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Strong feedback when using ReSound music program

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Edited

Resound Enzo Q hearing aid.
My family was here visiting for the weekend. Granddaughter is a violinist. She had a new bow, a gift from us, so she played for us. I enjoyed her playing but there seemed to be strange strong noise in the that I wasn’t accustomed to. For all of the pandemic I have not heard live music so this was new. I was using the music program on the HA. After she finished my son asked if I noticed the strong feedback I was getting? He could hear it. Well, there was this noise but I didn’t know what it was. He is a physicist so with an app on his computer he was able to get a graph of my hearing in the music program. The feedback shows a strong peak at 5464 Hz and a lesser one at 2707 Hz. The second peak is likely the octave below the first. The feedback does not occur on the Nucleus 7 processor in the music program and the feedback does not occur in the all-purpose program on the HA. Would my audiologist be able to clip that 5464 peak or does the HA have to be sent to the manufacturer?
I sent an email to my audiologist with this question but have not received a response. Perhaps she is on vacation. I wonder if anyone in this group has had this feedback problem?

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Seems lowering the gain a little in your music program at the 5464 Hz level should get it fixed.

Since you have an ENZO Q hearing aid, you probably have severe to profound loss and a very closed fit. So Raudrive’s advice on having your audi make a gain adjustment is probably best.

But when I have feedback from putting on ear muffs or having an ear too close to something, I find reducing the volume a bit on my ’s can often eliminate feedback (cutting backyard grass with muff protection against mower noise). If your granddaughter was playing the violin loudly right next to you, one option might just be to sit a bit further away. For myself, I noticed going from an to a closed fit greatly reduced feedback and allowed me higher gain without risking feedback in situations where it was easy to get feedback with an open fit - but you’re probably already in a very closed fit without any room to maneuver.

I have a mold that I have had for at least 4 years. When I got the Enzo Q I opted to keep the mold as it was comfortable and did not present any problems. The vent in the mold has always been plugged. I suppose that age might have changed the ear and I am experiencing leakage but I think that would affect more than just the music program. Would you agree? The violinist was across a large room from me. I still haven’t heard from the audiologist. She may be on vacation.

The ReSound Smart Fit fitting software has a feedback test that is run independently on each ear to evaluate the potential for feedback. It’s supposed to be run after any serious fitting change or with a new pair of ’s, etc. You might recognize when it’s going to be run as your audi might advise you that she’s going to play a test noise and then you’ll hear a loud test buzz played in each ear. The program is playing a frequency spectrum into each ear with your receivers and molds or domes in place and then effectively having the external mics listen for what sound of what frequency is leaking out of your ears to the mics. The fitting program effectively records this profile and should adjust the allowed gain to reduce it below the level that the test results indicate would allow feedback. The audi has the option, as Raudrive indicated, to go beyond what the program decides and reduce gain as advisable in individual frequency channels even further.

The descending gray areas show the potential for feedback for me with an (graph on left) and a very closed fit (graph on right) in the following post. Self Fitting Resound Quattro 9s - #2 by jim_lewis The top red area in each graph is the amplification region that’s beyond the capacity of my MP receiver. The amount of amplification involved changes according to the program in use so in your case, you might be interested in having your audi show you what the potential feedback areas are relative to the gain applied for soft, medium, and loud sounds when you’re in the Music program, which I think is where you said you experienced the problem.

You can see for me how wearing a closed fit, by reducing the potential for feedback, has given me a lot more amplification headroom to use an experience profile and a fitting algorithm that allows me a lot more amplification (the better to hear you with!) than possible with the new user reduced gain profile and fitting algorithm shown on the left when the open fit I have there allows the potential for lots of feedback if I have much more amplification than the restrained “intro” settings are allowing me.

Edited

An audiologist can also change the setting. Resound has a music feedback setting which is basically intended to stop the hearing aids from thinking that a pure tone from a musical instrument is feedback. So this setting doesn’t handle leakage feedback well. In the fitting software it’s possible to use a normal feedback setting (mild, moderate, strong) instead. The user may think the resultant music sound is terrible with this setting, but they may not. Everyone hears differently….

I have Enzo 3D, I also had a loud feedback. Being profoundly deaf in that ear and in the other I couldn’t hear this feedback. But my family could especially in enclosed areas eg car. I ended up having to turn off my aid in enclosed areas as it drove passengers mad. I went to my she could hear it as well. I don’t know what she did to fix it, but fix it she did with adjustments on the computer. So it’s easily gotten rid of.

This is the graph of the sound my son heard sitting next to me.

image

His comment: “the spectrum plotted in Audacity. The noticeable feedback is at 5480 Hz. I recorded this by just sitting next to you with my phone. We also generated a tone at this frequency, and it sounded the same.”

Should he have been able to hear these sounds unless my mold is leaky?

No he shouldn’t be able to hear that big spike. It’s not necessarily a bad thing for the mould to be leaky because a totally sealed ear canal can be very uncomfortable.

But if you can’t hear the feedback then the answer is simple: your audiologist should reduce the gain in that frequency range sufficiently to prevent it happening. You won’t notice any difference, but people near you may well do and thank you for it.

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