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Using ReSound Multi Mic in noisy workplace

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@MDB said:

If Costco guy thinks they will work, you could order

And Costco offers a pretty good price, something like $266 when I got mine back in Dec. 2018. The only thing about getting a Multi Mic through Costco is that any warranty issues have to be dealt with through Costco according to what the folks there told me - your provider couldn’t handle it.

Thanks…just ordered the MultiMic…my Costco guy verified they would work and even said he had sold several to happy customers. He said they had the Costco trail period and I could return them even if I decided to get a new hearing aid that didn’t work with it. I love Costco.

In reply to @lee_a

I bought my Multi Mic primarily to hear in group situations (often restaurants) where the conversation is going back and forth rapidly. I’m disappointed in the performance of the Muti Mic in these situations because of the background noise. If I go to a quiet part of the restaurant leaving my Multi Mic horizontally on the table, I can hear the conversation well (so it’s not the background noise going into the Multi Mic), but of course I’m out of the conversation.
I’m wondering if this is because my audi fitted me with just one aid because of very poor speech discrimination in the other ear). Is it the noise from the unaided ear causing the problem?

Edited

In the Smart 3D app, when you go to the Multi Mic program you can turn down or turn off the external mics on your hearing aid so you hear less noise picked up by your (the “Surroundings” slider). Have you considered wearing an ear plug in your unaided ear with very poor speech discrimination? (just an off the top-of-my-head suggestion - don’t know what the official best recommendation is in your situation). But as someone wearing occlusive molds, I do find it helpful in noisy situations that I only hear mainly what the HA’s deliver to my ears and seem to hear at least 10 less of any noise leaking into my ear canals past my molds.

Edit_Update: Also, when my left HA was getting repaired/replaced, I only wore my right HA and its occlusive mold. Now that both HA’s are back in my ears, the hearing experience is much better than having unfiltered sound and noise coming straight into the unaided left hear, e.g., was hearing high-frequencies in the aided right but not in the unaided left, more noise in the unaided left, less in the aided right, etc… Now that both ears are on the same “wavelength” so to speak, my hearing experience is much better. My voice sounds the same in both ears now, for instance.

Edited

It lost its high frequency responsiveness through the external mics but not via streaming - same failure that happened to original left . I asked the audi to get info from ReSound on the failure but she said that they just returned the HA repaired/refurbished with no info on the nature of the failure or the required repair. She said it appears whatever was done, they reused the same case. It’s not a totally brand new HA as they gave me for the failure of my original left HA. Works great now, though! - and covered under warranty.

Edited

Had a couple of further and curiously interesting observations on using the ReSound Multi Mic, an affordable alternative to the Phonak Roger Pen System.

On taking advantage of the Multi Mic directionality without hanging it vertically around anyone’s neck, on a recent road trip with my wife, I propped the Multi Mic up on the table at a 45 degree angle with a bit of wadded up paper napkin pointed towards my wife a few feet away. The directionality did a great job of picking up my wife and the overhead Muzak and leaving out the the kitchen and counter noise behind me and the noise and conversation of nearby patrons. The wife was situated with her back angled towards a far corner of the restaurant so there wasn’t too much sound other than her voice coming from her direction so just as in real estate, Location, Location, Location is everything trying to hear better in a noisy restaurant - look for the optimum location that you can get to help your hearing needs out.

Had my noise-canceling Surface Headphones with me for other reasons (listening to podcasts at our guest host’s house without bothering anyone else with the playback). But motoring down the highway in the passenger’s seat, I thought, “What if I hang the Mutli Mic around my wife’s neck, stream to my ’s, and wear my Surface Headphones set to max noise-cancelling over my HA’s with the external HA mics turned off to just selectively hear my wife’s streamed voice when she wants to ask me something about directions, stopoffs, or what not?!” Answer is: “Works Great!” I could still hear some faint road/wind noise picking up even through the Multi Mic was in vertical directional mode (sounded faintly like bath tub water sloshing around) but her voice came through loud and clear in a not-very-soundproof Honda Accord motoring along at 75 to 80 mph, which otherwise would provide quite a bit of road and wind noise making it very hard to hear the wife’s soft voice.

That worked so great, although it was goofy, I thought I’d try the same stunt in a noisy Cracker Barrel restaurant. That worked very well, too. I heard very little else but her voice. The MS Surface Headphones aren’t supposed to be the very best noise-cancelling headphones there currently are (that honor supposedly belongs to Sony’s with Bose’s close behind) but I think the best over-the-ear noise-canceling headphones do a far better job of eliminating external noise through active and passive mechanisms than any HA/dome/mold combination that HA wearers have - but wearing occlusive molds and shutting off my external HA mics to stream directly to my HA’s only through the Multi Mic probably adds close to another 10 of noise reduction beyond that provided by the noise-cancelling over-the-ear headphones. Most dinner companions probably don’t want to be seen dining, though, with someone wearing over-the-ear headphones. My listening pleasure only last a minute or two before the wife asked me to PULLEASE REMOVE THEM!!! More discrete over-the-ear devices that were compatible with wearing HA’s at the same time, though, might make listening in noisy restaurants at least to a small group of dinner companions easier. I think the increase in sound-to-noise ratio that I enjoyed with the combination of streaming/external sound cancellation with headphones far exceeded the ability of a normal hearing person to hear in such situations as the high-speed car driving and the noisy restaurant.

Thank you. Reading your discussion warns me not to have high expectations when I pick up the Multi Mic in the next few days. That head phones used that way would help with intensifying the sound you want to hear while reducing those that you don’t, makes sense to me. I’m wondering if any headphones that make a relatively good seal might help just by 1- muffling background noise and at the same time 2- “compressing/creating a partial seal” the aids on the ears.

Edited

Hi, Scott. There have been a number of posts in the past from folks in similar situations and replies from others who found approximate solutions. Dr. Cliff seems to think that the new Roger On is absolutely the best to help out in difficult listening situations and it can be fitted to work on top of and in conjunction with the Multi Mic but it’s quite expensive, $1500 or more with all the accessories needed to work with another brand’s ’s. I think when you have to move around as you do, your best option would be to wear the Multi Mic on a lanyard around your neck and point it towards the person speaking that you particularly want to hear. I did a test in the past where I stood by our very noisy Jenn Air kitchen stovetop exhaust fan and pointed the Multi Mic at my soft-spoken wife at about a 45 deg angle from my waist level (the Multi Mic is in most focused mode when hung vertically around someone’s neck but up to about a 45 degree angle or so, it’s pretty selective for people standing nearby). The noise-cancelling headphones come in when you’re in an environment all-around that’s so noisy that the general noise overwhelms what’s coming from the remote microphone feed). I don’t know/remember if in my post above on Oct. 2019 I used the Sound Enhancer in the Smart 3D app to crank up the HA noise cancellation as much as possible but the advantage of headphones over HA’s is that the headphone noise cancellation is external to the HA sound input from streaming and won’t degrade the streaming input by being too vigorously applied to that, as noise cancellation within the HA circuitry itself might. With headphones, though, you’d have the problem of running around the pharmacy making yourself standout by wearing headphones (and appearing maybe to not really be listening?). The headphones I used back on 10/2019 were first-generation Microsoft Surface Headphones. I think both Sony and Bose have a reputation for much better noise-cancellation than Microsoft’s offerings in this department.

If I remember past posts correctly, a number of folks who had problems dealing with customers at registers in very noisy business environments found a way to position a microphone on or near the register to better hear the customer right in front of them. But if you’re running around as you say you are, unless you can grab the mic and take it with you or have more than one mic to switch between, that might not help solve all your problems. And if you go away and leave the mic by itself at a register, some enterprising customer might decide to “borrow it” for some odd reason.

You might find an electronics store like Best Buy or the equivalent wherever you are located where noise-cancelling microphones are out on display actively working and (not too likely maybe with COVID) at the same time be in an appreciably noisy store environment where you could just test out wearing a noise-cancelling headphone while using the Multi Mic with a companion at various distances and directions from you speaking to see if the combo really improves your hearing results. Good over-the-ears noise-cancelling headphones get very pricey.

Don’t know where you stand on getting new HA’s but the Ultrafocus in the Jabras at Costco sounds like it could be useful in difficult hearing situations and there are also the KS10’s to tryout relative to the Jabras and so on with other new HA’s at Costco. You don’t say what vintage of ReSound HA’s you have. You also don’t say anything about the openness of your fit. If you wear open domes, you’re going to get a lot less speech focus out of your HA’s and the Multi Mic than you would if you go for a more closed fit. Otherwise, no matter what the Multi Mic and your HA electronics are offering you, if you have decent low-frequency hearing, environment sound will be leaking through openings in your domes/molds directly to your ear drums. I’ve worn and accommodated to a ~completely closed fit with custom molds made by ReSound and recently, having Select-A-Vent, backed off to about 0.6 to 1.2 mm venting by inserting a differently vented plug into the vent hole receptable built into each of my molds. With an occlusive fit, you get much better ability to restrict sound entering your ears to only what the HA’s (and the Multi Mic) allow to get through. So if you say more about your fit and your HA’s, others in the forum will be better able to offer advice.

P.S. I see that you are actually the OP in this thread so I’m not sure why we’re in a loop here and why your last post didn’t make that clear after you reviewed all above that was written before?

@rxscott63 said:

Can you explain noise canceling headphones.

The best source of info on what noise-canceling headphones do are tech reviews, either comparative, e.g., “Best of 2021,” or individual brands, which often comparatively reference the relative performance of other brands.

Especially considering the move to open cubicles and reduction in private office space in business environments, noise-canceling headphones are something that various makers including Microsoft have touted as a way for users to regain “private space,” i.e., ~semi-shutout noise from the rest of the world. Obviously, it’s not the be-all, end-all or we’d all be wearing them as of this moment. Just like I can’t say brand XYX is the hearing aid for you - it’ll be perfect, I think noise-canceling headphones are something that requires a prospective user, who can actually try the devices in a store, to do due diligence and figure out whether, especially with a little hands-on experience, whether such devices bring them the isolation from noise and the delivery of hearing aid sound from the desired source, e.g., the Multi Mic?!, in a way that’s useful.

How about a counter ? It connects to t-coils in hearing aids and cochlear implants. Usually, it is the customer with hearing loss who connects with the t-coils, but it seems the reverse could also take place. The microphone would be on the customer side, and you would be standing on the other side of the counter with the mat underneath you. The loop functions beyond the little mat.

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