I wear Bernafon Win112 Btes .. and I have feedback problems ! and I couldn't get proper earmolds since I had started to use them.. My earmolds are either small and so cause feedback or too big and causes big pains and hurt or bruise.. I don't understand it !!!! My right earmold is a bit small and causes feedback when I smile or laugh and I cannot properly use headphones when listening to music. How can I get a proper earmold ? Sometimes, feedback problems drives me
BTW, I want to ask STEVEAUD somethings..
I wanted the audi to set soft sound gain higher and high sound gain lower and he did .. I wanted this in order to understand speech better because standard gain level of the aid for soft sounds(low speech) isn't enough for me. but with this settings, sometimes I get too louder sounds.. What else should I do to understand low or quiet speech better ? Is there a better way ! How can the audiologist measure my MCL and UCL levels ? I don't have these measures on my audiogramme data ! Do they have effect of the performance of my hearing aids ?
How can I calculate the peak gain level of my hearing aid for my own loss ? My aid has a peak gain of 76 dbl and is this enough for my loss at 92 dbl and 88 db ?
There are a couple of ways to stop feedback in your case:
1. No vent (the aids are too powerful for a vent)
2. Your hearing aids have feedback cancellation. Your audiologist can hook you up to the computer and run the feedback loop to detect feedback. This can be done while you smile or chew if that's when it occurs the most.
3. Take an open mouth earmold impression. Using a bite block, your mouth is wide open while the impression material hardens. Because your ear canal changes shape when you move your jaw, this commonly nudges the canal portion or the mold out and breaks the seal of the earmold and your canal.
4. Consider a earmold with an acrylic body and a soft flex canal. The softer canal material often reacts to heat and softens a bit, creating a better seal.
5. Take a deeper impression, which lets them make the ear canal portion of the mold longer for deeper insertion. Caution, sometimes people experience pain from a deep seated earmold. That's because the bony portion of your ear canal is very sensitive. Most don't have problems, but I believe the patient/person should know what to expect in everything I do-What problems I foresee them having, and what I expect to be no problem.
In terms of hearing speech better, part of that can be the hearing aid, part of that can be you. I understand what you did and it makes sense to most, however, I would have warned about a couple things before doing that. If you increase gain for soft sounds and decrease gain for loud sounds, you increase the compression ratio. The compression ratio is the ratio in which the hearing aid compresses sound when it gets above a certain dB level. I never want to see compression ratio's above 3.0 (1:1 being no compression-linear). If speech is compressed too much you can actually smear it and make it worse. Often if you increase gain for soft, you have to increase gain for loud a touch as well. The phenomenon that occurs when you don't is....."I can hear the person sitting 15ft away from me better than I can hear the person 3ft away". Why? Because the person's voice 15ft away from you is recognized by the hearing aid as a soft sound (as you increase distance from the source the intensity decreases), hence the hearing aid amplifies it more. Inversely, the person's voice 3ft away from you is hitting the hearing aid at a much greater intensity, the hearing aid is realizing the intensity and not amplifying it as much because the gain for loud sounds in decreased.
The things I would try with you is to increase the gain for loud (not drastically), but enough to bring the compression ratio down. Increase the gain for the mid-frequencies (alot of consonants are mid pitch). If the hearing aids are too loud, I would turn down the the MPO (maximum power output). MPO is simply the ceiling, how high the hearing aids could go given an input. UCL's and MCL's are measured either using tones or speech. For UCL's I ask you to tell me when a tone becomes uncomfortably loud (I increase the intensity until you tell me). Once those are established, those set the point were I don't want the hearing aid to go above, they can be input into the computer. MCL's are the same, only I ask you at what point is the tone or my voice most comfortable for you. The difference between the MCL and UCL is called the dynamic range. This is the sweet spot of your hearing. Some have a very small dynamic range (some as small as 10dB
), making the person a little more difficult to fit. Some measure UCL and MCL's, some don't. It really gives the audiologist a guide as to where they want to go and where they don't want to go.
Peak gain is simply the maximum gain available given an input. I know it looks weird given your hearing loss (92 and 88dBHL). Your hearing aids have a peak gain of 76dB, however they have a maximum power output of 136dB. So your hearing aids can amplify sound and make it a maximum of 136dB to your ear (something you will never want). Gain is different, say I have a 45dB sound that's frequency is 1000Hz, your hearing threshold is 90dB at 1000Hz. So the hearing aid needs needs to take that 45dB sound and bump it up another 65dB, making it 110dB once it hits your ear. That's gain, how much the hearing aid can amplify a given input so that you can hear it.
I hope this helps, if I missed anything let me know.