I’m in the process of evaluating ’s for the first time. I trialed some Witex Moment 440’s for a few weeks and found the sound from playing my violin to be quite nice. There were some other features I found lacking so today I got fitted with Oticon Intent 1 HA’s. Now, the sound from playing my violin is horrible. It’s too loud and distorted, especially with higher notes.
Is this problem likely fixable with a setting change? Are there violinists who use Intents successfully? Should I just go back to the Witex Moments?
Were you using the MyMusic program to try out playing your violin on? If yes, then don’t, and just try playing your violin with the default program 1 to see if it works out better or not. Ask your to verify that the default program is set to General VAC+ formula, then if yes, copy the default program to another program and call this your own custom music program, then turn off Neural Noise Suppression and Feedback Management, change the Directionality Setting to Fixed Omni. Turn off the Sudden Sound Stabilizer. Hopefully this helps.
If it helps somewhat but not completely, then it’s time your HCP pulls his/her weight and adjust the gain curves in the Fine Tuning section some more to see if they can make things sound better for you or not, based on your perceived program → for example, you find the higher notes too loud and distorted → they can bring down the gain values on the highs to see if it helps.
If you can bring your own violin to the fitting session and try playing it there after each adjustment is made so that you can immediately give your HCP feedback on whether each particular adjustment helps or not, it would help work things out much faster on the fly like that.
The MyMusic program is designed more for overall music listening from speakers or from whole bands with multiple instruments, and even then, many people still don’t like the colorations it added. It’s probably not the best choice for single acoustic instrument soloing per se.
Were you using the MyMusic program to try out playing your violin on? If yes, then don’t, and just try playing your violin with the default program 1 to see if it works out better or not. Ask your HCP to verify that the default program is set to General VAC+ formula, then if yes, copy the default program to another program and call this your own custom music program, then turn off Neural Noise Suppression and Feedback Management, change the Directionality Setting to Fixed Omni. Turn off the Sudden Sound Stabilizer. Hopefully this helps.
If it helps somewhat but not completely, then it’s time your HCP pulls his/her weight and adjust the gain curves in the Fine Tuning section some more to see if they can make things sound better for you or not, based on your perceived program → for example, you find the higher notes too loud and distorted → they can bring down the gain values on the highs to see if it helps.
I’ve tried both the General and MyMusic programs, but they both sound about the same. What works best so far is to use the equalizer and turn the treble down to zero.
I’ll take your suggestions in to my and see what she can do. Thanks.
Another possibility is that instead of using the Oticon proprietary fitting formula, your might have chosen one of the standard fitting rationales in the General for you. These standard rationales are known to emphasize sharper frequencies in order to help focus on better speech understanding, but that might cause a detrimental effect on boosting up the highs for the violin sound too much.
So just make sure that the VAC+ Oticon rationale is used to avoid this possible side effect, and if it’s confirmed that it’s the VAC+ in the General program, make a copy of it to a customized music program for you, turn off all the special processing as mentioned in the previous post, then go to the Fine Tuning section and judiciously turn down the gain values in the high frequency channels in appropriate places to tone down the high overdrives that you hear with your violin.
Assuming that you only find it sounding bad on the highs for when playing the violin, but it sounds OK overall for normal use, then apply the high frequency gain reduction to the custom music program only. But if you find it helpful to reduce the highs for normal non-violin use as well, then you can ask your HCP to apply the high frequency gain reductions to the General program 1 as well.
Sometimes, playing the violin might have hit a resonant frequency of some sort somewhere in the high range for the whole Oticon Intent setup, but it just doesn’t happen on the Widex setup by luck. This might be the case if you find that the overall use of the Oticon Intent aids is OK, just bad only when you play the violin.
I recently been fitted with the Widex SmartRIC 440 as a violin player and have no desire to try any others. Quite happy as I experienced no distortion, no feedback, no intonation issues.
I’m an early Oticon Intent adopter. I play mandolin (same tuning, plucking/strumming vs bowing and at mid-chest level rather than the violin’s shoulder level position.) I find the General program just fine and rarely use the MyMusic setting while practicing and playing.
no distortion of pitch in upper registers? I am having a horrible time with my new Phonak Audeo 170-Rs. I am hearing intervals “flat” from what they are objectively. I know that my hearing has declined since the day when I was doing fine with an earlier hearing aid.
Do a search for threads mentioning Marshall Chasin, his recommendations for setting up a music program are very useful. I ’ed my KS10/Phonak P90s according to Chasin and found music greatly improved. However, as a musician I was really aggravated by a subtle jangling that seemed to follow every note on the guitar and have been unable to completely get rid of it. Got Widex Moment 440s, problem solved… they simply work!
