Phonak autosense behaviour

Mine work fine in noise, they’re even set up to kick in loud noise program earlier. That was my only complaint, that environment was to noisy for me but not for them, now we’re fine.

Filtering out competing sounds is tricky, but that’s not job of autosense but program in it. Autosense is only a program switcher.

I expect aids dying from sweat corrosion, water damage, pet nibbles on them and similar. Not chips inside of old age or usage.

Don’t chew your aids and you’re fine

Another guitar player here with Phonak Marvel’s. I play primarily nylon string guitar. Genre varies from classical to pop to jazz.

There is too much distortion / harshness in the sound in Autosense for my taste’s while playing guitar.

My audi set up a guitar playing program for me. It took my bringing my guitar into the office to get it right for me. No issues after nearly 2 years of wearing hearing aids.

Dave

lol… I do not have the intention to bring my entire set with me to the shop,but thnx for the suggestion.
So what I basically read through the messages is that autosense is nice for retired people,sitting behind the flowers, but less convenient for people with changing needs during the day/week. Right?

One of the mail reasons I really look to those phonaks is that they have native bluetooth buildin. No more neckwires and other stuff like that. After 40 years I am so sick and tired to always having to carry around my accesoires… Done with it. So an important demand is bluetooth and capable of direct ly connecting to my phone. Unfortunately this limits the choices drastically. I read several times people advise oticons, but those need an audioclip to receive bluetooth. Idem dito for the Resound Linx quattro.

@Eric said:

retired people,sitting behind the flowers, but less convenient for people with changing needs during the day/week. Right?

Wrong.

I’m not retired. And autosense switches properly whenever I’m outside or change environment, and for commute it distinguishes between noise, loud noise and car pretty well. Of course it doesn’t know that I’m on bus and not in car, so since I mainly use buses, I’ll adjust that one for commuting, and if needed, have manual one for riding in a car, if I need some different behaviour. So far, car to cover my bus rides works nice. I have a bunch of noise cancelling there.

However, autosense is program switcher, what matters is how each program is programmed.
There’s also music program available there, but characteristics of autosense is that it can do fast switching if it detects environment change.

So to be sure it will stay in one mode when you perform, easiest is to have separate music program which you manually turn on.

That is, if aids can help at all.

Hearing aids aren’t meant for musicians/performances, but for speech comprehension, so depending on your loss, it might be that none will be good enough, unfortunately.

For listening, same, it depends on your hearing loss. Even option with heaphones over aids does not work for everyone, bc of loss itself.

Hmmm… is it that bad? The direct phone connection would be one of the primairy things for me to pick this one?

But… if only 1 program, and disconnected phone and dislike autosense… does that not pretty much rule out all valid reasons to choose such an expensive aid?

@PRR said:

I still dislike the way the world drops-out when my phone needs to nag me, to the point that I un-paired phone and aid.

I have gotten used to it. But I also have pretty much told my phone to ‘shut up and quit nagging’ . I only get alerts for text messages and phone calls. Amazing how much better (even without connection to the aids) without all the intrusive alerts.

@Eric said:

Hmmm… is it that bad? The direct phone connection would be one of the primairy things for me to pick this one?

I don’t really find it bothersome myself. It was a bit odd at first but I got used to it pretty quickly.

When I am listening to music I have a special program and I set the phone to do not disturb so I won’t get interruptions.

Jim

BT classic connection to the phone actually has 2 BT profiles, media and calls. It is possible to keep call profile connected while disconnecting from media (all notifications are sent as a media stream).

For android, I’m using app ‘bluetooth audio widget’ where dev enabled this feature per my request, so I can do it in 2-3 clicks, instead of digging through the menues and (not) clicking the right device

So you can either have default behaviour - disconnect/connect specific BT device completely, that’s 2 clicks away (one for home button, one for click on the widget, assuming you have the widget on main home screen)
Or widget has subclick where it allows you to pick which profile to disconnect / connect to.

I’m digging through the tasker (automation app) to see if it can switch BT profiles, so that way I could even automate it.

@JBC said:

Amazing how much better (even without connection to the aids) without all the intrusive alerts

I practice ‘kill the notifications’ for almost all apps, and ‘kill the sound and pop up’ for those few that survived the first filter.

Now it’s several years that I’ve gone into ‘kill almost all’ mode and it’s been great. Nothing is that urgent to have the right to interrupt me all the time. If it can be send as a text, it’s not urgent, so I’ll reply when I see it and have time.

And even for calls, if really is that urgent, I’m probably not the right person to call anyway, calling the 911/112 should be more useful probably.

Phone and various messenger only calls are the only ones who have sound, and not 24/7 either.

Tasker + sound/DND profiles for the win

lol… I can really concur on that last part. I too am trying to be less reachable the last few years. I rarely take phonecalls. If people do not speak a message it probably wasn’t important anyway. At night between 22:30 and 08:00 my phone answers every call with a denial and a nice sms thatIdo like my sleeping time and am availble the following morning (which, of course, means they can then speak a message and I call them back )

Idem dito for messaging. I don’t do whatsapp. I do use telegram, but, no notifs. Also sms: no notifs.

I always tell people: the quickest and most decent way to reach me: e-mail

OK, about tasker… ever had a look at Macrodroid? I use that one and it can do really a lot. I love it.

Thnx for your input. My first reaction was: I don’t care for the changing (of course I do :-p ) but I am a bit afraid the programs are so harsh I feel limited. But your comment seems to counter that. You don’t ever have the feeling the sound is lowered or redirected or something like that too much?

Never.
Well…to be totally honest I do remember a few times early on sensing a very slight almost not noticeable shift…such as riding in a car and something ambient would change significantly…then a few seconds later I’d notice a small shift… but it was so small I’d have to me squinting and crossing my fingers to notice it…like really paying attention.
I’m not sure, but I think that also might have been before the audi got them dialed in completely.

Also, I used to fiddle with the app on the phone when I’d get into different sound situations, just playing and learning…but I could NEVER make it better

Now, I seriously do not notice it changing ever. Never touch them or think about them morning to night no matter where I go, listening to music, or whatever.
When I go for a run and I’m streaming music I’ll sometimes use the aids volume to adjust the music level but after the run I’ll put them back to zero and NEVER touch them otherwise.

@Eric said:

but I am a bit afraid the programs are so harsh I feel limited.

Ok, maybe another wording of my words will make more sense:

I am aware when program changes because I can understand better after it changes.

That might be louder, quieter, focused or whatever it is set up for specific program, point it that it works as intended and it is supposed that you feel it results.

What some people complain is that they hear the click from switching the programs itself, whatever caused that (maybe environmental sounds which got processed differently on that split second? Don’t know, didn’t ever hear that).

And what it definitely a possibility - that it recognise some environment as x while it isn’t.
For example, it recognised my bus commute as a car. Of course, that’s logical. However if you use both regularly and you have different needs for set up those two, then you’ll have to have one as manual, in order to ensure having it.
Like, if in public bus transport you want max noise cancelling and catching sound only focused in front of you whilst in own car you don’t want that much cancelling and you want sounds all around you.

Then beside the one that’s programmed in autosense program, and will start automatically when aids detect you’re in a such vehicle, you just need another, custom one for another vehicle situation.

And that’s only IF you really need different setup.

So far, that’s the only situation where I encountered guesswork that aids do to detect environment isn’t precise enough (and completely understandable so), in other situations it works great.

Ah, another one. When I flush the toilet or wash the dishes, it concludes I’m in very noisy situation and kicks that program in, even though I wouldn’t be bothered with that noise. Problem is if you have someone talking to you over washing dishes, and your default noise program is set up with for example forward focus, like mine is.

Solution: pause with washing dishes and teach people not to talk to you while you do it, just to call you to stop the water

However for that very reason I have set up ‘fast transition’ so it literally start the program when i start the water and stop the program when I stop the water.
I have very loud noise program set up to start for much less noise than by default, that’s probably a reason for water triggering it that much.

Previously aids were on default, water would kick noise but not loud noise program, and ordinary noise program has slower transitions, which annoyed me.

And in other noises, like traffic, aids would wait for quite a long time to start loud noise program. Since my hearing is that bad, I needed it to be more strict what is noise.

Other people which have default settings might not even notice this water situation.

I used llama for bunch of years, since 2011, even after it wasn’t maintained anymore. Then switched to tasker. At the time of switch, it was the only decent competition (to me). Llama was best for location based profiles, since it used network cells and not gps/other means.
Now I’m digging more into tasker to replace some of apps with it.

I hate getting new phone bc of endless setup of the apps, so it would be wise to reduce the amount of them, especially those that just do something in the background like wallpaper changer, showing the day and date in status bar…

Last addition is that it connects to my aids when I open youtube

Now I’m digging how to connect only to a2dp or hsp profile only.

As far as I can see Macrodroid can use cell towers as well as gps/geofences It’s free, give it try. I liked it enough to buy the license. And as for the new phone, it’s easy to export macro’s and import them as well. In fact there is a forum where macro’s are being shared

As for the HA programs. It’s been awhile since the last time I used programs on my HA, but the last time I tried such a program, what I notice was this: as soon as certain sounds were detected that the HA decided were worthwhile to be herad better, it reacted by nearly eliminating all other sounds around it. So all of a sudden you noticed the entire soundpalet you are in is decreaed in volume voor at east 50 % except the 1 sound (voice?) the HA wants you to hear. It was a very frustrating way of hearing because this happened quite often. so all the time I heard volumes in my ear decrease/increase, decrease, increase.

I know and understand our ears do the same. When you are not focused on a certain sound your brain reacts by making it less prominent. But it still is there as part of the palet. What I hope programs will do is not decrease the rest very audibly, but decrease just a little bit and then make the voice stand out a bit more.

Sorry, misse this one.
I used to like widex most in their non-digital times. But when I really had to go digital, the were miles behind on the competition.

At this moment they have no decent android connectivity, They will embrace asha in 2021 I learned, so maybe I should wait

One factor poster’s might be missing is the degree of someone’s hearing loss as it relates to Autosense. Maybe someone with a minor to slight mid-range hearing loss might pick up Autosense adjustments where someone with a mid level to profound hearing loss would not even notice the switching back and forth. Yes I know the Marvel and Paradise are made for a wide degree of hearing loss, but just saying not everyone hears the same. Thus you might have wearers of the Marvel/Paradise who can detect/ faintly detect Autosense working, while others say its totally transparent - as in functioning but not noticeable. Lastly maybe someone could have a new Marvel/Paradise that is just slightly off or shall I say slightly malfunctioning - which might cause the user to detect Autosense adjustments.