MyMusic disappointment

Not everybody likes MyMusic. Many folks on this forum seems to have your same sentiment. Some had their HCP make some fine tuning to the program and eventually are happy with the adjustment they made. It seems to depend on one’s perception of what good music sounds like and that varies between people. Folks with a discerning ear for music seem to be more critical of MyMusic’s performance.

Proprietary dedicated music programs can be iffy in my experience. However, your configuration of hearing loss is a huge factor as well, as that can affect how audible/natural/comfortable sound can be relative to a reduced dynamic range due to severity of hearing loss. I have had success just crafting a music program from scratch. Turn automatic functions off. Minimize compression, and try to form a flat frequency response. If anything, it can help create a blank slate from which your audiologist can better offer suggestions.

For More 1s, if you are streaming music you can open the streaming equalizer in the phone app and boost bass while cutting mids.

@SamuelH said:

What’s gone wrong?

What’s gone wrong is Oticon’s dim witted perception of what High Fidelity music should sound like!
The original Music program was actually quite pleasant, with some minor tweaks, but the geniuses strove for some marketing hype, and killed it.

@3dslides said:

It seems to tamp down some sounds, rather than add anything to the detail.

Absolutely!
Oticon published a White Paper on MyMusic, and claimed to incorpoate the “Harmon Curve” to great success on a test group.
Little detail was given on what sources of music were used or the level of expertise of the subjects.
here’s a link to the article.47

The solution is to have your audi modify the MyMusic program by adding some gain in the upper mids, and any other frequencies you find lacking.
Bringing a good music source, and a pair of good Over Ear headphones can really help during the fitting.
It took close to a year for me to be able to accept MyMusic, but it can be done!!

Tell your Aud to check the ‘Power Bass’ setting. If it’s too high, it can often cause streamed audio to sound muddy/boomy. This setting is found in the End Fitting → Accessories → Phone tab of the fitting software.

@Louie said:

Tell your Aud to check the ‘Power Bass’ setting. If it’s too high, it can often cause streamed audio to sound muddy/boomy. This setting is found in the End Fitting → Accessories → Phone tab of the fitting software.

I personally like the High value selection on the Power Bass myself. On these tiny little receivers, there can never be enough bass to make things sound muddy or boomy for me. Streaming music to hearing aids is always too tinny for my taste overall, because it’s not physically possible to faithfully reproduce the bass to the accurate level it needs to be from these tiny receivers. But hey, each to his own. I guess.

What I gather is that MyMusic sucks to some people because they overcompensate to give the appearance that there’s good bass by taking away some of the mids/mid-highs volume to give the perception of more bass overall. But they can’t fool the discerning ears because there can never be thumping bass delivered by the tiny receivers in the first place, so there’s no perceived of better bass, but in its place, more perception of lacking the mids and mid-highs because they took it away.

The screenshot below from their MyMusic whitepaper pretty much shows how MyMusic is different than the original legacy Music program → they took away the mids and mid-highs and bump up the lows and the highs. I guess the participants from their study noticed the bumps in the lows and highs and considered MyMusic superior, but the more discerning ears noticed the suppression/lack in the mid and mid-highs and consider MyMusic inferior to the legacy Music program.

There is A LOT of information in the mids and mid-highs for a lot of different variety of sounds. By dampening it, you can make a lot of critical sounds seem to become dull or get drowned out by other less critical sounds.

@Volusiano said:

Streaming music to hearing aids is always too tinny for my taste overall, because it’s not physically possible to faithfully reproduce the bass to the accurate level it needs to be from these tiny receivers. But hey, each to his own. I guess

Hi @Volusiano! Have you had the chance to listen to the audio samples comparing some of the newest hearing aids (posted here)? I don’t think the difference for music between Phonak Lumity and Oticon More is only due to hardware/receiver. I suppose the catch is in the fitting algorithm, which makes me wonder if that would be possible to replicate ;). BTW, I think the Lumity performed even better than the AirPods Pro 2 for music!

My curiosity got the best of me one more time! lol

Here I have input the same audiogram, chose power domes in the “acoustic” setting, and got screen shots of the initial music programs for Oticon More (MyMusic) and Phona Lumity (Streaming Media Music + Mic).

Phona Lumity (Streaming Media Music + Mic):

Oticon More (MyMusic):

I think I figured where part of the magic is coming. Please, Phoank users correct me where I am wrong… Phonak Target shows two music programs (neat!): one for live music; and one for streaming music. As seen in the screen shots below, Lumity boosts the low frequencies in the “media music” program. Again, neat!

Music Program (live):

Media Music Program (streaming):

Should add that I have been streaming Bluesound Node MQA music via my Roger On and that is great sounding . Maybe the frequency range is better with the Roger system as compared to bluetooth.

@Volusiano and @al11: I would like to clarify that I am not comparing what I hear from an actual AirPod Pro 2 or Phonak Lumity. I am just reporting my impression of the audio samples in that link I posted above (that seems to be down now), following the instructions I was given (no hearing aids, good headphones, normal volume). At this point I do not own an AirPod Pro 2 (I own the older version) and wear Oticon More

I think you both point out, perhaps, a limitation of that sort of samples: are they able to fully capture the music experience of the real thing in our ears, pumping low frequencies all over our skulls?

Thanks for the clarification, @e1405 . Yeah, depending on the audio samples used for the comparison, they may not cover the full range of audible sounds.

@Volusiano said:

they may not cover the full range of audible sounds.

@Volusiano: Perhaps this is why my Zamphir CDs sound like they are missing some notes (or even full bars) during some songs, especially at the climax of the tune?