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Does Phonak NoiseBlock not reduce speech background noise?

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I was at a larger gathering yesterday with over 100 people in one room.

For the first time, I didn’t find my Aids to very good at reducing background noise.

I’m thinking it’s because the background noise was just lots of people speaking rather then, what we would class as ‘background noise’.

I’m wondering if NoiseBlock doesn’t reduce lots of people speaking because the Aids think it’s speech that we need to hear?

For me, the 100-people-in-a-room-talking scenario has got to be the most difficult by far. I found that increasing NoiseBlock setting will reduce all voice intelligibility on top of reducing the background noise.

My approach for such environments is to increase mic directionality and look at the one I want to listen to, but if you are in a group where more than 1 person is talking, this is very hard work.

There’s only so much a hearing aid can do. Wedding reception for instance are a lost cause

I’m wondering if NoiseBlock doesn’t reduce lots of people speaking because the Aids think it’s speech that we need to hear?

No, it’s the other way around. The voices blend and the can’t determine what to suppress and what to lift unless you are pretty close to the individual you want to hear. This is particularly true if a great deal of the noise is coming from the front. The room acoustics is also a factor.

@mingus

Thanks for this. You’re definitely right as that’s how my Aids were behaving.

I found it more difficult to understand my table when the two closest chairs/people on the other table were talking but I was pretty close to them so I assume my Aids thought I would want to hear them.

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