Skip to content
HearingTracker
Log in

Do Hearing Aids Have a Shut Off Safety Feature?

This topic is closed.

10 replies4k viewsLast reply

Link to this topic

I was working in my kitchen this morning, listening to an audio book though my OPN 1’s and cell phone. My dog barked suddenly at something outside and my hearing aids shut off. This happened twice in a 10 minute period. The 2nd time only one aid turned off.

Is this by design or do I have a problem with my aids?

Mike

6 people in this conversation2 min readJump to latest

I emailed my Audi and she informs that it is by design.

Here is her reply to the same question I asked in the OP:

“Yes. There is a maximum output level for the devices (based on your individual hearing loss), Probably working the way they should - for safety,so as not to damage your hearing.”

Mike

With sudden loud sounds, my hearing aids go quiet (like they’ve shut off) but I never have to turn them off and on again, they come back on a few seconds later. To me, it doesn’t sound right.

@Zebras said:

With sudden loud sounds, my hearing aids go quiet (like they’ve shut off) but I never have to turn them off and on again, they come back on a few seconds later. To me, it doesn’t sound right.

Thanks for that info. It’s very possible that I was too quick to turn them off and on. I did try the volume button and it didn’t do anything. Next time I’ll give it a few seconds to see if they come back on their own.

Hearing aids are designed to not pass through any sudden, very loud noises to prevent further hearing damage. Next time wait and see if they work again in a short while…

I have the OPN 1 and any sudden loud sound will render it (usually just the one on the side where the loud sound is) frozen for a few seconds. Then it will resume normal operation again if you don’t interfere with it, like trying to turn it on and off again.

There are occasional situations where it may also try to reboot after a loud sound, although I find this very very rare. But in this case just leave it alone and it’ll come back and you’ll hear the reboot chime. Then it’ll see what program the other hearing aid is on (if other than default), and it’ll change itself to match the other aid’s current program.

It happened again this morning. The right aid came back up in a few seconds like everyone says, but the left aid turned off completely. After around 20 seconds I manually restarted it.

I emailed my Audi again with the above information and she told me she contacted Oticon and apparently this is a known problem with some OPN aids.

“I was told there is a glitch in the circuitry (people complain of this happening with a sneeze or a dog bark etc). They are aware of the problem, suggest you hang tight they are working on it and will send a software update as soon as it is ready.”

She didn’t have an ETA on when the firmware would be released but would contact me as soon as it was.

I notice that it didn’t happen very often in firmware 2 and 4 (there’s no 3), but since firmware 5, it happens a lot more often to me.

I also have had that problem with my OPN 1 aids. I went into the Genie settings and turned off “Transient Noise Management” under the Fitting, More Tools, Automatics section. That seems to have cured the problem and my aids no longer stop working when a loud noise occurs (like slamming a door).

Active discussions

What the forum has been talking about this week.