Adding to my initial post after some more time with the Intent. Bass sounds while streaming are much better with the new Intent with open bass domes versus the Opn with open domes. Should I have had the open bass domes all along? I don’t remember if they were available when I frist got the Opns 5 years ago.
I wear the bass dome with single vent on my OPN 1 since day 1. They were already readily available when the OPN 1 first came out. Given that you have no hearing loss at low frequencies, it’s understandable why your fitted open domes for you before. But HCP should have mentioned the bass dome with vent option for you, which would enhance your streaming experience in the low ends by not leaking everything out. These bass domes even with just 1 vent instead of 2 vents still don’t give me any occlusion problem at all. Perhaps your HCP didn’t think about the streaming advantage of the bass domes and only focused on the correct fit for non-streaming application for you.
Yeah, I felt that the open domes worked well for my situation, letting in the low frequencies I still hear well.I think those natural low sounds still come right into my ears through the open bass domes, but a little less bass leaks out while streaming.
The improved speech comprehension the hearing aids give me is a critical necessity for living. Streaming music and podcasts is a bonus–not critical to me, but nice to have. But I’d say streaming phone calls is pretty critical to me as well–but in that case the bass sounds are not as important to me as they are when streaming music.
I just came back from the audiologist whom fitted me with the INTENT 1 (coming from OPN-S1 4.5 year). Had both with 100 receivers.
The least I can say is am disappointed. I asked him if he will copy my settings and he said better we start from the new (which I did 2 months back) and take it from there. Here are my first impression:
1- My left has a dome with 2 vents and my right has .
2-Sound in my left ear is like am in a barrel. We tested several domes with vents and ended up to have a mold for it with special vent to relief the occlusion.
3- My right ear, which is the worse of both, sound was too low that he mentioned we should go 105 receiver to cover my loss in the lower frequency and so will need the mold with no vent.
4-when I speak, the aid seems as in silent but suddenly wake up on my voice. Like there is a delay between when I speak and when I hear myself talking. Like 1/2 second.
5- as feedback manager is on. I can hear the sound wobbling when I whistle or when I receive text message . This was off in the OPN-S because the same issue (but sometimes was having some feedback).
6- I have only 2 programs , General and (&Mic) . I asked for this to test the T-coil as this is the first time I have it.
8- to note, he didn’t do because he said best we carry it with the molds.
I should returning back in 2 weeks to have the molds and redo the settings but I really feel frustrated having this started again. My first audi spent weeks and several visits with the OPN-S and now I have to start from scratch!!
A note: my audiogram is somehow changed but I don’t know how to update it on the profile.
basically my right ear has loss of 95db till 1000hz then goes up…
According to your , your right hearing seems to have slightly better audibility than your left ear. Why do you say/think that your right ear is the worse of both? At the end of your post, you said that your right ear has 95 loss until 1KHz then goes up. So I take it that your right ear has gotten much worse than your (old) audiogram is showing? That’s why you’re saying that your right ear is the worse of both?
If that’s the case, then I agree with him that you should start from scratch because your hearing loss has seem to change quite a bit. I know you invested a lot of time back then to get the OPN S tuned properly, but unless your hearing loss hasn’t changed for the worse quite drastically, it’s better to start from scratch. Your old audiogram shows that your right ear loss used to be around 55-60 dB before at below 1KHz, but now it’s 95 dB below 1 KHz, then that’s a significant change/loss for the worse. I can see why you need to go to 105 receiver with custom mold and no vent now.
You said that your left ear has a dome with 2 vents, did you mean before with the OPN S? But not you have a mold with a vent? You didn’t say if it’s gotten really worse like your right ear did or not. But I presume that it did as well, or else your audi wouldn’t have put you into custom molds now. It sounds like you’re in a barrel is understandable considering that you’re now in a mold which is more occluded. I don’t know what to say except to hope that you’ll get used to it. Even with the old audiogram, you should already be wearing custom molds by then already, instead of a double vented dome and a like before.
I don’t really know why there’s a delay between when you start speaking and when you hear your voice amplified by the aid. I can only guess that it might be your brain not getting used to wearing custom molds now vs vented and closed domes before. I don’t think that the aids would delay that long. It’s probably more likely to be some kind of physiological delay in brain perception that might improve over time. What did your audi say about this? They’re specifically trained for these things so maybe he has a more plausible explanation.
If you don’t have too much feedback issue because you’re now on custom molds for both ears, you can ask your audi to turn it off like how your OPN S has it off , to avoid the sound wobbling.
I agree that can wait until you get all your fitting issues resolved first. If the molds solve a lot of your issues, then REM can be done at the end. I can see how he thinks it’s not productive to spend the time of doing REM if your fitting issues have not been resolved yet.
I can understand your frustration in starting over again. I’m curious to ask, though. Are you currently happy with your OPN S “as is”, with the double vented dome on your left ear and closed dome in the right ear? Are you upgrading to the Intent just to have newer aids/technologies or is it also because you’re no longer happy with your OPN S? If the later (no longer happy with the S), then it may not be so much that the Intent is not performing as well as the S, but simply because now you need to change things all around to accommodate your worsened hearing loss?
Thanks @Volusiano for your reply.
Yes my right ear got worse and now it’s around 95db till 1k then goes up to 40-50db.
I never used mold. It failed 3 times when I was first fitted with OPN-S1 so I ended up with rubber domes. I used Phonak domes as it was better getting deeper in my canal than the Oticon ones.
My trial now with the Intent-1 is using also rubber domes. Yesterday the Audi did impressions for both ears and should have the mold next week during the follow up visit.
The high sound and barrel feelings is for my left ear. Yesterday, We tried several domes with vents but he ended that I need certain vent to prevent the barrel effect. The loss in this ear is almost similar to the left. The difference I still have some hearing in the low frequencies (like 60db till 1.5k) then goes up to 45db then slopes down again.
As for the right ear, it’s certainly needs closed mold because of the loss.
I focused today again to see if this delay comes only from my voice or others and it’s certainly not physiological. Even when other people talk, there is some how a delay 1/2 second that sound is low then it’s boosted up. I tried talking to different people men & women and I am sure about it.
The only reason I can think of is the feedback manager is now on “Normal” neither on low nor Off which I lnow is the reason of the warbling sounds “specially for words which have O or if I whistle” . I had the same issue with OPN-S1 till my previous Audi asked Oticon and they said switch the feedback manager off and yes it solves it( but left some feedback which I had to live with)
As for my OPN-S1 , lateley am feeling am loosing more words and understanding than when I was fitted with it 4.5 years. Also, The right side started failing frequently and I changed receivers 4 times in the past 1.5 year so it’s time. I also started feeling lot of compression in my ears (as if there vacuum and my family doctor mentioned this could be of the aids it self)
BTW: the on my profile is not updated. I tried to edit it several times and failed. I will remove and will upload photo for my audiogram.
On the other side, do you have any idea idea why the companion app is showing my left is at almost maximum while the IPhone is showing am at 65 of microphone level !!! This is driving me crazy too
Usually when the hearing loss is asymmetrical, it’s not uncommon for the worse side to have less amplification margin compared to the better side because there’s only so much room to amplify the sound and the worse ear is already amplifying more than the better ear in order to get to a “balanced” volume perception… That will end up causing the worse side to lose amplification sooner than the better side. My right hearing loss is worse than my left, so if I click on volume up, they will step up in unison until I get the maxed-out tone on my right aid, while my left aid can go up another click before it’s maxed out. It looks like for your case, your left one is the one that gets maxed out sooner. I don’t know why the iPhone interface is not showing this discrepancy. But I wouldn’t be surprised because the iPhone MFI interface is just a more vanilla interface, so it may not be able to pick up the small nuances such as the limitation in the volume scaling of the worse ear.
If you hear the whistling caused by the Intent feedback management just like you did with the OPN S, I guess you can try to turn it off, but at the expense of having to live with the feedback like you did. One thing you can do is ask your audi to activate the old Feedback Shield functionality by running the Feedback Analyzer in Genie 2. At least this way, you still have some feedback control available, albeit using the older feedback technology. It’s still better than nothing.
While am testing the INTENT-1 now with rubber domes, am facing minimal feedbacks . It could be because he set Feed back manager to NORMAL and he ran feedback check several times .
I noticed that tone as microwaves cycle-ends, or message received on my phone, or clapping (adding to warbling when whistling )somehow distorted. Am sure this is the feedback because I had the same when it was activated on my OPN-S1. Once I have the molds next week will ask him to set it on Low and see how this affects processing sounds.
The good point I noticed is that the 360 awareness is better than the OPN-S . Also, my wife sounds more clear. I think with the molds and some tweaking could reach a satisfactory level.
. Once I have the molds next week will ask him to set it on Low and see how this affects processing sounds
Yes, settring Feedback manager to low, or off will resolve the warble issue.
This was a notorious problem with the OPN S, and Oticon knew about it.
My audi informed Oticon, and the answer was, have the patient upgrade to the More, with the new FB manager!
Lucky me, the VA did upgrade me, and problem solved. Now with the Intent “Saul Goodman!”
What knowledgeable people on here. I have had help this past week from others as I have just moved from to Intent 1 and I am in my sixth month wearing them. My original thread was that he told me I may not pick up every word of spearhead, if someone speaks to me from the side, which I found odd.
One other query I didn’t ask to add to my list. I wear custom molds, I also have the TV Adapter, when I use that, if I don’t turn the sound off on the TV, it’s almost as if there is a slight echo. Does this mean that the molds are not correctly moulded and the sound is getting past the molds which I assume it is, or is there another reason.
I am seeing my Audiologist on Monday, so I want to hit him with everything, so to speak!
One other query I didn’t ask to add to my list. I wear custom molds, I also have the TV Adapter, when I use that, if I don’t turn the sound off on the TV, it’s almost as if there is a slight echo. Does this mean that the molds are not correctly moulded and the sound is getting past the molds which I assume it is, or is there another reason.
I am seeing my Audiologist on Monday, so I want to hit him with everything, so to speak!
Assuming that the molds block the speaker sound of the TV from coming in like they’re supposed to, don’t forget that if you don’t mute the mics on your aids, then that’s where the sound from the TV to get to your ears. So just mute the mics on your hearing aids while you’re streaming from the TV adapter and you shouldn’t hear anymore echo from the TV.
Did you actually try to mute the mics and actually don’t get the sound from the TV Adapter for real? Where did you try to mute the mics? For the Intent, I think the only place to mute the mics is in the Companion app on the phone. There should be a Mute button on the lower left side of the main volume menu. If you click on that button, you should hear a mute tone and you will no longer hear anything from the mics, but you still hear the streaming content from the TV Adapter. If you try to turn down the volume with the hard buttons on the Intent, it might do a combination of volume change on both the mics and the streaming content as well. You should try muting in the phone’s Companion app first.
@Volusiano I have the Companion App. I think what I was doing wrong was going to the TV Adapter and NOT going into the Surroundings setting and muting that. Thanks for the information!
I have the Companion App. I think what I was doing wrong was going to the TV Adapter and NOT going into the Surroundings setting and muting that. Thanks for the information!
@firenzel I have the Companion App. I think what I was doing wrong was going to the TV Adapter and NOT going into the Surroundings setting and muting that. Thanks for the information!
SoCal
