- In this video I'm talking
about using different hearing aid programs
to help you hear better in a variety of different
listening environments, coming up.
(upbeat music)
Hi guys Cliff Olson, Doctor of Audiology
and Founder of Applied Hearing Solutions
in Phoenix, Arizona.
And on this channel I cover a bunch of hearing-related
information to help make you a better informed consumer.
So if you're into that make sure you hit that Subscribe
button and don't forget to click the Bell
to receive a notification every time I post a new video.
Unless you sit on a couch all day watching television,
you probably find yourself in a variety of different
listening situations all of which would require
different program settings if you want to maximize
your hearing performance.
For instance if you were in the comfort of your own home,
it's probably relatively quiet
and you would probably do best in a program setting
that allowed your hearing aid microphones
to pick up sound from 360 degrees.
Then if you and another individual go hop in your car
to drive to a restaurant, you probably would want
to be in a program setting that reduced the road noise
that's in your car so you can better understand
either the radio or that individual
that you're driving with.
Then when you walk into that restaurant
and you sit down at your table, you wan to be in a program
that has the capability of reducing that background noise
and orienting the microphones in the direction
of the people that you want to hear at your table.
Fortunately the programs in today's modern hearing aids
are better than ever at maximizing your hearing performance
in a variety of different listening situations.
The problem is not a lot of individuals know
which programs are actually active inside
inside of their hearing aids, nor do they know
to switch into the correct program
for whatever environment they're in.
But this is where Phonak, today's video sponsor
makes things significant easier for the users
of their hearing aids with their Autosense operating system.
Just like the name suggests Autosense OS
automatically identifies which listening environment
that you're in and puts you into the correct program
settings for that environment.
Now Phonak has continued to improve
and evolve their operating system as they identify
more acoustic characteristics that they need
to take into consideration in these changing environments.
In the most recent version of Autosense
that they've released is Autosense OS 3.0,
which you can find in their Marvel hearing aids.
This is a screenshot of a patient's usage statistics
while wearing their Phonak Audeo m90 hearing aids.
What you'll notice first is there are three main sections.
You have an automatic program section,
an automatic program streaming section
and a streaming program section.
Each of these sections has an overall usage time.
For this patient, he spends approximately 82.8%
of his time in the automatic program settings.
This is all of the time wearing hearing aids
when they are not streaming audio
from a separate Bluetooth device.
Different technology levels had different amounts
of Autosense programs.
The premium 90-level Phonak products have the most
Autosense programs at a total of seven.
First is the Calm Situation program.
This program setting is triggered when there's
no background noise and tells the hearing aid
to pick up sound from 360 degrees.
Second, is the Speech in Noise program.
This is triggered when you enter a moderately noisy
environment like a restaurant where the background noise
exceeds approximately 60 decibels for 5-10 seconds.
This triggers the hearing aids to go into settings
to help reduce background noise and to focus
on speech of those at your table by narrowing
the microphone pickup range.
Third is the Speech in Loud Noise program.
This is triggered when you enter louder environments
like a busy restaurant where background noise
exceeds approximately 65 decibels for 5-10 seconds.
This triggers the hearing aids to switch into
settings for maximum noise reduction
and narrows up that microphone pickup range even more.
Fourth, is the Speech in Car program.
This program is triggered by steady state
low frequency noise that you would expect to receive
inside of a car.
In this program, your hearing aids switch you
into program settings that maximize speech understanding
in the car by increasing noise reduction
and lowering low frequency amplification.
And based on this data logging, you can see that
this individual spends a ton of time in his car.
Fifth is Comfort in Noise, which is triggered
by lack of direct speech signals into your hearing aids.
In this program the hearing aids reduce overall
amplification to make the noisy situations more comfortable
since there is no one talking directly to you.
Sixth is Comfort in Echo,
this is triggered by reverberation in your environment.
Reverberation occurs when multiple signals
hit your hearing aid microphones at different intervals
because the original speech signal is bouncing
off the walls, the ceiling, the floor
and other hard surfaces.
This program reduces overall amplification
in these environments to reduce the negative impact
of reverberation, which can be some of the most difficult
listening situations for hearing aid wearers.
And seventh is the music program.
This program is triggered by the presence of music
in your listening environment.
The hearing aids can actually sense the harmonics
of music and switch you into settings
that reduce the amount of digital features
that could distort music sound quality.
Obviously this individual is not much
of a music connoisseur.
He also spends a good time streaming audio
from his smartphone.
11.5% of the time to be precise.
Autosense OS 3.0 also has the capability
of differentiating speech and music
and puts you into the best audio settings
for that type of media.
The last thing is the amount of time spent
streaming calls from his smartphone.
As you can see, he spends a good deal of time
on his phone as 5.7% of his total wear time
is actually spent streaming phone calls.
Based on the data logging for this particular individual,
it is a good thing that he is in this level of technology
because he definitely finds himself in a variety
of different dynamic listening environments
that his hearing aids can auto adjust to.
Now, seeing all that data is great
but what does that actually means for a hearing aid user?
Well it basically means that you can go from your house
to your car, to a restaurant to a family gathering,
to whatever environment that you want to go to
and your hearing aids are going to identify
the acoustics of that environment
and put you into the best program settings
for that particular environment.
And you don't have to push any buttons,
you don't have to go into your smartphone
and tell it to put you into a different program.
The hearing aids do this for you automatically.
Not only does this simplify things for you,
but it actually helps prevent you from picking
the wrong manual program for the environment
that you're in.
Creating a more seamless and better listening
experience in nearly all situations.
Automatic program classification systems like Autosense
have completely changed the way that hearing aid users
will utilize manual programs.
So instead of a hearing care professional
having to program in a manual restaurant program
at your first fitting.
They can then spend more time focusing on these automatic
program setting adjustments
and only add in a manual program
if you absolutely need it.
So the next time you're discussing hearing aid features
with your hearing care professional,
make sure that you ask them if your hearing aids
have automatic programs.
So you can spend less time adjusting those manual program
push buttons and focus more of your energy
on enjoying those special moments with family and friends.
That's it for this video.
If you have any questions,
leave them in the comment section below.
If you like the video please share it
and if you want to see other video just like this one
go ahead and hit that Subscribe button.
Also feel free to check out my website DrCliffAud.com.
(upbeat music)