Hearing aids and that hollow sound of voice

The audi or tech needs to reduce the compression between 200 and 750 hz, and add a little bit of gain. If you talk loud, or even above normal, your voice is putting the hearing aids into compression too early and too aggressively, which moves the sound from your ears to inside your head.

Interesting insight about part-time usage leading to deteriorating speech recognition due to cognitive factors. Especially as I am relatively young, had rapid onset, and have always had relatively good discrimination in the booth even with my loss, my audi has long been concerned about maximizing my ability to capitalize on these strengths. It’s why she recommended two aids despite the mildness of my loss in the right–something I have never regretted. And she, too, emphasized wearing them as much as possible (which was, I admit, made easier by my open fitting). From the beginning I have worn my aids from waking to bedtime, usually 16-18 hours per day.

It’s also why we have tried to minimize the use of noise suppression, speech enhancement, etc. in my program as much as possible: we want to give my ears the frequencies they need but still make them work for understanding. This is why I love my Opn aids: the sound is so natural and transparent that it allows me to maximize my own hearing while giving me just enough support to allow me to hear in complex environments. Four years on, I’ve still got 100% discrimination at 20 dB and – more importantly – I’m still getting around 85% discrimination without my aids, unchanged since I started wearing my Alta2’s nearly five years ago.

I will tell my audi this on next appt June 12th. You are very knowledgeable. I thank you.

Thanks for that explanation! There are times when my voice sounds normal to me, but more often it seems like I’m talking in an empty room, and I feel like I’m shouting. I wear open domes, so it’s not occlusion in my case. All the possible adjustments have been made to reduce this effect and I was told this is the best it will get. So even after 9 months, I have not gotten used to my own voice. Now I understand why.

Interesting and complicated but at least I have something go by, Thank you.

I did notice that intermittently when I first got them. I had what seemed to me like a long adjustment period, but I wore them all day, every day. Once I adjusted, my echoey voice comes and goes, but others no longer sound that way. Now I really notice when I don’t wear them how muffled everything sounds. So when my voice annoys me, I just make a conscious effort to ignore it, and sometimes I actually succeed with not noticing anymore. I wear Oticon OPN 1 btw.

The Widex Evokes have lots of programmes, universal is the base setting which automatically moves between sound classes. Then you can choose from programmes such as comfort, social, party, transport, music etc. They’re great hearing aids, I have the ITCs and my son has the F2s.

The Cros sends sounds on the left side over to the other aid on my right side, it’s not a hearing aid by itself. Well maybe thats why with Widex, you have to have two working aids. But, that’s not the case with the Phonak, hum, wondering why the Widex hasn’t gotten their technology up to date.

Do you have a Widex rep/customer services, I am sure they would be happy to help if needed.

That’s an idea. Thank you.

Well, I can certainly agree with you. And, it’s not only the occlusion of my voice other peoples voices sound the same too when I talk to them.

@Liss said:

I have worn hearing aids all day, every day, for over a decade, and I have never, ever adjusted to the occlusion sound of my own voice.

You may want to stop in at a Costco and ask for a demo of the KS8, Rexton, or at another place that carries Signia which feature own voice processing. The Own Voice Processing does help, not perfect, but does help a lot. The technology is both highly advanced and real simple. My understanding of the way it works is first to train the HA to recognize your voice as unique from others. That is fairly high tech. The second part is quite simple. When it knows you are speaking it simply turns the amplification down. When you are speaking you don’t need to hear others, so it works. When you stop speaking amplification goes back up again, and you hear the response from the other person you are talking to.

That sounds more like an equalization problem where certain frequencies are over amplified, while others are under amplified.

@cjpines said:

They are at one level of sound and I can’t change it but to pull the one out a bit.

A couple of questions for you:

1. When you pull it out a bit, does the hollow, echo effect get better?
2. When you pull it out a bit, does your level of hearing get any worse?
3. Lastly, when you pull it out a bit, do you get feedback?

Thanks!