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Oticon OPN 1 streaming interruption/ disconnect with IPhone MFI

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The Bluetooth stream for Music, Podcasts, the TV box, The Audible app and the feed from the oticon clip mike is often interrupted or disconnected by loud ambient sounds, wind pressure, or even coughing. ​Sometimes the stream cuts one ear sometimes it cuts both. ​May self-restore one or both ears after 10 15 seconds, but sometimes does not restore at all. When this happens I have to reset functions from scratch. I’m using IPhone 8 controls. Has anyone else had this problem.?

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The cut out in streaming is usually due to a sudden loud sound near by, causing the OPN to go into a loudness protection mode and cut out the sound temporarily, before resuming operation and restoring the streaming connection, which can take several seconds. This has happened to me and most of the times, the connection gets re-established OK.

You can try to have your provider turn the Transient Noise Management setting in Genie 2 to OFF. Some folks on this forum have claimed that it helped resolve the issue for them. It doesn’t seem to help for me, but maybe it’s a combination of things and that’s why it works for them but not for me.

Another solution to this is to mute the OPN mics (a long press on either buttons will do, or via the iPhone MFI volume control). This way, you can hear the streaming audio better without the interfering external sounds, and with the mic muted, sudden loud sounds won’t temporarily freeze the OPN either.

Restoring mic functionality is a quick click on either of the OPN buttons.

As Volusiano suggested, turning the Transient Noise Management setting for your OPN aids to off should get rid of the problem. I did that for my OPN 1 aids and the problem completely disappeared.

Volusiano and GeekMan thank you so much for your suggestions. I’ll made and appointment with my audiologist to make this adjustment and report back to you with the results. Just FYI Volusiano, I’ve tried your suggestion of muting the mic but the problem persists.

Edited
@placroix1 said:

Just FYI Volusiano, I’ve tried your suggestion of muting the mic but the problem persists.

That’s interesting. It makes me wonder then if it’s something else that’s causing the cut out. If the mics are muted then it cannot be loud transient noise that’s causing the cut out because it cannot be picked up by the processing anymore. Unless muting the mic only disconnects the output to the receiver instead of disconnecting the input from the mic.

Please report back after you’ve turned off the Transient Noise Management feature to see if that solves your problem or not. I’m curious because it seems to work for GeekMan but not for me. Thanks.

My aids also still cut out from loud noises even when the mics are muted. I have an android phone and Connectclip.

In reply to @Volusiano

Yes Volusiano, I will do that - My appointment is for Monday. Your conjecture about the muting is interesting.

I can see how muting at the receiver as opposed to the mic might make sense from a design point of view. If muting happened at the mic input, instead of the receiver output, it would kill the feed to the processor.

Since the whole point of the OPN approach is to maximize cues, a steady feed is needed to compare left and right inputs. If so, then killing the mic input would also kill the feed to the Velox chip, perhaps requiring a re-initialization to restart the stream. On the other hand, killing the output at the receiver end would allow processing to continue in the background, so an immediate restoration of the processor stream would follow, once the receiver was unmuted.

(This would also explain the reduced battery life that accompanies heavy streamer use)

On the other hand, since the bluetooth stream comes from source independent from the ambient field (like an app, remote mic, phone or TV box) - wouldn’t interruption of the output at the receiver also kill the bluetooth stream? If not, it would have to be independent from the processor also.

I’ll write again after seeing if turning off the transient noise management function does the trick.

Mikeji I also use the connect clip.

@placroix1 said:

On the other hand, since the bluetooth stream comes from source independent from the ambient field (like an app, remote mic, phone or TV box) - wouldn’t interruption of the output at the receiver also kill the bluetooth stream? If not, it would have to be independent from the processor also.

What you said about cutting off at the receiver end to allow the processing to continue unabated in case of instantaneous restoration by unmuting makes sense.

As to why cutting off at the receiver doesn’t affect the streaming audio, I surmise that the streaming audio takes a different processing path than the mic audio, and at the receiver end, the two outputs are combined/added together to the final receiver stage. So the streaming end is not cut off, only the mic output is cut off, so the sum of these two output equals the streaming output only at the final end on the receiver, which is what you hear. So that makes sense.

After all, audio streaming does not have to be processed like the mic input. They simply takes what the Bluetooth signal sends them and forward out to the receiver. The only processing that would be applied to the streaming audio that I can think of is the Speech Rescue technology. And may be the fine tuning stuff. But not the Open Sound Navigator processing as that only applies to the ambient sound from the mics.

Aids come with a little brush that is used to clean the mic area. It should be done fairly regularly. Canned air also works for some. If you’re having mic problems, it is the first thing to try before send in for repair.

In reply to @Volusiano

Well I got the transient noise reduction turned off yesterday during my appointment with my audiologist, but unfortunately, I’m still having the same problem with loud sounds and wind pressure interrupting the stream in all modes both muted and un-muted.

So I have sent the following email to Oticon. Unfortunately they say it may take a week to get a reply. I’d like to speak with a rep directly, but have not been able to find a phone number. Does anyone know of one?

Good afternoon,

I am wearing OPN1 aids on a trial basis and have experienced repeated interruptions in bluetooth streaming when using the TV Box, the connect-clip mic or iPhone apps like music and audiobooks.

This occurs in response to transient sounds like dishes or pots and pans clinking together, or to changes in pressure like the presence of wind on the microphone, or if I should cough. This happens even when listening to streaming with the mics is muted.

Sometimes the signal restores itself after 5 or 10 seconds, but not always - sometimes one ear only is restored - sometimes neither.

My audiologist attempted to correct this by setting the transient noise management to off - with no success.

I read in a forum that this might be a known problem involving Oticon software or firmware updates.

Can you offer a solution to this vexing problem?

I think the response you get from Oticon will be general in nature, for two reasons. One, you are not their customer, your pro is. Secondly, they can’t do anything that would be considered dispensing or fitting unless that person is licensed in your state. So they will try to keep your pro between you and them.

In reply to @placroix1

OK, at least it’s consistent with my experience, that turning off Transient Noise Management does not help stop loud sounds from cutting out the OPN for a few seconds before resuming service, either while streaming or not streaming.

I wonder if you’ve experienced this cut out issue while not streaming as well?

I don’t think I have Volusiano. I can’t recall an instance where it occurred while listening to the ambient alone.

I don’t mind the interruption so much as I do the fact that the stream does not always reconnect spontaneously. Sometimes one ear or both ears remain disconnected and I have to reestablish the stream manually through MFI or the app that has been knocked offline.

By the way, my understanding of the Transient Noise Management feature is that it is not meant to cut out loud sounds. I think it’s supposed to detect loud sounds and temper them down (make them not as loud as they’re supposed to). For example, when a racket hits a tennis ball, instead of a loud/sweet pop sound, it’d be more of a muffled pop sound and not as loud.

So it’s supposed to know how to deal with loud sounds via its Transient Noise Management technology and not cut out like that. In my opinion, the reason it cuts out is that it doesn’t know how to handle that sound like it’s supposed to so it cuts out. It’s not feature but more like a bug in my opinion.

To support this opinion, I’ve been in a live concert wearing the OPNs and the music is pretty loud but it never cuts out on me. But I have plenty of loud sounds at home when it cuts out on me. Especially when there’s a loud screaming kid.

While I’ve had cut out happenings both during streaming and non-streaming situations, my OPNs almost always re-establish connection after a few seconds. Sometimes it may reboot itself, but then after a reboot, it will follow the state of the other unaffected OPN and gets itself into that same state.

I’d agree that it’s very annoying to lose the streaming connection and be forced to manually reconnect due to a loud sound. I don’t know why that happens to your OPNs but not mine. I suspect that maybe there’s interference in the 2.4 GHz frequency band in your case that makes your streaming connection weak in the first place, and an interruption breaking the connection messes it up beyond the point of self recovery, forcing you to manually reconnect.

Of course all these are just guesses, trying to explain why we’re seeing different things.

Well I got what I think is a fair and informative reply to my question from the folks at Oticon.

Although it doesn’t fix the problem, at least I now know a few things now that were uncertain previously: 1. The problem is known to affect the OPN1; 2. it is being addressed by a research team; 3. A notification will be sent to providers when a solution is ready; and 4. It may involve the apps in use.

I conclude from this that there is little to be gained right now from attempting to fix the problem by changing settings in the hearing aid circuitry or speculating about app configurations. I approach I will follow in the interim between now and the time a solution is available will be to modify my behavior to prevent the problem happening as much as I can.

The message follows (in part):

We can confirm we’ve received reports of similar issues from hearing care providers and their patients. At this time, the teams at Oticon’s headquarters are in the process of trying to identify factors that may trigger the drop in volume/connection. Since the teams are in research mode, there’s no time frame for when a fix will be developed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We notify providers of product updates so they can follow up with their patients. Your audiologist would keep you updated should the resolution be on the Opn/instrument end. Updates to apps, though, are usually done by the patient.

I also have had a lot of issues with connectivity and connect clip to iPhone. What would happen is the phone Bluetooth direct to the aid, phone speakers, and the phone to clip would cycle periodically and basically be fighting each other. It would always happen on phone calls ehcoh was annoying because I’d have to hold the phone to my ear as well as experience the half second silence. My audiologist reportednit to oticon but in my opinion it’s because they do t give you enough control over routing either in the iPhone accessibility or in the oticon app. I would like to be able to set how everything behaves in each circumstance.

I wonder if this could be part of your experience. Things are better without the connect clip…unless I needed to use it. Lol

Yes Lopsided I’ve had similar experiences to the ones you described. The various devices and apps coupled through the iPhone do seem to fight each other and that adds a level of complexity that requires action to overcome them, like the actions of going into the Made for iPhone accessibility options to between devices, or reset the presets.

There is convenience in having a direct bluetooth connection without a streamer, but it comes at the cost of messy cross-connections.

They say that a “mess” is a system of interacting problems, and that’s what we have here. I think the bottom line is that the functions for the Oticon OPN instruments are not quite ready for prime-time.

I suspect that gradually these wrinkles will be ironed out by the engineers, but in the meantime users are left to develop strategies to minimize the problems that pop-up and adopt behaviors to prevent them from happening, like disconnecting Connect clip except when you need to use it for a specific purpose, or avoiding sudden noise or pressure changes so you don’t get disconnected.

The connectivity issues aren’t limited to Oticon. Resound, while a bit better, has issues as well. They don’t seem as bad as what has been described here, but I have had losses of connectivity between aids and app on phone, app on watch, phone clip drop on one side or the other. It happens at times. The one that is an issue is loss of stream while talking on phone. I have had it happen once and that was annoying. It could conceivably cause accidents or tickets if using it as a hands free device in a car.

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