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Oticon Opn: Adjustments to boost male deep voices

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All,
So in opposite way, What adjustments to make to boost male deep voices? Would you please give any advice? I still have trouble to hear man voice

I took an advice from Volusiano: “Fine Tuning -> Sound Controls and turn up the Soft Sound Perception all the way to the right for the most Detail value (vs Comfort on the left)” but sound be come so sharp and noise but not clear at all

Thank you

7 people in this conversation10 min readJump to latest

I see you have fairly significant low frequency loss. Do you have closed fittings or small vents? It is hard for receivers to reproduce bass amplitude with open vents.

Hi,
I have custom molds. My audi and I, myself kept tweaking (I used Genie2) but I am still unable to hear deep male’s voice to the level that I feel comfortable and understood… currently, to deal with them, I either stay very close and ask them to repeat so many times… which are annoying for some of them or I am pretending that I got it (which is stupid! at certain scenarios).
Experiments we had sometimes were to sharp and and loud (kind of hurt my ears) but were not clear. and sometimes we seemed to get it right but it just to too soft…If I know how to describe it right to Audi, I think she can get it or I can get it…
I don’t understand what you are asking “Do you have closed fittings or small vents?”
Please clarify if you can

thank you

Your significant low frequency loss makes it hard to hear low deep voices of men. I assume that your audi already tried to boost the low frequency area to help you understand low deep voices better. But if you have a fitting with an open vent, the low frequency amplification will leak out of the vent and become lost. So you need to be fitted with a closed vent fitting, preferably a custom shell with no vent if not already done so. One quick way to verify this is to use your fingers to plug up your ears with the receivers in place. If it seems to improve your low frequency perception and you can hear low voices better, then you know that your current fitting has some kind of vent or is not entirely closed and you need to get new fittings that has no vent, preferably a custom shell to ensure that all the low frequency amplification stays in.

In reply to @tritrang

I put your loss in the Rexton software. It recommended micro vents (1 mm) in the molds. That may be what you have now, but if not, there may be an opportunity in reducing your vent size.

A deep male voice is likely in the 80-160 Hz range. I check the prescription formulas in the software and the seems to give the most boost in the very low frequency range. See below. You could ask your Audi if NAL-NL2 might be better than what you have now for bass boost. I also see that the software is recommending frequency compression, but that is unlikely to help with a male voice.

Last you could just ask for a boost manually in the 100 Hz region.

image

In reply to @tritrang

I think somewhere around 4 mm is getting pretty big. It could be the length, but the standard for length is 16 mm. Here is a graph showing the impact that vent size has on low frequency loss.

image

Some molds have adjustable vent sizes. You could ask if yours could be reduced to 1 mm if it is currently larger. It would help a few in the very lowest frequencies where you need it.

The other issue is how well your mold fits in your ear. If there is leakage around the mold then you lose low frequency too.

My molds are hard clear shell. I can see the receiver inside the mold. These molds fit really well in my ear. There is one little hole (the vent? may be?) on each mold. While waiting for next appointment.
Can I get something to plug that hole? (may be the tap?) Then go to Gennie to change the vent size to 1 mm? is that ok to experiment? I guess it does not hurt the right?
please advice

thank you again all

Some vent holes are made to be adjusted – Select a Vent or SAV. I think at least one of mine are that way. They came with a package with a bunch of tapered little plastic plugs/vents. I would not have the nerve to try putting them in my molds. Looks like too delicate a job for my fat and aged fingers. It seems like the easiest way to do a quick trial would be to put a piece of tape over the vent and try it like that to see if it improves things. It it does, then I would get it changed at the next appointment by the pro. My fear would be getting something stuck in the vent hole and not being able to get it out again. That said some mono fishing line might do the trick…

Well, the hard shell (or custom mold) can only get in the ear complete or it will fall out. I can not wear half in or half out because it either falling of my ear or it will whistle really really bad! so answer to your question, No I can not wear loosely

If closing up the vent hole in your custom mold still doesn’t help, and assuming that your mold is already well fitting and is not loose and leaking, I think Sierra is probably on to something when he (or she?) suggested to try different fitting rationales as the next step after trying to close up the venting. It’s something your audi can set up easily for you. There are 4 programs, so with VAC+ in the default program, you can use the other 3 programs to try , NAL-NL1, v5.0 Adult in parallel. Heck, if none of those 3 seem to help, you can also try DsL v5.0 Pediatric next as well.

As for using Speech Rescue to apply to help with your hearing, although it’s most likely not going to help much with low deep male voices, it looks like it’d still be helpful overall because even low deep male voices still employ the “s” and “sh” sounds and such in the English language, so I would suggest having your audi turn it on as well, and set the destination target to the leftmost Configuration 2.4, which has the destination range of 1.5-2.4 KHz.

@Volusiano said: (unavailable)

I think Sierra is probably on to something when he (or she?) suggested to try different fitting rationales as the next step after trying to close up the venting.

I am a he! Sierra is actually my dog’s name, and that Sierra is a she!

Edited

All,
You are “HEROES!”.
Since I cannot have appointment with Audi right away to provide the suggestion from all of you, so what I did were:
1/ cut the rubber band and stuck into the ear mold vents
2/ Went to Genie2 and under the selection tabs, then I changed the vent size to 1mm. (cvKemp was right. my previous setting was 1.4mm!)
3/ change P1 to VAC+, P2 to , P3 to v5.0 Adult, and P4 is speed in noise. Then re prescribed for all programs
4/ Went to P1 under fine tuning tab, I select all 25hz to 2K columns and increase two clicks
5/ I wanted to change Soft Sound Perception up to increase sharpness but It did put to max already. I cannot change anymore.
6/ Went to open sound navigator changed all P(s) to “Open automatic” selection. and increase max help for speed in complex senario

Well the outcome was: “I can hear extremely loud!” on P1. Basically, I can hear the running, refrigerator was humming. fan was running… and other sound from mechanic that I never heard before or barely hear!
I went to work and it seemed I can hear now certain men voices (still not clear and crypts but hey we do make progress right! …and I can hear people talk on the phone. Before I lost certain people who talked to me on the phone.

I am starting to see the light now! but I have few more the questions please advice:
1/ I seemed to loose the sharpness of the voice that I used to have in letter s, sh … (high frequency words) --> should I put back 1.4mm with the vent close?

2/ why P1 was extremely loud but other P (p2, p3) are still in normal range of volume and seemed P2 and P3 were not affected by all setting I had above?

3/ after all of the changes from the above, for P1, the red gain bar went down to 2.5db. and the blue gain bar is still at 7db. How do I bring up the red bar(my right side)?

another note: the sound I am hearing now is like I knock on the plastic box/can. the sound is dull and dry. Before doing this, I heard the sound is sharp like the the sound of the metal can or cookware. Please give me some advice for how to balance those sound

Thank you all again for the helps

Prompted my to change my avatar. No that is not me either. That’s Sierra my dog!

You have to finetune also P2 and P3, like you did at P1.
This is the reason that there is hardly difference at these programs.
Fine tuning can be done individually in all programs.

Edited

Thank you evert!
Well, the P2 and P3 in my now are , and v5.0 Adult and these are not having the tab “Soft Sound Perception”; therefore, I cannot adjust the sharpness/dull voices .
I think what I can do with these programs are just highlighted all the columns (from 125hz to 8K) and increasing the volumes. I did that but I don’t see much of the different when I increased volume of prescribed graph to above the target dashed line graph… I think when I changed the vent’s size from 1.4 mm to 1 mm, it would affect all programs but I could be wrong. Let me see this evening if I P2 and P3 are having same vent’s size as P1.

thanks again

Reducing the vent size in the software if anything will reduce your bass, not increase it. If you want to trick the software into boosting the bass you would have to increase the vent size in the software but not in your ears.

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