I recently had Oticon OPN2 hearing aids fitted by my audiologist, and have worn then for a couple weeks now. My left ear has profound hearing loss (90 ) at 8000 Hz, but the right ear is not far behind with 80 dB.
When I set it to its “Speech Rescue” program, high frequencies are greatly improved. The only downside is that an “s” sounds very distractingly like an “sh” through the left hearing aid. With “Speech Rescue” off, the problem goes away at the expense of loss of high-frequency sensitivity.
I have a follow-up visit in a couple days. Before I go, does anybody have any ideas what might be going on? Does this sound like a hardware problem or simply a tuning problem? Thanks.
Below is the chart of the 10 possible configurations to choose from. Genie 2 will choose a default configuration for you based on your hearing loss. But you don’t necessarily need to stick to that configuration. Experiment with different ones to see which one you like best, and which one gives you the most differentiation between the “s” and the “sh”.
Your loss starts nosediving at 2 KHz. So this is probably the best destination region for you in Speech Rescue. However, this configuration #1 has a lower source region of between 4-7 KHz only. But you can’t really pick and choose much if your hearing loss limits where the ideal destination region is for you. But you can try out between configuration 1 up to 5 maybe and see if you prefer one over another or not.
I’ve played around with several configurations myself, and for my particular hearing loss, I keep going back to configuration 1 as my most preferred choice.
Beside choosing the configuration you like the best, you can also choose to keep the sounds in the source region (higher frequency bands) intact, or remove it. Keeping it intact will let you hear both the original sounds and the lowered sounds.
Then you can also adjust the volume of the lowered sounds that is mixed in with the overall sounds to achieve the most optimum balance of the 2 volumes for you.
Note that whatever your choose in Speech Rescue parameters, it applies the same way to all programs you have with Speech Rescue enabled. By that I mean that you can’t individualize Speech Rescue parameters for each program separately.
Wow, thanks for the detailed reply. Just so I understand correctly, “destination” is the frequency range that the “source” frequency is being moved to in order for me to hear it, correct?
Regarding Genie 2, I poked around the Oticon site, and it appears that their fitting software is for professional audiologists only. Is there a way for people who are not in the profession to download and install it? Since I am a mechanical engineer, I’m not in the least bit intimidated by the technical side of audiology. Thanks.
Wow, thanks for the detailed reply. Just so I understand correctly, “destination” is the frequency range that the “source” frequency is being moved to in order for me to hear it, correct?
Regarding Genie 2, I poked around the Oticon site, and it appears that their fitting software is for professional audiologists only. Is there a way for people who are not in the profession to download and install it? Since I am a mechanical engineer, I’m not in the least bit intimidated by the technical side of audiology. Thanks.
Tom
Yes, that’s correct. The destination frequency range is where the source frequency range is being lowered to in order for you to hear it better because your hearing loss at the destination frequency range is not as severe as that at the source frequency range, so you should hear those sounds better in the destination region.
Even if you don’t have the programming hardware device to connect your OPN to Genie 2 (although you can buy it for around $250 or so, see the section for more info), you can just download the software to your computer, install and run it, create a new Client profile for yourself, enter in your , then go to the Family section to select the relevant OPN type you have, then go to the Selection section to select the receiver type/size and dome type/size (or custom mold size), then go to the Fitting section and you can see all the program selection, Speech Rescue, and all other programming options, etc. The End Fitting section has some more programming options for you to explore and choose from.
You don’t need to have the hardware programming device to connect your OPN to Genie 2. It’ll still let you go into Genie 2 and you can play around with the parameters if desired. You just can’t hear the effects it has on your OPN because it’s not connected to your OPN.
NW Indiana