Post-Activation - 11 Day Followup

I've gone back for my second mapping.  I had a moderately long wish list and we got through everything.

I cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to understand how cochlear implants work, and what the tunable parameters are, and what each one does.  It makes far better use of our limited time together if I can convey what I need in "audiologist language".

First, I wanted my favorite program in slot 1.  No brainer.  HiRes 120, Clear Voice medium, IDR set to 60, using tmic only.

So next, we had to kill the RF lock issue I was having due to my thick skin flap and some residual swelling.  We did this by overriding the automatic RF power.  We made two copies of my favorite program, and set the RF power to 8 on one, and 12 on another.  SoundWave estimates I will get 7 hours from the large batteries on level 12 instead of 22 hours on automatic.  OUCH.  But it's better than dropping RF lock all day long.

Finally I wanted one copy of that program with UltraZoom, and another copy with IDR set to 80 and ClearVoice set to low for listening to music and TV (next time I want CV off on this program).

Last night I was getting sore as the skin thins out from the pressure of the magnet, and was thrilled to find good magnet hold with only 2 of 5 magnets installed in my head piece!  Both the RF power required to hold RF lock, and the magnet strength required to hold the head piece seem to change day over day.  I imagine this will settle as all swelling subsides and my head gets used to having pressure from the magnet.

How is everything sounding?

  1. Speech in quiet is real awesome, though women sound more realistic than men.  Men all sound a bit like Kermit.  I think I need to boost M/T levels around 1000Hz
  2. Speech in noise is difficult, but combined with lip-reading it is workable for the most part
  3. Music.  Sigh.  For the most part music that is not overly complex has the best chance of sounding decent.  But then there's also a huge dependence on the vocals.  Anything with lots of percussion sounds good due to the large pitch range of percussion.  Rap sounds pretty normal.
  4. TV and Computers can be difficult.  I think it has more to do with the sound dynamics of the room, since hooking up to TV with comPilot sounds pretty excellent.  Need more practice.
  5. iPhone held to my ear is pretty workable.  Depending on the person's voice, it can sound quite excellent.  Speaker phones fall into the same category as TV and Computers for the moment.
  6. Rooms with a high amount of echo are a huge challenge!

Comments

Cycles Online said…
Very nice. information Really Very Helpful for me.. Thanks for sharing..
August 18, 2014 at 9:09 AM
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