I’m currently evaluating oticon more. I like them very much, since they sound so natural -
but -
all three versions (more3/2/1) have a constant white noise in both ears. It’s not loud, but when i take into account, that i’m hard of hearing, it must be quite massive. Like tinnitus i soon forget it, but it is there when it’s all silent around me.
Since my 12-year-old phonaks are silent, i wonder whether this is normal for oticon.
Of course - they have 18bit+ conversion and a powerful processor and wireless in the same circuit. So it seems sorcery that it works at all (i have fumbled a lot until i got 16 bit to work for a measuring instrument and had to use ground planes like railway tracks).
So my question to oticon-users:
Is this normal or should i insist to get a pair without rustling?
It doesn’t particularly bother me, but if i pay a more than 6000€ i accept physics but not a defect.
Thanks.
Others, including myself, have experienced this floor noise with Oticon Aids. It often happens to people with good low frequency but poor high frequency hearing.
Tell your Hearing care because there is a setting in the Oticon fitting software designed to reduce this type of floor noise.
A search of this Site might provide guidance. This has been discussed here previously.
Interesting I wear the More1 aids and don’t have any issues with white noise unless I enable the tinnitus masks.
Now if I lower the volume of my aids low enough I can hear my tinnitus but with my aids at default volume I don’t even hear my tinnitus.
Maybe the tinnitus mask is enables for white noise or your aids don’t have the default volume high enough to mask your own tinnitus.
Assuming that it’s not due to the tinnitus feature that you might have had turned ON, the floor noise you’re hearing is most likely because you or your has set the Directionality Setting in your MoreSound Intelligence page to Full Directional. This forces the aids to the front beam forming mode, but the side effect of it is that you’ll hear a floor noise in this mode. If you’re in a noisy place, this floor noise is not noticeable because other noisy sounds will overwhelm and mask it anyway. But if you’re in a quiet place, and if you have good low frequency hearing like you do, you’ll notice it for sure.
This is not a limitation of the Oticon More. This is a physical side effect / limitation (phenomenon) of doing full directional beam forming of the hearing aids mic, which is well established by hearing aids research papers. It happens to ALL hearing aids, no matter how advanced they are, because it’s a physics phenomenon. It’s basically because directional modes tend to cause a low frequency roll-off that would be compensated by the system through amplification at the low ends, resulting in higher internal microphone static noise levels → what you call the white noise. The screenshot at the bottom shows the low frequency roll-off of directional mics vs omnidirectional mic.
You probably didn’t have it set all the times in your 12 year old Phonak because it’s likely that the Phonak’s AutoSense takes you to this mode automatically in noisy situations, which would mask out this floor noise in the first place. Then when you’re in a quiet environment, Phonak AutoSense takes you out of the directional mic mode.
But you or your HCP probably have this Full Directional value set in the Directionality Setting of your default P1 program in the Oticon More, so with it ON all the times, you’ll definitely notice this floor noise when things are quiet. You should not have it set to Full Directional in your P1 program. Instead, the P1 program should always have Directionality Settings set to Neural Automatic. If you want Full Directional for when it’s noisy, set it to another program like P2 and only change to your P2 program in noisy environments so that the floor noise would get masked out by the actual noise anyway. Either that, or use the ON app to temporarily enable the MoreSound Booster only when you need to, which effectively enables Full Directional on the mics to get the front beam forming for you.
I’m interesting in Genie 2 settings that can help with this and with implementing low frequency expansion. The static in new Real1 is terrible and the audiologist just claimed I’d get used to it and didn’t even try to dial it out.
I’m using double vent domes, but that isn’t going too well either and might make this static worse.
If you are using an iPhone, check your phone settings that you haven’t turned on ‘background sounds’ as the iPhone has 6 sounds to help with tinnitus, one of which is white noise.
Go to:
Settings, Accessibilty, Audio/Visual, Background Sounds - should be off.
Thanks for the search term “floor noise”. I couldn’t find a previous thread, because searching for “noise” alone is not much use in a hearing aid forum. Google didn’t provide an applicable translation for “Grundrauschen”. Now I’v got plenty to read.
Basically this is it, what i wanted to know: I’m not alone with my floor noise.
(“It’s not a bug - it’s a feature” )
Does anyone know if floor noise would be audible to someone with good normal hearing? Whatever static I have can be heard by others just by holding the hearing aid near their ear. I’m trying to figure out how to distinguished floor noise from some other issue since mine is much worse on one side. I also notice that sometimes the static seems to diminish when the hearing aid is processing a speaker or other noise. Perhaps my own hearing is getting masked by another frequency some of the time?
Oticon doesn’t appear to have as many expansion settings as other manufacturers? Will better controls be added to Genie 2?
Does anyone know if floor noise would be audible to someone with good normal hearing? Whatever static I have can be heard by others just by holding the hearing aid near their ear.
Definitely if you can hear it, they will hear it as well.
Oticon uses a preventative feedback manager that, although pretty effective, does introduce a static-type noise. That would explain why you would hear it regardless of technology level. Although Oticon does not readily recommend it, Genie does have a more traditional reactive feedback manager that may not introduce as much static noise.
Then why don’t I hear the static? I have the More1 aids with 100db receivers and acrylic custom ear molds. And by the way I don’t have any issues with feedback, or wind noise. My fitting has been adjusted to maximize my speech understanding, and I am receiving 100% of my prescription setting, and my ear molds have a very small vent that I can barely run a cleaner tool through.
The main reason would be because your low frequencies aren’t quite good enough to hear it, most of the people who complaine would have pretty good hearing in the low frequencies.
Oticon uses a preventative feedback manager that, although pretty effective, does introduce a static-type noise. That would explain why you would hear it regardless of technology level. Although Oticon does not readily recommend it, Genie does have a more traditional reactive feedback manager that may not introduce as much static noise.
I beg to differ here. Oticon’s Optimizer technology (the feedback prevention stuff) does not introduce a static-type noise, as in constant “floor noise” type of sound (like when you overdrive your amplifier but with no sound going through, so all you hear is the over-amplified floor noise). What Oticon’s Optimizer technology does is to introduce what they call STM (Spectro Temporal Modulation), or what people call “breaks” into the sound scene, but only when and where it detects an energy build-up that can potentially develop into a feedback situation. The breaks (short, quick burst of pulses) are designed to break up this energy build up to avert a feedback condition from occurring. These breaks may be heard by some users, depending on their types of hearing loss. For those users with good enough hearing in the frequency bands where these breaks are to be able to notice these “breaks”, they usually describe it as a “fluttering” sound.
But it’s not a static noise that can be heard all the times like the floor noise. It’s a burst of fluttering sound that comes (when a potential feedback condition is detected) and goes (after the feedback potential is broken up/averted). Before, you either turn ON or OFF the Optimizer. After many users complain about hearing the fluttering, Oticon fixed the issue by updating the firmware to reduce the aggressiveness of this functionality. They introduced a Low value in addition to the Normal value and the OFF value. This firmware update and the new Low value seems to resolve the issue for many folks who hear it, albeit they wouldn’t be able to get the maximum feedback protection like with the Normal value, but it’s a good compromise.
And yes, the traditional reactive feedback manager is still available and can be used in conjunction with the Optimizer, or all by itself with the Optimizer turned off if desired. I suppose it’s very easy to test and see whether the real culprit for the OP’s white noise is the Optimizer or not. Just turn the Optimizer off completely to see if it goes away or not. My bet is that it won’t go away, but then it doesn’t cost anything to try to turn it off, so I don’t see why not.
I think we are talking about different sounds in the same feature. The fluttering is one thing, but there is also a low level white noise. It is most noticeable to me in a quiet room and I am actively switching between off/low/normal in Genie.
If you actually hear that, then for sure I believe you, although this is the first time I hear a forum member mention about this low white noise issue with the Optimizer. Mostly it’s been about the fluttering.
I think it’s easy enough for the OP to just turn it to normal/low/off like you did to see for himself it it’s actually the culprit for him as well or not. Thanks for mentioning this. I guess we learn something new from each other everyday.
I really only hear it when I am actively switching the feedback manager on and off in Genie. In my defense I have normal hearing so it very well could be something inaudible for anything greater than a mild hearing loss.
It very well could be, but I will add back when I wore domes instead of custom ear molds, I heard a lot more wind noise, and some thing I would call white noise. But since wearing custom ear molds or when I had the custom aids I never noticed white noise, and I had lots of issues with wind noise until I got the More1 aids.
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