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Car interferance with oticon aids

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Surprisingly, I can’t see this particular topic already posted . On holiday we rented a Citroen C3 which was quite new and had all the bells and whistles that come with modern cars. As soon as we got into the car and switched on I could hear a terrible crackling noise and it was several minutes before I realised that none of my passengers could hear it. It was in my hearing aids (Oticon Engage). I was frantically trying to turn everything off including the audio system and my passengers wondered why I was doing this! After several minutes it stopped and I never found out the cause. Has anyone any ideas in case it happens again?

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Do you have a TCoil on your aids? I know a couple of times I have left mine with TCoil on by mistake and I would get bad inteference from the engine. Funny enough it does not happen in the Honda, only in the Renault. So maybe it’s a French car thing. :grinning:

Personally I don’t want my aids connected to my vehicle and when i am driving I set my phone to do not disturb. When we are driving we don’t need any distractions.

I have Oticons with t-coils and I notice a constant crackling when driving in the car. It seems to go away when I turn off the car heating/cooling system so I thought it was interference from the fan motor being picked up by the t-coils. Of course, I do not even have the t-coils activated so I assumed it was a fault with my ’s.

It is electrical interference that your vehicle makes. The t-coils pick that up, all you can do is disappear the t-coils. One of my first sets of hearing aids I had would alert of an upcoming radar speed trap. That was about 20 years ago.

I never (other than by accident) have the T coils activated in my aids and I don’t use the phone app nor was my phone paired with the car. It may be a thing with French cars as is said. I assumed at the time that it was the Bluetooth interacting in some way. Odd that the problem went away and I’ve not experienced it since on any car in the UK.

I’ve had a high frequency whine from certain kinds of motion detection lighting systems in commercial hallways, with previous Phonak . It would grow louder than softer as I walked past the units.

Some cars are bad for interference in general on their own AM band radios. I know that some low end Jeep models have ground straps between hoods and the chassis and firewalls to try and suppress it.

Some of the motors, belts or anything rotating in the car might cause the interference. It also depends on how the are set up. HA can be very sensitive to certain type of sound (frequency). When the motor runs smoothly, the interference becomes quieter or less.

I looked around. Nobody flinched. No one else seemed to notice. I tried not to panic—maybe it was just a one-off. But no, there it was again. A persistent, scratchy noise that sounded like a bag of crisps being opened next to a microphone. I turned the volume down. I turned it off. I checked the windows. Still the crackling.

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