Hearing aids for music listening

@bernard.danino said:

You mean the little cap the audiologist added on top of the speaker?
That is very interesting. She actually tried a pair first and then switched to another, pertaining the fact that my ear duct was narrower than she thought.
What exactly should I look for?

Yes, the little silicon caps on the end of RIC hearing aid wires are called domes. Domes from many hearing aid manufacturers are interchangeable. Just find the ones that fit your ear canals and give you the right sound. The ones I use, Widex large tulip domes for my Phonak P90 HAs, are classed as vented domes. There are open, vented and closed domes in a variety of shapes and sizes. A crude rule of thumb is:-

Open domes will give you the most ambient sound and least bass.
Vented domes will increase occlusion and increase bass.
Closed domes will be the most occlusive and give the most bass response.

My own experience is primarily concerned with keeping the domes in my ear canals without them backing out within minutes of wearing, a point which most audioligists i have come across don’t seem to regard as that important, or something that is easily resloved.

You can tweak your audi’s fitting to your heart’s content with DIY fitting but for me the key to good sound quality is getting the right domes.

Of course, logical. But it will take a while before I get the Noahlink via. I might as well start investigating

What you are saying about domes makes total sense to me. Since I am only corrected above 2kHz I would need Open domes. I will need to check the ones she gave me. Thanks.

On the topic of domes, my personal experience with my ears is that I seem to have fluctuating pressure in my ears. (for all I know so does everybody) But what it does is makes it extremely uncomfortable to use closed domes due to that pressure buildup. I would rather have complete control of all sound being output from the HA’s but the pressure buildup precludes that option.

A question about the Oticon Bass Domes. Apparently for having different sizes ear ducts my audi gave me 2 different dome sizes.
So now I have one that is loose and sometimes I can feel it move slightly. At first it was distracting but with time I think it is more comfortable.
The other one is really espousing the diameter of my ear duct and sometimes it is firmly in place.
I am not sure which sensation is the right one to get used to.
The loose one is more “breathing” I guess…

The Oticon bass dome should have either 1 or 2 small vents, so you shouldn’t get the total occlusion sensation from it. I have the bass dome with 1 small vent and I only get the occlusion sensation when my vent gets plugged up with ear wax. A little toothpick to clear out the vent opens it up again.

The bass domes are flexible so if you have one that keeps slipping out then maybe you should move up a size on that ear. But before you do that, if you didn’t get the retention wire that keeps your dome in place from your audi (by snuggling the wire at the bottom of your inner ear well), then ask for the retention wire and try it on first. Sometimes it’s good enough to keep the dome in place.

Hello
I use Oticon More 1 and one of my programs is dedicated to listening to music or movies in my home theater. ALL the special features are disabled for that purpose. Only the feedback control is set to low. But when I listen at high volume somehow intermittently my hearing aid step the volume down for a second of two. As if there was some kind of limiter or protection engaging. What can it be? This is really annoying.

I thought it was the MPO levels. Ok I will try disabling the feedback control and see. Thanks

That’s when it’s “clipping” you’ll notice the difference between the two in most cases.

There are 3 different musical types, recording, live, and instrumental, so one needs to explore these with your audiologist to try and set them up just the way you like it sound.

Disabling the feedback control helps reduce the problem drastically but not entirely. It still happens while listening to music. And I cannot see a pattern. It’s just random. Everything is disabled so the only thing I can think of is the gain control. How does the MPO act? Can it lower the volume by a whole step when clipping?

Thanks for sharing your audiogram. I think the 85 dB receivers are appropriate for you overall, assuming you’re wearing at least bass domes and not open domes. But even then, it is at near the edge of the 85 dB performance at the 3 to 4 KHz range. I’m guessing that that’d be where you’re hitting the saturation point and run into compression limiting once in a while when exposed to higher volume.

If the 100 dB receivers don’t require custom molds (I assume that you’re not wearing custom molds with your 85 dB receivers anyway), then it wouldn’t hurt to try the 100 dB receivers to see if it solves the issue for you.

Why would I wear bass domes? I hear quite well in the low range therefore I need them as transparent as possible, open domes is what I wear. Not?

You certainly can wear open domes for less occlusion, at the expense of not be able to get sufficient amplification for your hearing loss at 3-4 KHz. If you look at the 85 dB receiver fitting range in my last post, open domes can only fit up to 65-70 dB loss while bass domes (with double vent for the More) can fit up to 85 dB loss at 3-4 KHz.

Another thing that occurs to me is that with open dome, if there’s some kind of compression limiting going on due to over saturation at high volume, the delayed response in the compression limiting can possibly cause the (late) sound coming from the hearing aids to become out of phase with the natural sound coming through the open dome at those frequencies, triggering some sort of phase cancellation, resulting in nullified or reduced volume perception. This is all an educated guess, of course. Nothing can be proven. But there’s a lot of trade-offs between wearing open domes and bass domes and this may be one of those things.

But this discussion brings up another point, and another thing you can try. Before trying out 100 dB receivers yet, maybe try to switch from open to bass domes with double vent first to see if this would help with your issue. I wear bass domes with single vent and I find it to be a very good compromise that would give me better high frequencies amplification and still acceptable openness and I really don’t feel a noticeable occlusion except for when chewing maybe.

One other advantage of the bass dome vs open dome is that if you find speech in noise a challenge, the neural noise reduction with the bass dome would be more effective than the neural noise reduction with open domes, because no matter how much noise reduction you can apply through the hearing aids to clarify the speech, the noise bled through the open domes tends to render the clarified speech muddle again anyway.

I got me some sample bass domes today. I will try them. I discussed the subject with my audio while picking them up. She is certain I don’t need the 100 (maybe a hassle to exchange now?). And told me that the culprit is in the MPO values (what I thought on my own at first). She said to experiment with the MPO but couldn’t spare me more time. I have the feeling I toyed too much with the gains. Can you have a look at my screenshots and tell me what you think? Yesterday I watched a movie, using the music mode. I had to set the volume to -1 using the phone app because it was uncomfortable , and yet the limiting phenomenon occurred at least twice.

Oticon Genie 2 Questions

Actually I try to not mess with the Fine Tuning -> Gains Control at all, for the exact reason that you mentioned, it’s like pure experimentation / wild shots in the dark. Maybe a couple of times is OK. But several times is exhausting and you can find yourself running in circles. I didn’t learn this from experience through wild goose chases. I just intuitively told myself to stay away from that can of worms. Because I self program, I forgo the luxury of being able to have REM done, which is …