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Tweaking the Oticon More

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Edited

@Volusiano

Hello Volusiano,

I doubt you remember me, it’s been about three years. My insurance allows a new set every three years and it’s that time again. A number of things have changed over that time and not just my hearing. I’ve moved from the east side of Michigan to the west, my insurance has changed (I’m now forced to use TruHearing) and my very excellent audiologist is now three hours away and does not participate with TruHearing. Oh well that’s life.

Have been wearing the Evoke 440 which I got because of the way they handled music which is terrific. But over the past year they have not been meeting my needs for . Noisy environments have become impossible. Best thing about the Widex? Music is fabulous. Worst thing? Their feedback manager sucks. I wear fully or molds or have to put up with an oscilloscope strapped to the left side of my head.

Anyway, after lots of searching I’ve finally found an actual audiologist in a hearing center, Hearing Life, that participates with TruHearing. Hearing Life is owned by Damant so, though they will fit any of the major brands, they do try to fit Oticon and I’ve been trialing a set of More 1s for the last week and a half.

I’m putting this post to you because of your obvious knowledge of the whole Oticon program and I have some questions to go with my initial impressions of the aids. First, music is better with the Widex. OK that’s out of the way. I am hearing significantly better with the Oticon. At home I can hear my wife speaking to me from another room. I am not missing fricatives nearly as much and so I don’t have to be looking at someone to pick up all they are saying. In simple environments I can hear people at my side and even behind which has been missing for quite some time. But I still struggle in complex environments. They are better there but not great. Noise suppression, at least as they are presently set, is wanting. I do understand Oticon’s open concepts, my first hearing aids were Alta Pros, and I don’t think that is the issue. Speech enhancement is superior to my current aids but the complexity of loud environments is still very difficult.

So educate me if you will on settings for that environment. What should I be looking at when I start asking the audi to modify things.

  1. Neural noise suppression. I’ve seen where you suggest maxing that out, 5 easy and 10 hard, if I recall correctly. I have the speech in noise program. Do these settings effect that or are they applied only in auto? If auto only I assume they are, or can be manually set to max in the speech in noise program.
  2. Virtual Outer Ear. What does this effect and how is it to be maximized for speech in noise if that applies.
  3. Sound Enhancer. Same as above.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I do not have a printout of my current test but if you take the current one in my info you can, on the right side, drop everything down around 5 decibels across the board and flatten the midrange peak, and about the same on the left but 8 to 10 decibels at the high frequency end.

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Edited

Hi Marks, congratulations on being able to get a new pair of from your insurance coverage.

First of all, regarding music on the More, Oticon recently released a new built-in MyMusic program that’s supposed to make music sound much better than the original built-in Music legacy program. However, a number of More owners on this forum, one who’s a professional guitar musician (@SpudGunner) , don’t like the new MyMusic program because it artificially boost the lows and the highs too much, leaving out the mids to be too thin. This is with the most recent firmware 1.1.1 on the More. The unfortunate thing is that Oticon removed the legacy Music program in favor of the new MyMusic program, so people can’t even restore the legacy Music program even if they wanted to. Some folk (like @flashb1024) tried to build their own custom music program with good success. Others resort back to other built-in programs like Comfort and the default P1 program for listening to music for now.

  1. The NNS max value in the MoreSound Intelligence page can be set to different values in any program you have that have NNS enabled. So you can have a lower max value set in one program and set it to the highest in the next program so you can toggle back and forth between them to see how they perform compared to each other. Although Oticon sets the default to NOT be the highest possible value, if you really still struggle with speech in noise, I think that is justification to change to the max value to the highest possible value. You can do the above with 2 identical programs except for the max NNS values, then toggle back and forth to decide for yourself whether it’s better to leave NNS max at default or NNS max at the highest value. Note that they will most likely be the same for simpler situations, and you may only notice a difference in complex or very complex situations.

  2. Virtual Outer Ear only affects the Easy Environment and what Easy Environment encompasses is configured by you in the MoreSound intelligence Configuration setting. It’s basically a “filter” of sort to let you hear more around or give you a more front focus, or something in between.

2.1 For Difficult Environments as configured by you, the Virtual Outer Ear is not used. Instead, a Spatial Balancer module is used, and this module does MVDR beam forming to create null directions to attenuate dominant noise sources around you. Basically the Spatial Balancer does a more aggressive job of rebalancing the sound scene by attenuating dominant noises sources around you, while the Virtual Outer Ear rebalances the sound scene simply using a virtual model of the outer ear and lets you pick out which outer ear model you want to have, not matter what your real ear shapes are like.

  1. The Sound Enhancer applies only to the Difficult Environment and what Difficult encompasses is configured by you. It’s basically because users don’t have a say in how Oticon’s Neural Noise Suppression affects the level of details one can hear, so they give the user an option in the Sound Enhancer to enhance (Detail) or reduce (Comfort) the NNS effect or keep it on even keel (Balanced) the level of details they want to hear.

I would be remiss not to mention a couple of other brands that utilizes the Deep Neural Network to implement noise removal from speech. That’d be the Philips HearLink 9030 sold by Costco for $1800, and the new Whisper brand that’s subscription based which runs around $90/month (current discounted price) on a monthly subscription model for a 3 year sign-up rate. The Whisper requires a “brain” which is an extra small box you have to carry around with you to maximize the speech in noise benefit.

But if you can only use TruHearing to acquire your HAs so that the insurance will cover them, then perhaps neither of the 2 options above can be applied to you.

Volusiano thanks for the fast reply. Boy spud nailed the music program. I described the midrange as empty–the missing middle. Really unfortunate.

I have no reason to head to Costco. My insurance covers the full cost of my aids. TruHearing does not cover full after purchase maintenance but Hearing Life offers a 500 dollar three year package that covers everything. So the end price of the aids will be $500 out of pocket.

The Whisper looks interesting but I have no desire to carry another device. If the More don’t work out it I’ll look to the Paradise with a Roger pen in the pocket.

Concerning the settings I appreciate the info very much. I think you’ve given me the specifics I need to get them where they should be for me and that will let me know if they’re keepers. I’m back to the audiologist on the 6th and I’ll let you know how it works out.

The music is a bummer though. Hopefully they get enough negative feedback to do something about it.

Thanks Again!~!!

@Mark_Chambers said:

The music is a bummer though.

Well, let me update, and enlighten you, @SpudGunner, and @Volusiano, regarding MyMusic.
I met with a new audi last week, and explained the issues Jim, and I were having with the program.
He showed me how , for some reason the Genie 2 fitting software, was indeed compressing the mid-range frequencies to the point of distorted goop!
He quickly lowered the soft sounds in the mids, and increased the gain for loud sounds, and the MyMusic Program is BACK, Baby!

I’ve been comparing it with the custom program I created based on Comfort, and I’ll probably delete mine, and keep MyMusic!

@SpudGunner said:

Sorry, Flash but “me non comprende”.

esta :

MyMusic_b4

That’s what I was faced with prior to last week.

Ahora:

MyMusic_after

that is not from my most recent settings. I’m on a laptop with an older client setup, but it shows the difference.
The one my audi created is more linear.

In reply to @flashb1024

@flashb1024 said:

He quickly lowered the soft sounds in the mids, and increased the gain for loud sounds, and the MyMusic Program is BACK, Baby!

Do you know how many clicks () he lowered the Soft sounds by and how many dBs up for the Loud sounds? And which channels of the mids did he select?

It seems consistent that by adding gains to the Loud sounds in the mids, he compensated for the added boost in MyMusic on the lows and highs that rendered the mids weaker. Now that the gains in the mids are increased, it gets compensated to be on-par with the boosted lows and highs.

I’m guessing that the added gains in the mids he did have a more equalizing effect than the reduced gains in the Soft sounds.

@Volusiano said:

Do you know how many clicks (dB) he lowered the Soft sounds by and how many dBs up for the Loud sounds? And which channels of the mids did he select?

He went 2 clicks up for loud, and 2 down for soft, between 500Hz, and 2Khz.
He left the moderates at the baseline, and tweaked the louds, and softs for linearity.
We compared it to my custom program, and it was pretty close, but the MyMusic program still has that added bit of boost in the lows, and highs, that are more linear than my custom program, so I give it the edge.

We also reset the sound sliders, to default, as I had tried different settings in my futile attempts previous.

The real key was, and I admit I had no clue, that using the setting is necessary to see the problem.

image

@Volusiano and @flashb1024: YOU MEAN, ALL THESE LEVELS OF DETAILED ADJUSTMENTS ARE AVAILABLE TO ME IN THE GENIE2 SOFTWARE, AND MY AUDIOLOGIST HASN’T TOLD ME ABOUT THEM, OR WALKED ME THROUGH MY CHOICES???

I think I need to ask one of my friends to install Genie 2 on his computer. I’ll buy the NoahLink Wireless getup and we can tweak our Mores and fountain pens during one of our coffee klatches.

Yes, there’s a lot of Fine Tuning adjustments you can do, but normally you don’t touch it unless as a last resort because you can mess up things as easily as fixing up things as well. You gotta know what you’re doing, or at least save what you had before so you can revert to what you had last time it if it doesn’t work out. Or record what you change, but saving and reverting is probably easier.

Audis normally don’t walk their patients through the Fine Tuning section because that’s just how Genie 2 prescribes the gain based on the program you select. Even if they need to tweak those details, they don’t necessarily walk through it with their patients because their patients may not understand the concept of gain adjustment per frequency channels anyway.

@Volusiano said:

save what you had before so you can revert to what you had last time it if it doesn’t work out.

That’s the key.
The beauty of Genie 2 is the ability to save each session with comments on what you did.
Then you can play around with all the settings, do a complete new fit, and still have your original to go back to.

@SpudGunner said:

I think I need to ask one of my friends to install Genie 2 on his computer. I’ll buy the NoahLink Wireless getup and we can tweak our Mores and fountain pens during one of our coffee klatches.

Yes coffee is the key!!
Do it, Jim, and OPN your world to MORE with your More’s!!
(That might make a good song title)

Edited

In reply to @Volusiano

@Volusiano said:

Even if they need to tweak those details, they don’t necessarily walk through it with their patients because their patients may not understand the concept of gain adjustment per frequency channels anyway.

:exploding_head: … What, then … do they think we’re to stupid to understand ??? :triumph:

[NOTA: I hope everyone realizes that, when I post in this tone, it must be read as one would watch a Laurel and Hardy movie?]

If you read the fine print, we’re actually not allowed to give you the software. You have to track it down yourself.

In reply to @flashb1024

Not wanting to jump all over this thread; but the description of (non-)linear gain above is flawed.
(Apologies if I’ve read that back to front though)

Linear amplification applies the same amount of gain at all levels of input (compression ratio of 1). Non-linear amplification selectively apples more gain to quieter sounds and less amplification to louder sounds; hence Compression (of the output). Compression Ratio > 1.

On the diagrams above the ‘linear gain’ is illustrated by the lines that sit over each other: you can see the similarity in the gain values underneath.

Potentially, the reason why you didn’t like the sound output (in linear) is that when you feed high input levels through a linear system you get one of the following;
1, Peak clipping: physical limit of the receiver reached. (squared off wave; sounds nasty)
2, Output limiting compression: like peak-clipping but via electronics (more rounded wave, but still distorted)
3, Saturation: overdriving a receiver that makes it resonate at its resonance rather than where your music is.
4, Feedback manager (not with streaming) but this will eventually kick in at very high outputs.

In reply to @Um_bongo

@Um_bongo said:

Potentially, the reason why you didn’t like the sound output (in linear) is that when you feed high input levels through a linear system you get one of the following;
1, Peak clipping: physical limit of the receiver reached. (squared off wave; sounds nasty)
2, Output limiting compression: like peak-clipping but via electronics (more rounded wave, but still distorted)
3, Saturation: overdriving a receiver that makes it resonate at its resonance rather than where your music is.

That’s exactly the way MyMusic presented itself when 1st programmed.
It was totally unuseable.
I understand your definition of linear vs non-liner, and as usual, must acquiesce to your expertise, sir:)

Thank you for the clarification.

In reply to @Mark_Chambers

@Mark_Chambers said:

I am assuming those decibel levels are the current modified settings?

No, Mark I was using a sample client I had created on a computer that doesn’t have my current setting.
I just created those settings in order to demonstrate the difference between the default , and corrected gain curves.
Here are my actual settings for MyMusic:

image

The end result is very satisfactory, musically speaking.

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