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Help diagnose Phonak Marvel M90-13T problem

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Not long ago I moved from open domes to custom molded slim tips

Never had a problem with open domes…that I noticed anyway

With the slim tips, I started getting an intermittent dropping out of the sound… they would still be on but sound levels would drop, and sometimes bounce up an down in sort of a crazy way

Now in hind sight I think that it had a lot to do with the noise blocking features trying to do their thing and I can just hear it better now with the molds…but even still it was crazy and not fully right

My Audi sent them to Phonak for “overhaul”
The new aids seem to be more stable than they were…not going completely nuts but still have an intermittent problem with the left aid.

Fairly frequently at first… then it calmed down to an occasional annoyance for a a few weeks. It was really bad on Thankgiving morning. Didn’t work most of that day. I could get it to work by pushing and jiggling the wire and sometimes it would work for a time but a lot of times that day it would only work while I was holding the wire in just the ‘right’ way… Seems like a short!

I put them away

Then the next day without doing anything it worked fine all day and has continued to work fine without issue until yesterday. Yesterday I could get it to momentarily work by jiggling but never any length of time. Seems like a short. So I put them away again

I replaced the receiver yesterday afternoon with a new one I bought from ebay. It worked perfectly after that all evening and this morning for several hours when it dropped out just like the other one.

I pushed the pin to disconnect and then reconnected it to the aid. Still no good. It’s the same symptom, like a short in the wire

And through all of this the aid is on and working because when I push the volume button on the left aid it beeps in the right and changes the volume even though the left is silent.

Hey, at least the left volume button is working now. It didn’t before the factory repair!

and to add to the mystery…

I fiddled with it, removed the receiver from the mold, and got it working again this morning, and all seemed ok for about an hour.
Then I quickly balled up a piece of paper to throw it in the trash, and the aids I could tell adjusted into some sort of noise block mode…
and right then with that paper noise the left aid dropped out…and didn’t come back on-line
(it’s just no sound out of it, the volume button still works and is linked to the right side)

This is very similar to the behavior that started all of this before we sent them off the last time! (and if my memory serves most of the issue then was happening with the left aid)

anyway, back to this morning…

I rebooted both aids (opening the battery door momentarily and restarting it and it’s still quiet…but the volume button is working so it IS on.

I then rebooted leaving them off for 3-4 minutes. Still quiet

Then I shut the left one down, pulled the receiver out of the mold, replaced it, and it came back up like it should!

Then a few minutes later some hammering noise from down the hall made it drop out again!

After several minutes I rebooted only the left one. stone quiet as usual. Not even the little boot-up song but I can confirm that it is on and connected to the right side with the volume button.

Several hours later I pulled the receiver out of the mold again, and then replaced it…and it has been working fine now all afternoon!

Seems almost to be related to pulling it out of the mold and replacing it!

Any ideas before I send them back to Phonak again?

3 people in this conversation6 min readJump to latest

Almost looks like the receiver connection at the aid is questionable. Look for lent in there. Make sure it’s clean.

Have you put the aids in a dryer? Moisture sure plays havoc on aids sometimes.

Can’t imagine the noise cancelling causing this.

Switching receivers can tell you if it’s a receiver. See if the issue follows the receiver.

Very strange. Maybe use the app to see what mode they’re in when the aids are acting up. If you could tie the problem to a mode then it might narrow things down.

I’ve thought of that before… I think yours is a great idea!

thinking that it might be some box checked or some obscure setting needs to be tuned down or whatever… under the settings for one particular mode or another…

but I have had low faith that I can tell which mode it’s in with certainty.

When a glitch happens, by the time I open the app on my phone…the app connects… and I get into the screen that tells me which program it’s in…I see now way to really know with certainty that this is the same mode it was in when the glitch happened
and often when I go into the app to check, I can hear the aids change programs while it’s connecting and once the app connects it’s momentarily in a Bluetooth streaming program then switches to something else…

It would be great for troubleshooting and probably for better program tweaking if there was a live always-on display that shows what the aids are doing right NOW

Might be worth investing in a Noahlink Wireless, or ask your audi to create a new first-fit fitting from scratch and stick with all the defaults. If the issue persists then you could rule out the cause being a quirk in the original fitting.

If it is a programming issue try turning the volume down when the aid acts up. Noise seems to trigger it. See if the problem stops.

A dirty connection could still be the problem. As gains (power) increase the connections become more critical. Like any electrical connection.

I like Dusty’s idea of resetting the aids and starting over. Sticking with fitting protocols. Worth a try.

In reply to @Dusty

@Dusty said:

Might be worth investing in a Noahlink Wireless, or ask your audi to create a new first-fit fitting from scratch and stick with all the defaults. If the issue persists then you could rule out the cause being a quirk in the original fitting.

I’m getting closer and closer to wanting that software.

Since the aids are so old and no longer under her “contract” she seems less than excited to dig in very much. I have the idea that the first-fit program as you call it is what I have…but I suppose it could be the default based on my latest , but with all the previous tweaks and settings still cluttering up the things. I’ve asked about this sort of things a few times lately but it’s never really been addressed so I don’t know what it is…
and that’s why I’m close to investing in a new computer so that I can run the software and do it myself

In reply to @Raudrive

@Raudrive said:

If it is a programming issue try turning the volume down when the aid acts up. Noise seems to trigger it. See if the problem stops.

A dirty connection could still be the problem. As gains (power) increase the connections become more critical. Like any electrical connection.

I have played with the volume… good idea though. The volume button on the left side still controls both aids, even when the left is silent. It doesn’t fix it.

And as far as the dirty connection idea. I’ve looked a few times and didn’t spot anything. Have disconnected and reconnected several times to…which often helps with janky connections. Maybe I’ll look this weekend with my loupe to really get in there to see…
but I hav a hard time beliveing it’s taht becasue thses thing only just recently came back from a factory “overhaul”… which according to my Audi is nothing but a complete swap out to new internals…

also it’s odd in my thinking because the thing that seems to “fix” it most often is pulling the receiver out of my molds and re-installing it. Unplugging the wire from the aid itself has never “fixed” it.

and to point even more aggressively at the molds…
this whole thing started whit the switch from open domes
…so that says to me that it’s either
a) whatever was changed in the program at that time
or
b) some funny thing regarding the fit of the receivers into the mold.

@bradw said:

whatever was changed in the program at that time

This is a button push in Target. Other changes may have happened???

Have you tried swapping the receivers? See if the issue follows the receiver. Could be a bad connection, wire, at the the receiver itself. Going from domes to molds would bend that wire differently.

I never did find anything that made sense to me
of course I don’t really know what’s in the program…

The audiologist sent off my left aid back to Phonak yesterday for a 2nd try. We’ll see in a few weeks I guess…

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