Hearing Speech in Background Noise

@ziploc said:

Or that the entire HA hardware is unchanged from the AX platform and the hardware is just being utilized differently via the IX platform? It would seem unusual for a manufacturer to introduce a new platform but not upgrade the hardware

It’s all software and it’s not unusual at all, that’s what they all do. Hardware is plateauing, there’s only so much you can do within current size constraints. I don’t remember the source now [I’ll try to find it later] but Signia didn’t even recertify their hardware for LEA for the IX RICs and Resound released their new platform [Nexia] just a year after the last one, probably only with radio module changed, if even.

@Torbill said:

I have the Philips 9040, having come from Phonak with the KS10. The first time I was in a restaurant there was loud speech in the background at a table directly behind us. I was annoyed that I could hear too much of the conversation behind me. Never had that with the KS10 because the KS10 shut down the stuff behind me. I can switch programs to make the Philips more like the the KS10. But I prefer to get used to hearing all the sounds, so I’m leaving them in the “General” program and re-learning how to focus on what I want to listen to.

I was in the exact same boat with you when I started wearing the Oticon aids from the Costco Resound aids. I thought there was something wrong with the Oticon and was really annoyed because I didn’t get the noise suppression I was used to with the Resound and it was really annoying to have to hear everything, including what I didn’t want to hear.

When I researched it more and understood that this was a different (open) paradigm, I changed my attitude from being negatively annoyed by the noise to embracing it and truly try to give it a go with the open paradigm. It was taxing at first, but by the end of the first month and toward the second month, I was getting more used to it and didn’t mind the noise much anymore. I also think that it depends on one’s hearing loss. Yours and mine are similar enough, and we still have relatively good hearing in the lows, which gives us a wide enough dynamic range there. But for folks with heavier hearing loss, I think it can be harder for them to focus and filter, especially heavier hearing losses tend to narrow down the dynamic range of the volume too much, so if it’s too narrow, everything sounds almost equally loud and you don’t get the finer nuances on the volume levels, which is only available in a wider dynamic range, to be able to focus and filter.

I remember watching an Audiology Online presentation by Don Schum (from Oticon) that actually said that if you have more speech cues available to you from multiple speech sources, it’ll help enable your brain hearing to differentiate and filter and focus better on which one you want to hear, because the differences in the characteristics of the voices give you a telltale sign of which one you want to follow and which one you want to ignore. I think what he was getting at is that hearing from multiple speech sources around you should not really be a big problem because they all have distinct characteristics in their voices to let you differentiate better.

Of course soft spoken voices (like my daughter’s) can get overcome by louder voices. Oticon has a feature exclusive to the VAC+ fitting rationale only, called Soft Speech Booster, to help with this. I find it to work OK, but nothing earth shattering. But better than nothing, I guess.

@Moore8 said:

https://youtu.be/SYl9MF7e9_Q?feature=shared

Thanks @Moore8 for this link. That is pretty cool. However, I just cringe at the subscription model. I’d rather just pay more for something but only pay once. At $20 or $50 a month, I begin to question the value of what I get for the service. I know that there’s a free version as well, but almost always, free versions are just too barebone to be usable.

I appreciate your post for another reason.

As a has-been photography pro I still buy excellent lenses to produce better images. So I switched and bought my eyeglass lenses from a better maker. Budget lenses had disappointed me. I use them all the time. I’m worth it!

My last lenses were bought with this in mind. However, they bothered me. After several years of use the fitter explained to me that she had put the temples of the eyeglasses on top of my hearing aids, and taken measurements to ensure that these new lenses would work better. They did not. Devil’s in the details.

I love the suggestion that HA’s should pair and be used properly with special eyeglasses.

The hearing aids don’t have to read our minds, but they could incorporate gyroscopes to use head positioning as a way of determining what to focus on.

FWIW, I now have the Oticon Real 1, and with my moderate hearing loss, they still don’t seem as good in helping me discern speech in background noise as the Whispers.

Volusiano, I’m in full agreement with your assessment. Hearing aids can only do so much via beam forming with their microphone arrays. They will always be somewhat limited in terms of bandwidth when compared to the natural human ear. And, if the “fitting” is not well-matched between both ears, it becomes even more challenging. My ears, for instance, are highly asymmetrical due to an acoustic neuroma (worse than my audiogram would indicate) and my directionality is not very good with my residual natural hearing and does not improve at all with the aids.

But the big improvement in high-frequency response with my aids was the key to speech intelligibility in general and even more so in crowds. As you stated, the brain is really the ultimate signal processor. Given FULL acoustic information from both ears, you have the best opportunity to “tune in” on conversations around you. This is how our hearing naturally works. We see the same effect in the processing of received radio signals: The more information you pass to the signal processor, the better its chances of recovering information in the face of noise and interference. Too much pre-filtering is a bad thing in many cases.

In the worst crowds, signal-to-noise ratio can be degraded so badly that speech simply cannot be recovered, not by normal hearing nor by the magic of hearing aids. You just gotta move closer…

I had similar experience with a trial of Widex Moment 440 after switching from Phonak Q when I was super annoyed by the suddenly increasing loud background noise that frequently drowns out the speech I wanted to hear. The difference is I have a hearing loss of 80 db and my low frequencies are not good. While I love its soft-speech boosting function very much, I had to quit it after two weeks of trial because I couldn’t handle the problem. After seeing you post, I was wondering if I should give it a longer time to get used to it. Maybe two weeks are too short.

@happymach said:

they could incorporate gyroscopes to use head positioning as a way of determining what to focus on.

As used in this prospective device. (unavailable)

@anon33641277

It’s the setup and the skill of the person who did it. Good setup and you get the best out of the hearing aids. Bad setup (2 years for me; he’s gone.) and my smart HA’s became earplugs. Couldn’t hear.

Me too, Dave. Frustrating.

@anon33641277

I’ve used HA’s for 20 years. a Widex and 3 sets of Phonaks.
First audiologist worked miracles. First set were magnificent.
Second had two partners; one was ok, other was not. They sold me my second set. I couldn’t hear at all behind me the way they worked. That’s dangerous in construction with noisy equipment moving fast.
Third audiologist got me my Phonak Audeo Paradise P90R’s. That was a miracle.
Except he didn’t know how to set them up. He encouraged me to use the App and adjust programs, then he would incorporate settings in my P90’s. After 2 years he set up my first old Phonaks as backup. I said they were wonderful and wished my new ones worked as well. He called me back in and suggested I should find someone that could help me more than he could. We parted friends. He had scrubbed my hearing aids of those programs we set up

I found someone knew. They used my P90’s. They used his audiogram. They did a quick fit using the Phonak software. I got home. I could hear. Finally. After a couple of hours, my wife said, “Night and day difference.” and, “What took you so long”. It had been two years.

I know it’s an AID. Same hearing aid. Two setups. Took less than an hour. I asked if the new fitter had found anything wrong. They said:

• wrong domes were specified. Set at OPEN, not CLOSED
• right hearing aid was not communicating with the left hearing aid.
  And–they provided two reports. USER Report, and PRO Report. That showed how my hearing aids were set up.
  I’d like to be more positive; however, I couldn’t hear for two years even though my audiologist did a number of hearing tests and setups.

There are wonderful audiologists here that have helped me with suggestions. I came here to learn more. I’ve read a bunch of books too.

It shouldn’t be so difficult. After all I had hearing aids before.

@Torbill said:

We had lunch with another couple, last week. (Their son-in-law is a PhD audi who works at Starkey, formerly at Phonak.). Both he and she have brand new Starkey HA. She took her hearing aids out as the distractions behind her were too great. He had his turned down most of the way. I have no idea what Starkey HA characteristics are, but perhaps they are more open than in the past…? These people are not the types to have a lot of patience for re-training their minds to filter out what they don’t want to focus on. I don’t think that they are atypical of seniors with age-related hearing loss. I don’t think that they care about hearing the birds; I think they want to hear the people across the table from them.

Fascinating report. I’m trying a number of different hearing aids right now & Starkey is on my short list.

“Brand new Starkey HA” must mean the Genesis, right? The Evolv drew raves about its ability to reduce background noise and the Genesis is supposed to be even better. Something I noticed on the tests done by www.hearadvisor.com3 with the Evolv is that it’s performance in background noise was pretty average on initial fit, but that it improved dramatically to be one of the best tested when “tuned”. I infer from that result that performance is very dependent on getting the fit right for the individual user. That may or may not tell us anything about the Genesis, but if I were your friends, I’d go back to my Audi and have a conversation.

Trialed the Audible version of the Evolve.
Hated them.
I think the aids are very good.
The Audi was clueless.
The factory audi was clueless.
I have a pixel 6a.
Asked about the white noise when I interacted with it. She told me she didn’t know, she had an ipone.
In noise I got a headache.
It’s supposed to adjust.
It never did.
I made her put my old restaurant program on them.
Like I said I’m convinced it wasn’t the aids.
That’s the problem with all this fancy tech.
The majority of audis have no clue how to set it up and adjust it so it will do what the manufacturer says it will do.

@Torbill said:

(Their son-in-law is a PhD audi who works at Starkey, formerly at Phonak.). Both he and she have brand new Starkey HA. She took her hearing aids out as the distractions behind her were too great. He had his turned down most of the way.

I’m inclined to consider this an in-law problem, not a Starkey problem. He and she seem to have really badly-fitted aids.