 105dB receiver assembly on the OPN 1 miniRite. But the 105dB receiver for the miniRITE will require a custom mold. But the PP BTE will also require a custom mold as well anyway.

Even before you get the PP BTE in, as an exercise, you can create a second client profile on Genie 2 if you want, same audiogram of course, but change the 85dB to the 105dB, or change the miniRite selection to the PP BTE selection. Now you can compare side by side all the charts and the compression ratios to see how well/better the 105dB configuration can accommodate your hearing loss compared to the 85dB configuration.

Danke! Danke! (Thanks you so much!) Your explaining can help everyone!

Indeed your configuration of your OPN with your hearing loss is not the same like mine and I had the same experience but I was not sure. Because of the practical knowledge with my Siemens HA in OPN I tried to reduce the Compression Rate as possible (about 1.3 until 1.5) and set the MPO close to maximum. But I think the maximum was exhausted:

Because of the my existing ear molds of my Siemens HA my Audi could get the BTE version easier, so I also think like you I will have more success with the 105db amplification.

At the end I would decide between the miniRite and the BTE version, or I will change completely to Signia Pure 13 BT wich I would like to try it also.

Finally getting my mini pro tomorrow after a long delay. Eager to get started!

Yay @gkumar. Mine was delivered but I haven’t laid my hands on it yet. Reading Volusiano’s successes here has me really looking forward to it.