Phonak Naída M70 - distortion/cancellation for sudden loud sounds

Dear Everyone,

I have the hearing aid mentioned above, about which I would like to share my observations and experience.

I have been using HA continuously for almost 3 weeks. I previously wore a Sonic Balance Bliss BTE HA for 17 years, and I can say that I have never had such a well tuned and adjusted HA.
Unfortunately, those days are over, after a heavy sweat, the left side HA’s microphone broke, the HA can no longer be used… Although with tears in our eyes, we said goodbye to each other.

This is how I got to HA above (on both sides), which I am learning.
We are beyond the initial steps with the audiologist, I have already made several rounds for fine-tuning, but I feel that the perfectly polished “diamond” is still a long way off.

I wake up with HA and go to bed with it, so I’m really addicted to it, forced to wear it if I like it or not. I wear it for 14-16 hours every day, so the training time is also very fast.

I can listen to music, watch movies and have online conversations without HA without any problems, but I have to wear it for everyday activities, otherwise a bicycle would easily hit me.
As a basic program, I use the “Music” program, for me this is the setting with which all sounds sound complete, there are no filters and other artificial “silliness” that is lost from natural hearing. I feel this is the closest to natural.

However, there is one thing that I cannot place.
According to the audiologist, even though the SoundRelax option is completely removed, I still feel that certain strong/sudden sounds would be suppressed by the HA.

What am I thinking?
For example:

• the wind slams the door/window,
• clinking of plates/glasses/trays
• joyful exclamations/screams of children
• applause
• the sound of cutlery during lunch when dipping from the plate/pot
• it will be funny: flushing the toilet

These are all sounds that we experience and hear during everyday use, and (for me at least) it gives a kind of clue, a sense of security that yes, they should be like this.

I have also experienced that after a while talking with a colleague, the HA starts to drown out his voice as well as mine, even though we are sitting in a quiet office and there is no ambient noise, at most the clicking of keyboards.

However - even though it’s completely disabled in the setting - I feel like there’s still some distortion/overshoot that I’d like to get rid of.

There are situations in which I know how loud the sound is (e.g. I put the glass on the glass table), it actually sounds like a single tap, but on the HA I hear it as if I hit the glass on the table with force.

Sorry if I made it long, I think it is important to illustrate my question along this background.

I wonder if anyone else has experienced this? Is there a specific solution for this?

Thanks everyone for the replies.
Lately I’ve been digging deeper into the forum and reading a lot of posts. However, there are questions I don’t really know the answers to.

As Zebras wrote, I started doing more thorough research starting with the compression error.
Based on the values ​​set by the audiologist, the CR correction values ​​mainly showed >3 values ​​above 2kHz, and the line of the curve is quite absurd.

Last week I bought the same device (M70-SP) which I found on the used market. It belonged to an old uncle, may God rest him in peace… His son sold it, saying that they would not take it back, it would be quite a luxury to bury it…

I did an Audiogram Direct with this device and got a completely different acoustic and sound experience from the HA I bought used than the audiologist set up on the original M70.

This brought me very, very close to the sound of the HA what I used before, however, the problem mentioned above is still present. Not so annoyingly (maybe I’m adjusting to HA myself in the meantime), but it’s still noticeable and sometimes annoying.

I am answering the question of the forum member: I am currently on APD setup, NL1 and NL2 sound very foreign to me.
I tried the APD-Contrast also, but not so differenct than the normal APD.

Based on the previous device, I had no further hearing “problems”, with it all sounds came through one at a time, there was no muting and so on.

My trust in my audiologist is quite shaken and I feel that he is not really listening/dealing with my problem. I can deeply agree that it is very rare to find an audiologist who not only understands, but also treats complaints properly. Well, I haven’t found the right specialist yet.

My question, which I am looking for, is the significance of the value of the CR correction at certain frequencies? In other words, the higher the number (eg: >3), the more significant the distortion?
Or is it best if the values ​​are as low as possible?

I really believe that this HA can be fine-tuned to perfection, it just requires the right knowledge and settings.