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Oticon Real 85 Receiver or 100 Receiver

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Edited

With my severe/profound high frequency loss in my left ear I was wondering if I should have been fitted with the 100 instead of the 85 minRITE. Audiologist said my hf area above 3k is basically a dead zone. Also shouldn’t their speech resque help by shifting to a lower frequency?

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You can see that I have pretty severe to profound high frequency hearing loss, too. I was initially fitted with 85 receivers as well. I was curious so I paid extra to go for the 105 dB receivers with custom molds, but it didn’t help me much at all. I’ve come to the conclusion the same as your that my profound high frequency loss area is pretty much a dead zone. When I did an in-situ audiometry tone test, I couldn’t hear anything from 4 KHz to 8 KHz despite using the 105 dB receiver size, yet I could hear a buzzing mechanical noise when I hit the tones at those frequencies, indicating that I was overdriving those 105 dB receivers so hard that they vibrated and caused the (lower frequency) buzzing noise that I was able to hear. Eventually, one of my 105 dB receivers failed to work, much sooner than I though receivers should last. The right ear is the worse ear for me as well, so it makes sense that the right one would fail before the left one, and it was very likely because I drove it to its death.

It’s not easy to remove and replace the 105 dB receivers out of the custom molds, so I gave up on the 105 dB receivers and went back to the 85 dB receivers. For sure the 85 dB receivers wouldn’t be enough to let me hear those high frequencies, but I use Speech Rescue in all of my programs with the lowest 2.4 configuration that would assign the lowest destination lowered region between 1.5 KHz and 2.4 KHz. This helps let me hear those high frequency sounds like bird chirping or cricket sounding, and those very high pitch digital tones from appliances.

Because I agree that those profound loss areas are pretty much in a dead zone for me, there’s not even a need to drive the receivers so hard to amplify those areas if you can’t hear anything but the buzzing noises of the vibration anyway, so I actually also set the High Frequency Bands setting to OFF to disable amplification in the Source region as well. That should help make the 85 dB receivers not work too hard trying to drive sounds in that Source region, so hopefully they will last longer than otherwise as well. Another benefit to set the High Frequency Bands setting to OFF for me is that it will eliminate the potential for feedback at those very high frequencies that, if and when it actually occurs, I wouldn’t even be able to hear to know, while normal hearing people may get annoyed at hearing that feedback that I’m not even aware of. And the potential for feedback at that high frequency dead zone is a real possibility in my opinion because you’d be making the amplify the heck out of it in that dead zone region.

I agree with the gist of what you’re saying, but I think you’re a bit off on the explanation of hearing the buzzing noise at high frequencies. I don’t think it’s related to the receiver vibrating, but is related to stimulating the basilar membrane in frequencies adjacent to the dead zones in the cochlea. Section 2 (The role of off frequency listening) in the attached link provides a more detailed explanation.

Dead Regions in the Cochlea: Diagnosis, Perceptual Consequences, and...3

Hearing impairment is often associated with damage to the hair cells in the cochlea. Sometimes there may be complete loss of function of inner hair cells (IHCs) over a certain region of the cochlea; this is called a “dead region”. The region can be...

Thanks for clarifying this point, @mdb. That’s very possible, too. It’s another new thing I learned today!

One thing to note from me is that I don’t hear any buzzing noise when I listen to my 105 receivers on normal sounding environments. Only when I hit that single tone generator during the in-situ audiometry test. So if the basilar membrane adjacent to the dead zones are simulated, I don’t know why it’s not pronounced in the normal sounding environments, but very pronounced in the in-situ test. But granted, the in-situ test is with a single pure tone in an otherwise very quiet environment with no other noise to be heard. So it’s also very likely that if there are other noises, the buzzing can easily be masked by them.

@deisman said:

Audiologist said my hf area above 3k is basically a dead zone. Also shouldn’t their speech resque help by shifting to a lower frequency?

Not in your right ear surely?

Look at the specs for both, try the 85dB. If you have hooge canals or are a bass junkie, then 100dB might be the only option. Based on your right ear I’d try the 85dB first even with some quite snug double domes just to see if they work for you.

In reply to @Volusiano

@Volusiano said:

When I did an in-situ audiometry tone test, I couldn’t hear anything from 4 KHz to 8 KHz despite using the 105 dB receiver size, yet I could hear a buzzing mechanical noise when I hit the tones at those frequencies, indicating that I was overdriving those 105 dB receivers so hard that they vibrated and caused the (lower frequency) buzzing noise that I was able to hear.

To me this is red flag of dead zones, no need to amplify sound on those zones.

For me it was a popping and crackling sound. It took Nadia UP aids to learn this.

turned out to be a great thing for me.

Wow! thanks for the replys and great info. I’m learning more here than I could ever hope to learn from my audioligist. Agreed that there is no sense amplifying a dead zone and frequency shifting seems to be the answer(or at least part of the answer). Visited my audiologist today and advised her that I was done with Oticon and want to try the Phonak. She took new impressions and was going to check with WCB to see what I qualify for. Looking forward to my new journey with either Lumity or Paradise in a couple of weeks. Will read up on Frequency shifting to help key in on where to move those dead zones to. And of course visit here to read the communities words of wisdom.

Edited

Wonderful posts here.
I’ve learned a lot. Thanks

edit: I spent two years trying to determine what had been missed setting up my Paradise P90R hearing aids, because they didn’t work. I kept going down “rabbit holes” reading old information. I bought an old text that explained compression and read it. I hoped this was the missing key. Well written; it was obsolete.

@MDB Is the information in the link still applicable?

DaveL
Toronto

Edited

Yes, the information on is still good. Unfortunately use of frequency lowering is basically in the realm of do it yourselfers as audiologists and hearing aid specialists typicaly don’t want to really mess with it. They want to treat to treat it as an “on or off” type setting and it typically takes tweaking. If the “S” sound turns into an “SH,” the settings are too strong. Even if set up perfectly, the user still may not like it. Frequency lowering is definitely NOT a cure all, but it’s the only way some of us will high frequencies shy of a cochlear implant.

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