Phonak’s Occlusion Compensation

Why do some people have black hair and others brown hair. Why do some get hearing loss and others don’t? We’re all different.

Signia have own voice settings, to be able to further adjust for the feeling of your own voice. I do not know whether or not this works great.

Occlusion is most likely the issue when the complaint is that own voice sounds boomy, hollow, or like talking in a barrel.

From: How Do I Adjust Hearing Aids for Own Voice Complaints?36

Since “boomy” sound are low frequency sounds it makes sense that decreasing the low frequency sound wound in some cases decrease the feeling of occlusion.

Hope this helps.

Some people have thick skulls.

Seriously though, it is normal for low frequency vibration from your speech to radiate through the cartilagenous portion of your ear canal. Normally it escapes through the open ear, but if the ear is occluded it can’t and so becomes a second source of sound. It only generally effects people with low frequency thresholds below about 30 (plus or minus, so a few people might notice occlusion if they have low thresholds around 40, whereas a few might not notice it even with low thresholds around 20). People on this forum seem to be much more concerned about it at much higher thresholds than I would normally expect. Occlusion is reduced as vents get larger, or as the length of the mold reaches the bony part of the ear canal. Also, if we’re talking about domes a “closed” fit may be more or less closed depending on the size and shape of the ear.

Literature will also differentiate between occlusion and “ampclusion”, the former of which is a physical effect that should be present whether the hearing aid is on or off and the latter of which is really an effect of hearing aid gain. Phonak’s occlusion compensation will only really effect the second.