By Jennifer Groth, Global Audiology
With summer upon us, many will take the opportunity to get away from it all, or perhaps seek excitement and new experiences. Regardless of what any individual might be looking for, hearing instrument wearers who are taken out of their usual surroundings and plopped into new ones can meet all sorts of new and challenging listening environments. Some automatic features in ReSound hearing instruments, such as Environmental Optimizer II and SoftSwitching, can ease listening effort and improve comfort in many situations. However, sometimes you just need your hearing aids to do something different for you. Alternative listening programs which can offer both varying frequency responses as well as different feature settings can be of great help. And, with the ease of listening program overview and switching afforded by the ReSound Unite Remote Control, multiple programs are a simple and fast way to try out different settings in a situation where the user feels a change is needed for better listening.
Hearing instruments are typically fit with the primary goal of amplifying speech in quiet at fairly close range. Obviously, hearing instrument wearers find themselves in many situations every day that are acoustically very different than this, and where their listening preferences may also be different. Music listening is a good example of a situation where the typical hearing instrument settings may not be optimum. A variety of pre-defined listening programs are available in Aventa 3, and the fitter has the freedom to adjust gains and features in any of these to best suit the individual’s preferences. The table below presents an overview of the available programs and the settings for each. The highest technology level is assumed in the table – for lower technology products, the same programs are available, but the feature settings depend on what is available for the particular product.
| Environment program | Description | Feature settings | Gain offsets |
| Basic | General purpose “base” program. |
|
Gain is set according to prescriptive targets with no offsets |
| Basic + SoftSwitching | General purpose program that automatically switches to a directional response when directionality is likely to be of benefit. |
|
Gain is set according to prescriptive targets with no offsets |
| Natural Directionality II | General purpose program with asymmetric directional fitting strategy to ensure directional benefit and environmental awareness at all times. |
|
Gain is set according to prescriptive targets with no offsets |
| Restaurant | Program for maximizing speech understanding in group situations and other moderately noisy environments |
|
Increased gain in the 2 to 4kHz region relative to prescriptive targets |
| Music | Program for enhancing music listening |
|
Gain decrease for soft sounds and gain increase for loud sounds across frequencies relative to prescriptive targets. |
| Traffic | Program for increased comfort in very noisy or very loud situations |
|
Overall gain decrease relative to prescriptive targets. |
| Party | Program for better speech understanding in very noisy situations. |
|
Gain decreased in low frequencies, and gain increased in 2 to 4kHz region relative to prescriptive targets. |
| Outdoor | Program that reduces wind noise for better listening comfort outdoors. |
|
Gain is set according to prescriptive targets with no offsets |
| REM test | Program for real ear verification. |
|
Gain is set according to prescriptive targets with no offsets |
| Telecoil loop | Program for listening via an induction loop. |
|
Gain is set according to prescriptive targets with no offsets |
| Telecoil Phone | Program for using the phone with the hearing instrument telecoil. |
|
Gain is decreased below 500 Hz and above 3kHz, and increased in the mid frequency range. |
| Acoustic phone | Program for using the phone with the hearing instrument microphone. |
|
Gain is decreased below 500 Hz and above 3kHz, and increased in the mid frequency range. |
| DAI | Program for listening via an FM system or other direct audio input. |
|
Gain is set according to prescriptive targets with no offsets |
| Phone Now | The hearing instrument switches to this program in the presence of a magnet. The fitter can choose “Acoustic Phone” or “Telecoil Phone” for this automatic program. | Same as “Acoustic Phone” or “Telecoil Phone” | Same as “Acoustic Phone” or “Telecoil Phone” |
| TV/Radio/PC | Program for streaming sound via the Unite TV Streamer or Unite Mini Microphone. |
|
Gain is set according to prescriptive targets with no offsets |
| Speech | Program for streaming sound via the Unite Phone Clip. |
|
Gain is set according to prescriptive targets with no offsets |
*only if hearing instrument microphone is active
4 thoughts on “Multi-Program Options Can Help Users Meet New Listening Challenges”
This is a good cheat sheet but too big for me to print. Can I have a cheat sheet like this sent to me.
Ditto for me, but can you also laminate it for durability?
These programmes are not in my software. How do I get them
Would it be possible to get a new post showing current (as of 2017) programs and feature settings and what they do in Aventa 3?