Phonak Bluetooth voice rattle

Ok guys I have the bolero and phonak as well. I’m a DJ and audiophile …. I’ve always been very critical with sound distortion analogue and digital. So firstly the sound on listening to talking is like the cone rubbing like its off centre. Similar to a full size speaker when listen to spoken word … Anyway after hearing this in YouTube I then tried it in tik tok Facebook and various other video services like radio garden which is live TV. The distortion is not present at all. It only seems to be YouTube and even then it’s not present in all videos I would say probably 85 per cent it’s there. Which then suggests it’s a codec issue in the software …. I’ve also listened to my own videos on my phone I’ve made with voice over and it’s perfect no rattling or distortion ….. I hope this helps…. !!!

@Djste said:

So firstly the sound on listening to talking is like the cone rubbing like its off centr

Maybe it’s from peak clipping due to the too weak receiver?

Update

Now fitted with power receivers and vented domes. Today my audiologist re-programmed my aids accordingly, ran feedback test and checked some other things - all relatively quick. For clarification: I don’t need power receivers, my loss is in upper frequencies, we were just trying to find a solution to this ongoing issue have tried everything else.

Hurrah! Almost completely cured the issue at last. I’ve prone to listening out for this damn distraction sort of buzz but honestly it’s now barely noticeable at all which I’ll take as a solution. Note I have settings set to ‘car stereo’ and set ‘adaptive bandwidth’ on the Phonak app. I listen to music on Quobuz at high bitrate quality or stations from Radio Paradise at lossless quality intending to give the Phonak software the best quality in the first place hoping any processing artefacts are therefore minimal.

Downside / compromise? The speakers are physically larger, and I can feel having the bigger squishy domes in my ears whereas previously open tips I generally forgot I was wearing them.

So now I need to see if I am comfortable with these domes after a few days I suppose. This confirms it is a software Bluetooth related issue as there is still trace evidence of this buzzing, information my audio is going to be reporting back to the technical contact at Phonak/Sonova. I hope I can live with these domes as despite them having only tiny holes in them my initial listening to music on my main hifi system is that they’re fine, don’t interfere with the natural sound of instruments / music I’m very familiar-with sounds as it should.

Today was a very good day😀

I’ll update again as needed, hope this may help someone. Rob.

So it was problem with clipping or too much open setup?

I previously wondered about a connection with the open domes, experimenting with soft earbuds or just my little fingers carefully inserted to make a seal, but this masked rather than solved the problem. My Bluetooth streaming program has all software enhancements turned off and microphones disabled but that didn’t help

My audiologist and I have agreed that the issue seems to be software related. As we all have different hearing measurements the way their software takes the Bluetooth signal and applies corrections seems to have varying degrees of error/ compression/ sampling or whatever (I’m not qualified) that a small number of users experience what sounds like clipping. My audio remarked that my low frequency hearing is very good, whereas many hearing aid customers have much broader hearing loss, or may not even use Bluetooth streaming much as they may “be above a certain age” ahem. So this issue hasn’t received attention by the designers that it requires.

We felt it can’t be something as simple as amplification clipping if I hear these noises at low volumes, but it could be something to do with the parameters of the decoding software which would be different with the higher rated receivers, and indeed something has greatly improved to the extent it’s as good as a fix, bearing in mind I never expected audiophile standard headphones!

Looking forward: I hope they’ll solve this properly, which would mean I could revert to the more compact receivers and possibly turn back on the microphones and wind block etc etc which may well be nice to have on outdoor walks for example, but have been dumped striving to find solutions. Chances are the fix would just be rolled out discreetly in annual updates in the same manner Apple keep making changes without fully disclosing what they are actually doing because we consumers are regarded as not being allowed to know. Oh well, here’s to hoping!