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Phonak WhistleBlock technology

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Hi all,

I recently purchased a pair of Phonak Naida Q90 UP from my audiologist a while ago. Right now in the phase of adjustments - done 2 so far and its almost okay for me already.
What came to my concern was Phonak’s WhistleBlock technology - from what i understand it works to suppress the feedback by cancelling out the specific frequency, much like noise cancelling headphones.

However, during usage I have notice significant artifacts caused by WhistleBlock especially when listening to music where high frequency sounds are commonly encountered.
I have identified three frequency that cause artifacts - 1046.5Hz, 1174.7Hz and 1318.5Hz. I used this website Tone Synthesizer by David Tulga11 to generate the frequency, hence that specific frequency. But if not wrong, it generally start from 980 Hz and ends at 1500~Hz. My theory is that this frequencies get misidentified by the Whistleblock as feedback sound and during the course of attempting to cancel it out, cause it to become another tune.
Because certain accoustic songs often use higher frequency(i.e Tears in Heaven by Choirboys), the song now sound as if they had a sore throat during recording! Another quirk is that if you play that frequency on that website, the artifacts comes on about 0.5 to 1sec after and ends only after the sound cease, approx also around 0.5 to 1 sec!

I told my audiologist regaridng this and unfortunatrly he told me that WhistleBlock in the full auto program cannot be tweaked at all, whether in the music program or anywhere else. Only possible was to disable or enable it entirely.
Of course, having paid a lot for this I wanted a better option - a workaround he figured was to set a manual music program where whistleblock was disabled. So now i have to switch manually whenever i listen to music - still okay but I want a better option for the long term.

Im asking any of Phonak users, esp those with the latest Whistleblock technology if u have any similar luck having ur audiologist to configure the whistleblock to a lower sensitivity to avoid these artifacts.

Cheers
Eldrid

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@Eldrid_Chapman said:

I told my audiologist regaridng this and unfortunatrly he told me that WhistleBlock in the full auto program cannot be tweaked at all, whether in the music program or anywhere else.

That’s not accurate. The strength of WhistleBlock can be increased or decreased in the automatic program (SoundFlow). But be aware that the setting is shared amongst all the programs that comprise the automatic program (calm situation, speech in noise, comfort in noise, music). So choosing a weak setting that works well for music may result in increased feedback for other listening situations. That’s why it best to use a manual program for music. WhistleBlock is on level 13 by default, with 20 being the strongest, and 0 is Off.

@rasmus_braun said:

That’s not accurate. The strength of WhistleBlock can be increased or decreased in the automatic program (SoundFlow). But be aware that the setting is shared amongst all the programs that comprise the automatic program (calm situation, speech in noise, comfort in noise, music). So choosing a weak setting that works well for music may result in increased feedback for other listening situations. That’s why it best to use a manual program for music. WhistleBlock is on level 13 by default, with 20 being the strongest, and 0 is Off.

Thank you for your clarifications. Do you have any experience with Whistleblock users regarding the “ideal” setting for the Whistleblock’s strength? Perhaps where the amount of artefacts is least while providing a decent amount of well, whistle blocking haha.

Cheers

[quote=Eldrid Chapman;109803]

“Im asking any of Phonak users, esp those with the latest Whistleblock technology if u have any similar luck having ur audiologist to configure the whistleblock to a lower sensitivity to avoid these artifacts.”

Your contribution here was extremely helpful to me in understanding why I was getting distortion listening to violins, etc., on my Phonak Naidas. As I have written elsewhere on this forum, my audiologist phoned a Phonak tech who made suggestions in adjusting the Naidas. Unfortunately, this was before your contribution appeared in this forum. I did request that both Whistleblock and Sound Recover in the music program be deleted. I cannot tell you if Whistleblock was touched since there was some discussion about it when the tech discussed the changes with the audiologist. But whatever changes were made did little to fixing the problem. Throughout my audiologist was patient and cooperative. But the tech got the last word since the Phonak people should know what to do. I returned the Phonaks since I was too close to the end of the return period. Maybe someone in the future will benefit from your findings.

I hope you noticed that 1318.5 Hz is almost exactly 3x the A440 that many orchestras tune to.

Please keep us informed about this problem.

      • Updated - -

I have worn Phonak Audeo Q 70 - T hearing aids for about a month. I’ve had this exact problem when listening to certain kinds of music. Flutes, violins and guitars seemed to cause the most artifacts. The strange thing about it was, it only happened in the left hearing aid and not the right at all. Moderate hearing loss is similar in both of my ears, so settings should be about the same. The audiologist made adjustments both in gain settings and whistle block threshold settings several times, but with no real improvement that I could tell.

This week he sent the left hearing aid back to the supplier for evaluation/repair, so I am temporarily only wearing the right one. And still, no whistle block artifacts from the right one. I’ll let you know how it finally turns out when I get the left one back.

One odd thing about using just the right hearing aid, is the program produces a static sound when I hold my iPhone close to my ear. It didn’t before with both hearing aids on. I can only assume this has something to do with the hearing aids being paired, and one is missing. We’ll see…

In my Phonak thread, “Phonak Audeo Q90’s interfere with singing”, I talked about how my Q90’s distorted my hearing of my own singing when i performed. At my last adjustment my audi set Whistleblock to the lowest possible setting in my music program and that solved that problem. However, as Rasmus_Braun predicted, the Q90’s are now much more prone to sustained feedback while in the music program. I am hoping to get a suggestion for an ideal WhistleBlock setting that would allow WhistleBlock to squelch feedback as it begins to appear, but still not produce the artifacts that make it difficult to hear the true note I am singing. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.

Having a user selectable music program with way less gain on it is about the best thing you can do.

I’ve been through a similar thing with a violin playing customer: we settled on a quiet music program with minimal gain for his violin side and a bit more on the other side so he could hear the conductor/others in his group.

My whistle is at 3 kHz, much higher than the artifacts mentioned. Unfortunately, this is exactly the frequency for the “singer’s formant,” and some speech formants. (Singers are trained to produce this frequency so they can be heard above the orchestra.) Unless the whistle block produces those artifacts, I would suspect Sound Recover, which is designed to do so.That is, it produces frequencies lower than those of the source so that you can hear them. Unfortunately, the artifacts Sound Recover produces are not submultiples of the source–not good for music.

Herb

Frequ: L/R
0250: 35/40
0500: 30/35
1000: 20/30
2000: 20/35
3000: 30/60
4000: 55/60
6000: 55/75

— Updated —

My whistle is at 3 kHz, much higher than the artifacts mentioned. Unfortunately, this is exactly the frequency for the “singer’s formant,” and some speech formants. (Singers are trained to produce this frequency so they can be heard above the orchestra.) Unless the whistle block produces those artifacts, I would suspect Sound Recover, which is designed to do so.That is, it produces frequencies lower than those of the source so that you can hear them. Unfortunately, the artifacts Sound Recover produces are not submultiples of the source–not good for music.

Herb

Frequ: L/R
0250: 35/40
0500: 30/35
1000: 20/30
2000: 20/35
3000: 30/60
4000: 55/60
6000: 55/75

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