Oticon Speech in Noise Program - Is it just directional?

Thanks for your previous answers, they are all written down for the Audiologist for Monday.
I have ear moulds. I was told that these will not sit as close to what I call the eardrum like my CICs did. Is this correct.
Also when I use the TV Adapter, if I don’t turn the sound off on the TV I get a bit of echo. To me, that is getting past the moulds, have you found that.
Also you said you use the ConnectClip also, would this be a good investment. Thanks!

The receivers will not set as close ad the CIC. With my TV adapter i let my wife set the TV volume to suit her needs. Then I adjust the TV adapter volume and the environment volume to suit me. Normally that is by lowering the hearing aid s microphone volume to -2

@Volusiano said:

I guess the word Pediatric automatically kept us away from wanting to try it in the first place.

DSL pediatric was developed for children with hearing loss and the goal was to give them as much undistorted audibility as possible. It’s louder. It’s less compressed. Babies never say, “It’s loud and sharp and my keyboard is too clickity!” so they are pretty nice to fit.

Thanks for that. So you do not get a slight echo effect. What I get is, as if I am slightly hearing the TV as well as it streaming in my ears. Luckily, or unlucky, I can turn the sound off. I was wondering was the ear moulds letting the sound from the TV past them!

@e1405 said:

The DSL Pediatric is a keeper, I can’t see myself using the other ones anymore. Oh, and it’s always P1 for me!

So, have you abandoned all your custom programs, and just use a single custom DSL Ped. program, now, without the MSI, and FB manager active?

@Volusiano said:

I tried out MyMusic and I can understand why some folks don’t like it. They seem to boost the mid lows and the mids up by quite a bit to give you an overall impression of the music being more “alive”. I can see that it might work with popular and rock music where accurate music reproduction is not a priority, but it gives you a “kick” or “pick me up” kind of feeling with the extra warmth and punchiness.

The famous MyMusic “Boombox” effect!

@Volusiano said:

the added coloration ends up being way too much and can make the instrument lose its tonal accuracy.

Yes, my 1st impression of MM was almost a WOW, but it soon became apparent what they had done, and I almost cried when I went to Program Manager, and saw no more Legacy Music!
V, thanks for the insightful summary, and I’ll probably test drive DSL Ped. soon,because I like your description and @e1405 loves it, too!

@flashb1024 said:

I’ll probably test drive DSL Ped. soon,because I like your description and @e1405 loves it, too!

Funny, I notice that the MyMusic gain curve and the DSL Pediatric gain curve looks almost identical in the low to mid range, then the deviate from mid to high, at least on my own gain curves. The MyMusic amplification is much less on the mid to high compared to the DSL Pediatric in mid to high. You can see the 2 screenshots below for yourself to see how similar they are in the low to mid area. By contrast, look at the third screenshot for my VAC+ general program, to see how the gain curves are not rising as linearly as the other 2 programs, but has more of an exponential curviness to it going from low to mid range.

By the way, I use Speech Rescue for frequency lowering, so that’s why you see the red/blue vertical column on the left and the gray column on the right, which are my destination and source regions in Speech Rescue. I chose to turn off amplification in the high frequency band because from 4 KHz up to me, my hearing is really like a dead zone, so there’s no need to amplify in that area because it’s not helpful for me.

I still prefer the thinner sounding VAC+ for normal every day use. I treat the DSL Pediatric program more as my replacement for the built-in Speech in Noise program, where I put the max Neural Noise Suppression on it and Very High Sudden Sound Stabilizer on it (vs High in my General VAC+ program). I’m hoping that the low to mid fuller gain curve will emphasize the speech cues and help me understand speech better.

By the way, my fourth program is the Tcoil program, specifically to use with my headphones when I play my piano. I didn’t have a bonafide Tcoil program before in my OPN (it does have a semi Tcoil-like setting that is also very nice), so I notice all kinds of electromagnetic interference sounds around my house depending on where I am in the house. Usually it emanates near things that have a motor, like near my refrigerator and portable fans. I use a small fan on top of my piano, and now with the Tcoil in my Real, I have to move it out further away by a bit to eliminate its buzzing sound so I can use the Tcoil in silence with my headphones.

@stevepriceloco → can’t really tell that it messes up my music listening in anyway. But I’m not a professional musician by any means. Although I consider myself an amateur musician and I do play the piano and drums and I think I can hold a tune (sing). Tagging @e1405 who just mentioned that he uses Speech Rescue for his P1 (but not necessarily for his Music program) to see if he ever tries SR for music or not, and what he thinks.

I think the fact that Oticon uses frequency transposition and frequency composition, instead of frequency compression like Phonak does, helps make music sound more normal. However, a disclaimer that I’ve never had a chance to try the Sound Recover 2 frequency compression by Phonak, so I’m not proposing that the Phonak frequency compression make music sound worse than the frequency lowering technology used by Oticon based on personal opinion. That’s just a pure guess on my part, not an anecdotal observation.

As you can see below, Oticon creates the source region then cuts it up into 3 parts and transposes each part into a destination region, and stacks them equally on top of each other (composition). And you can select which destination region to match with where your remaining audibility exists. I had to pick the lowest destination region because I don’t have much audibility left in the higher destination regions. I also turn off the High Frequency band because my hearing loss from 4KHz up are pretty much goners, so there’s no point of keeping the High Frequency band option ON. I can’t really tell a difference with it ON anyway.

The last 2 screenshots are some verbages that describes how/why I think that the Oticon Speech Rescue helps not mess up the music too much. But I’m not qualified to interpret what they say there into layman’s terms. Just a hunch that what they say there helps make the lowered sounds more normal and less intrusive. And when you come to think of it, for music, the sounds in the high frequency range generally are just the timbres and maybe reverberation or adding to the tonal color of the musical sound, sounds in that range are not the core fundamental “body” of the sound per se. So as long as the “body” of the musical sound is preserved and not compressed and get out of whack, the transposition and composition of the timbre will just “add on” into your audible range on top of the “body” of the sound, but not necessarily change the sound of the body at all. So that’s probably why the music doesn’t sound as weird.

Maybe an analogy (not necessarily a good one perhaps, but I’ll throw it out anyway) is a round cake. You make a big round cake and it tastes different in the center, but as you go out, there’s more topping and cream and sprinkles and what-have-you. Except that once you’re done with it, you can only find a smaller plate to serve it on. One option is the squeeze the cake inward and hold it with tape outside to fit on the small plate (the frequency compression analogy here). That might still preserve the whole cake, but the cake might have a heavier texture now instead of being “spongy” and soft, and no longer taste like a cake anymore. Another option is to cut the outside part up into smaller sections and stack them on top of the center of the cake so you can fit everything onto the smaller plate (the transposition and composition analogy here). At least the cake is not squeezed in and the softness and spongy texture is preserved. It just has more layers on top to consume, but the texture still make it taste like a cake, and now at least you can still consume everything, including the outer part that is placed on top now, instead of having the outer part cut off and discarded altogether to fit on the smaller plate.

@Volusiano said:

Tagging @e1405 who just mentioned that he uses Speech Rescue for his P1 (but not necessarily for his Music program) to see if he ever tries SR for music or not, and what he thinks.

I tried Speech Rescue in my ‘Music’ program, which I use with my over-the-ear headphones, and I have mixed feelings about it. While it does help with understanding vocals and picking up some details, when I fine-tuned the program with my pure tones MP3 file, the frequencies above 5-6 kHz sounded odd. I no longer use it for music, but I have to admit that, in practice, it wouldn’t make much difference whether Speech Rescue was on or off.

@Volusiano said:

t the texture still make it taste like a cake, and now at least you can still consume everything, including the outer part that is placed on top now, instead of having the outer part cut off and discarded altogether to fit on the smaller plate.

You can have your cake and eat it too with Oticon Speech Rescue, brought to you by Duncan Hines!

Seriously, what you say is true, the frequencies above 4 k are mostly comprised of the elements which add richness and “Air” to the fundamental notes.
Even with my H F loss, I can tell the difference between a 128kbps mp3 and 320kbps.
I’ve never used frequency lowering (yet).
FYI: You may wish to click on the “dB” icon above the Target icon in the fine tuning screen, which allows you to display the gain curves when you check the boxes for soft, medium, and loud, which gives a better picture of the actual fitting values
@e1405 has done that on his screen caps, and it gives a better overall snapshot, as well as allows you to fine tune each of the 3.

@flashb1024 said:

FYI: You may wish to click on the “dB” icon above the Target icon in the fine tuning screen, which allows you to display the gain curves when you check the boxes for soft, medium, and loud, which gives a better picture of the actual fitting values.

Yeah, thanks for the tip. I knew about it but when I fine tuned mine to get rid of the feedbacks, I just picked the vertical column(s) and cut the gains together in all 3 levels. And not by a lot, just to smooth some of the humps out that were causing the feedback. Otherwise I pretty much leave the original gain curves alone and don’t change it by much.

@flashb1024 said:

Wow, you really squashed the Guitar string down on the fret board. It’s way below your target, but with your loss, I can understand how it may work for you.

My guitar program is essentially the same one I’ve been using for the past two years, but now it’s set to DSL Pediatric instead of DSL v5. The key difference is that the pediatric version of DSL has higher targets.

@Volusiano said:

Anyway, glad to hear that at least fundamentally you don’t think that the Oticon frequency lowering “royally” screws up music either.

I’m quite picky about my guitar program, but I’ve realized there’s no need to be overly purist with the music program as a hearing-impaired listener. I fine-tune the music program using pure tones to ensure it’s balanced and to avoid overly amplified frequencies, but ultimately, what matters most is whether it lets me enjoy music. With my acoustic and classical guitars, I’m a bit more meticulous, as most of their richness lies below 2 kHz, and I strive for an authentic representation of the instrument.

@Volusiano

I’m struggling to find out how the Oticon EduMic transmits and whether it needs line of sight or for the signal to bounce of walls, like the Phonak Roger does.

Would you know the answer?
Thank you.

I’m of hiking for the whole of January with a friend and want to have a better chance of hearing her but I’ll be out in the open, which is why I have the question.

Sorry I don’t own the EduMic so I can’t tell you. I do own the ConnectClip and I’d imagine that the Remote Mic function on the ConnectClip is probably performing similarly to the EducMic. But unfortunately I never use the Remote Mic functionality on the ConnectClip to be able to tell you much either. But perhaps other folks on here who have used the Remote Mic on it can chime in and share their experience with you.