NaidaUP

My friend has asked me (I don't know the answer) how a music program is set up in different to the automatic program.

She also wants to know is, when she listens to music via direct input and it uses the Fm program, can whatever goes into the music program, also go into the fm program?

I have no experience with listening to music as only listened to music a few time in my while life (25 years).

Deafness

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coolgirlspyer90

You can probably use a device called ICom. It allows you to connect to different devices to be able to hear through that easily. I only used it once when i was on the 30 day trial, but I liked it a lot.

I personally don't like the FM system, i always had bad experiences with it. It's either too soft or it's always staticky. I don't really know if the FM system can do music. I never had a friend or myself for that matter, use a FM system for music. I'm sure somebody here on AD can help you with this problem. I need to catch up on the technology today that are being made for CI and HAs. So i don't really know how much the FM systems can do for us today.

deafdrummer

Music program? What music program? On the Naida HA itself?

The Naida, if it's the same one I tried, is not appropriate for music because it has a lot of speech programming in place that interferes with ACCURATE reproduction of music, not to mention the frequency range is very limited compared to the analog HA I use.

PANNED.

Sarfarigirl2011

yeah and the Icom is a good use for your Naidas

__________________
18 yr old girl with a moderate loss in the right and moderate/profound on the left.
currently wearing purple Oticon Safari P 600s

NaidaUP

The whole point of a music program on digital aids is that everything is turned off like an analog aid.

I've heard of many people with music program's on the Naida itself, I just wanted to know, if it's only turning everything off or is there more to it.

NaidaUP

Isn't the ComPilot better coz of the battery?

deafdrummer

The thing to not overlook is the quality of the sound coming down the tube. The sound is heavily digitized, the higher frequencies are much quieter, and the bass frequencies is just motor-boating noise with no pitch differentiation. I returned them ASAP.

BleedingPurist

Digital or analog, a digital hearing aid still has the capacity to mimic an analog hearing aid just as NaidaUP indicated. If you were hearing motor-boating noise with no pitch differentiation you weren't listening through a setting that left it open. My last hearing aid was digital and was better than any analog hearing aid. I always made my audiologists leave my hearing aids open so that it would not mangle music. They would try the whole "speech-optimized" settings approach and I would not have it.

I don't think a music program does anything different other than leaving it open both in frequency range and gain/suppression.

ambrosia

Any idea if it's possible to fiddle with JUST the music program and leave it wide open, and putting on a manual setting, so when you're in the other programs you still have optimized speech.

NaidaUP

I think it can be done but not 100% sure. I've heard of it been done on other aids so don't know why it couldn't be done on the Naidas.

Sarfarigirl2011

yeah dude seriously, look around, some peeps carry one!

__________________
18 yr old girl with a moderate loss in the right and moderate/profound on the left.
currently wearing purple Oticon Safari P 600s

deafdrummer

You mean to tell me that this audiologist who "prescribed" them was incompetent? I tried to explain to her, and she told the VR counselor that I was a "difficult client." The thing you fail to understand is that the hearing aid cannot reach down that low on the frequency chart, and there are alarms at work that I could not hear with them, which I can hear with the old analogs. All you need to do is compare the output charts of the Naidas and the old analogs. No contest.

NaidaUP

My old Phonak Superfronts and my Phonak Naidas UP are set with the same amount of gain and output. Mine can reach down that low as you say. I am no response at 250 frequency and my Naidas work very well for me with coping.

BleedingPurist

Don't know what to tell you. I do see the frequency response for the lower range as <100 hz in the technical specs. I admit I am not quite sure what that means. It seems to indicate there is leeway going lower than 100 hz without specifying a hard cut-off point.

I can't imagine you can blame not being able to hear alarms at work on that though. Even if the alarm is lower than 100 hz, you should still be able to hear the overtones/harmonics of the alarm unless it uses a pure-tone alarm, which is not likely.

I used a Siemens Triano SP as my last hearing aid and did not notice any problems with bass frequencies.. and they were pretty much all I had left at that stage. Yes, I listened to a sh**load of music with it and was pretty happy with it all things considered, though I do believe it played a big role in blowing out what hearing I had left and can only blame myself for insisiting on the settings I got. I did have issues with older hearing aids in that department.. and they were analogs.

If you take a look at music as an input to a hearing aid you'll see the problem is more complex than a low frequency cut-off point.

BleedingPurist

Honestly, no idea.

deafdrummer

Let me explain more clearly. The frequency chart is an expression of how high or low in pitch a sound is. A woman's voice in general has a higher pitch than a man's voice does. A bird goes still higher. A bass guitar is a very low-pitched instrument, and then your piano can go down even further on the very left of the keyboard. I can hear THAT with the hearing aids, and hear it right. The Naidas would not allow me to do that. It sounded like electronic motor-boating at the same pitch, so if you played on the keyboard, "C A A# B G D," it would sounds something like "G G G G G G."

The alarms are in a COMPLETELY different frequency range and another reproduction issue altogether. The Naidas that I had could not output up that high on the frequency chart (I'm not talking volume, but PITCH). I couldn't hear the high sounds of the jacket security chains nor the security tag sensors at the registers, and barely hear the tag sensor at the door about eight feet away (the old analogs allow me to hear ALL of them, and hear the door sensor 50 feet away!).

In my experience, the Naidas are completely inappropriate for music use. I'm waiting on word from someone in the industry to see where we are at with a suitable device for profoundly deaf musicians as an end-run around the hearing aid industry, which does NOT cater to musicians with this kind of loss AT ALL any longer.

BleedingPurist

I'm not sure why you are attempting to explain pitch and frequency to me when I play guitar and drums with an understanding in music theory. Do you understand harmonics? That should have clued you in. Read the report and then perhaps you'll understand the problem is more complex than you are understanding it as. Your issues.. all the way up to the inability to hear the alarm at work the way you used to, sounds like front end processing issues and not frequency issues.

Good luck!

deafdrummer

This... Told me you didn't understand what it was I was trying to explain. I wanted to make sure I was clear. I know what harmony is. I'm classically-trained.

And you're telling me that the audiologist was incompetent? The horrors! I had ASKED for the analog program.

BleedingPurist

No, I understood you perfectly. I'm trying to pry you away from the idea that it's a frequency range limitation while you are still focused on it. I don't know if your audiologist was incompetent since I don't have all of the information. The Naida has a frequency range from 100 hz to 5000 hz. I doubt very much that any of the alarms at your job fall out of that range, much less that you were able to hear beyond that range with a profound loss using analog hearing aids. I believe you when you say the Naida is not allowing you to hear sounds that you should hear, I just disagree that it has anything to do with pitch despite your reasoning for it. There are other factors involved, though it's possible she programmed it with the low end suppressed. It sounds like your sound window is very shallow.

How did your audiologist explain it to you? What was her reason for not being able to give you back what you were able to hear before? Was she responsive to your complaints? It doesn't seem so.

NaidaUP

Totally agree with this.

deafdrummer

I'm not going into the argument. All I'm going to say is, I fired the B* when she reported me to my VR counselor as a "difficult client" and treated me like a child during the appointments. I was appalled. I dropped off the hearing aids, went back to the VR counselor and requested that he save the agency's money by requesting the money back from her. I revealed her to be a hearing aid mill, where she was just evaluating clients and slapping hearing aids on without regards to client's complaints and said, "Next!" Her photos in her office showed that she was a show-off and well-to-do. I do not trust her and never will again.

My current audiologist is a great guy and has a good grasp of sound engineering and understands my problems. Even my digitals, which are in the safe (Resound Sparx, I think), have a limited frequency range and motor-boating noise down at the bottom and, and EVERYTHING sound-processing-wise is turned off. These hearing aids are designed for heavily processed speech processing and there seems to be very few ways around it. That is why I have a contact working with someone to recreate the environment of standing in a room of nothing but speakers set up and adjusted to play into a sweet spot so loud that a deaf person like myself could hear everything within my limit, and have it sound RIGHT, but in a compact package. Just like you were at a rock concert. I have done this before and know that what comes out of the speakers match what the analogs give me, and I can really tell that the digitals do not sound ANYTHING like what you would hear across the air of the concert from the speaker stacks. He is trying to see if it's possible to introduce this capability in the style of in-ear monitor systems that are currently available for hearing musicians. As I mentioned in another thread, it was a big fail, because the 130 dB output was measured using the in-ear coupler, not the 2cc coupler that hearing aids are measured with. Huge difference in output.

The fact is, the day that I run out of analog hearing aids to buy on the used market is the day that my music world dies. Until the hearing aid makers start listening to profoundly deaf musicians or I get stem-cell therapy (unlikely to happen in my lifetime).

BleedingPurist

I know exactly the type of audiologist you are talking about... "You're the Deafie and I'm the licensed professional. You know nothing and have nothing to say that interests me.. now run along." I think you made the right call. I've done the same. They are usually young and only a few years into it. Though I have experienced a much older audiologist that VR was using who was just a hearing aid mill.

It sounds like your current audiologist is like my last one was. Older guy, years of experience, knows full well to listen to feedback from his clients and respond to it rather than force some bullsh** on them. Meet in the middle while applying their experience and knowledge. Those are the good ones.

I don't know your hearing history, but if you are severe/profound... I would encourage you to reconsider a CI. Obviously, there is no guarantee when it comes to music and I'm betting you are horrified at the thought. You aren't likely to be identifying pitch, but I bet you aren't doing that now. As a drummer, you'd have access to far more detail than you do now.. the first thing I noticed after being activated was how razor sharp rhythm became instead of being boomy through a hearing aid. In regards to pitch, I cannot complain as I know I have it far better than many do.

While music appreciation seems to be all over the map among implantees, most often they seem to report enjoying it more than they ever did through their hearing aids. That is definitely the case with me.

As you said, stem cell isn't likely in our lifetime. I was terrified at losing music when I was facing being implanted and I'm grateful everyday that all of the horror stories I'd heard just didn't happen to me. I regret holding on to my hearing aid as long as I did, but at the same time I did wait until the technology was available that at least put music within reach.

deafdrummer

I know you have your experience with CI, but I'm afraid that my experience will not be the same, and I do very well with my hearing aids. I do understand pitch, as I can tune instruments with each other, like tuning the bass guitar strings with the piano. I can tune the pitch of my voice to my didgeridoo (one or two octaves up, and raise up a fourth or a fifth above that to get a particular sound). I can also listen to the pages on the sales floor (I work retail as a sales person and have for 9 years for this company), tell you at least half the time what was said, and if the voice is not distinctive enough to tell who it is, whether it was a man's or a woman's voice, and sometimes can always nail down whose more distinctive voice is being used.

You see, I would not be a musician if I didn't understand the amount of detail that I do with hearing aids. I LOVE music because it sounds great. When I hear singers on talent shows and if it blows me away, like Paul Potts on Nessun Dorma, I get goose bumps and want to cry, and I've seen other people have the same reaction. I can not only tell the difference between pitches, but also the timbre quality between woodwind instruments and brass instruments, even though they might be playing the same note. There's no mistaking one for the other.

As for drums, I can tell when a percussion section is not very tight together, like one or two snare drummers out of time with each other. It is one reason why I like performances like this one - - I can hear the clicks from the snares and the tenor drums, and I hear drums out of sync in the background from another group. Listen how CLEARLY the tenors are playing. The snares are playing as fast as 64th notes, like playing sextuplets per beat and double-stroking each stroke.

Now, let's change gears and listen to this song that always has melted me... -
Notice the richness of the bass line as it supports the rhythm line above it, and then add the melody above it. A beautiful song.

Now, let's go way out there away from mainstream music, two examples.


The second one, Ngorunderi, is my favorite one at the moment.

This much detail is why I'm afraid to go for CI and lose it. Plus, I'm frightened off by the degree of uncertainty in the financial world (I used to do heavy underground financial research for years and am scared of losing access to surgeons under current circumstances - you'll see what I mean shortly).

BleedingPurist

Thanks for sharing the clips! I can hear why you like them.

All I can really say is if you ever do find yourself faced with having to do something due to losing more hearing, that you may be very surprised at what awaits you on the other side with a CI and kicking yourself for not doing it sooner. There is hope. You seem to be keeping your hearing brain going as much as possible with your aid, just as I did. That will benefit you in the long run. I understand it probably would take an additional drop in hearing that robs you of the enjoyment you have to get you to consider your options, just as it did with me.

Have you always been deaf or are you late-deafened?

deafdrummer

Always been deaf.

Sarfarigirl2011

same with deafdrummer

__________________
18 yr old girl with a moderate loss in the right and moderate/profound on the left.
currently wearing purple Oticon Safari P 600s