My Mum has just got new Oticon Intent hearing aids today. When she drove her hybrid car home from her appointment, she got dreadful feedback whenever the petrol engine was running - meaning essentially the majority of the time in the car other than when idling or manoeuvring at very low speeds. Obviously this isn’t sustainable. Has anyone got any similar experience and/or any advice, please?
She called the hearing centre who sold her them and they will see her again tomorrow, but said on the phone that they’ve never heard of the problem before which didn’t give me much confidence in them resolving it! Especially as it’s only evident when she’s driving, which obviously she won’t be while at an appointment.
I never had this problem with oticon intent in the general profile. I will suggest to check on the oticon companion if you have the comfort profile and then enable this and check again the noise inside the car.
I never had this problem with oticon intent in the general profile. I will suggest to check on the oticon companion if you have the comfort profile and then enable this and check again the noise inside the car.
I suggested she try the equalisers in the app. If she turned all three down then the feedback was much quieter but still there so that doesn’t seem like a great solution either.
I’d go back to the Audi and have them re-run the feedback manager. I do have problems with engine noise in cars but only in so far as understanding speech over the road noise, not with feedback. The shouldn’t feedback unless you have the wrong dome for the power amplification. Since there is no on the profile its hard to have an opinion.
I agree with @Luga that since the OP doesn’t post up her mother’s , it’s hard to be able to give good advice not knowing what kind of hearing loss it is. Please post it up so that folks on this forum can give more helpful advice.
Also, you’re not describing what kind of feedback your mom hears. Is it a whistling type of feedback, or is it a fluttering type of feedback? It helps to describe this to be able to pinpoint to which feedback management functionality is causing the feedback, because there are 2 types of feedback technologies used in the Intent, the new Feedback Manager (found in Automatics), and the old Feedback Analyzer technology.
There are several ways to try to tackle the feedback issue with the Intent. If the Intent’s new Feedback Management feature is enabled and set to Normal (as seen in the screenshot below) and your mom hears fluttering, then change it to Low to see if it helps solve the problem. If it does not help, turn it to OFF to see if it helps.
If it helps solve the problem but starts causing the whistling type of feedback in other situations, then the can activate the older Feedback Analyzer/Feedback Shield feature to help solve the whistling feedback program. The one-time Feedback Analyzer “scan” will introduce a white noise during the scanning part to see where feedback can occur in the frequency spectrum, then it gets set to reduce the gain margin in that area to help minimize the feedback there. Reducing the gain margin means that it will subdue the necessary amplification needed to hear something in a certain frequency area to a lower allowable limit because the scan analysis has determine that there would be feedback if the amplification is allowed past this set limit. The trade-off on this is that you won’t get adequate amplification as needed sometimes in that area where the gain margin is reduced, resulting is not being able to hear things as well due to it. That’s one of the main disadvantage of the old feedback control technology that the new feedback manager is trying to address.
It is preferrable to use the newer Feedback Manager technology first and disable the older Feedback Analyzer/Shield technology if possible, because if this works out OK, you won’t have to compromise and lose the gain margin allocated by the older technology to remove the feedback as explained above. But if the new Feedback Manager causes fluttering and has to be lowered or disabled and this starts to cause the whistling feedback, then there’s no choice but to turn on the old Feedback Analyzer/Shield.
Sometimes, for folks with severe hearing loss, to whom just the old feedback technology is not even enough to control feedback unless a closed custom mold is used, the new feedback technology can help supplement the old feedback technology to manage the feedback, and sometimes even allow the custom mold to be vented to a certain degree to help remove the occlusion effect.
Thanks all for your input. Mum managed to work out the problem this morning before her appointment, the audiologist had left it set to mic/t-loop Now set back to General the feedback is all gone.
Ah, OK. I’m guessing that the tcoil must be picking up some stray electromagnetic field generated by the hybrid car when in gas mode. It’s odd, however, to have the P1 default program set to mic/tcoil. Usually a mic/tcoil mode should not be in the default program. Might just be a simple mistake, though.
When you get a chance, after your mum has been wearing the Intents for a while, if you could ask her how well they’re working out for her and share it with us here on the forum. It’d be much appreciated!
Will do She previously had in-ear which just made everything louder, not clearer. She says these are like night and day - she has turned the TV volume down to about half of what she was having it before and doesn’t need to use the subtitles. She could hear the birds singing when she went out this morning. Already a vast improvement! She likes being able to use them to take phone calls and listen to music or audiobooks from her phone too.
Rural New England
Now set back to General the feedback is all gone.
She previously had in-ear which just made everything louder, not clearer. She says these are like night and day - she has turned the TV volume down to about half of what she was having it before and doesn’t need to use the subtitles. She could hear the birds singing when she went out this morning. Already a vast improvement! She likes being able to use them to take phone calls and listen to music or audiobooks from her phone too.