I went in for a new mapping today. What a difference that made. I actually feel like I have “normal” hearing again. It’s not “perfect” mind you, but I’m amazed at how everything sounds so much better. An order of magnitude. Easily.
I took Roxanne with me to the mapping. Also I took my laptop with the “keyboard” program (see NL-0034 CI Music Calibration Part 1). Roxanne went with me because she wanted to ask about why I could not understand her sometimes, yet I claim that I can her everyone else fine (I already told her it’s because she sometimes mispronounces a key word and I get totally stuck trying to figure it out). Poor, poor wife. Pam (my audiologist) told Roxanne the same thing. What a shock.
I was more concerned about the frequency translation issues that have been driving me nuts. I explained to Pam about the problems I was having with the central octave and the frequencies from 300 to 3000 Hz. She was agreeable to try to resolve the problems. (Pam also plays the piano, so we had some good common ground from the start).
I set up my keyboard tone generator program and played various tones from my laptop. Whenever I found a sour note, I called out the frequency of the offending sound and Pam wrote it down. Then we looked at the CI mapper program for which element(s) might be generating the corresponding sound in my ear. Then she modified the mapping program by deactivation an electrode or two, and I tried my tone generator again.
This was inexplicably like the scene from “Close Encounters of The Third Kind” where the mother-ship and the scientists are exchanging tones in order to communicate. Interactively calibrating my ear was way cool.
At the end of all this, we ended up deactivating electrode 21, which produces a tone at 294 Hz (“B” above middle C). The energy that would normally be emitted by that electrode was passed on to the two adjacent electrodes. Also, we lowered the max levels of four of the upper elements (seems that they were set slightly above what the CI mapper program recommended).
After programming the CI with the new map, sound was so much more crisp. Like the difference between night and day. Wow.
The explanation the Pam offered is this: When the implant was inserted into my cochlear, electrode 21 randomly ended up over a location where the channel energy could not conduct properly to the auditory nerve. Seems that there may be “really dead cells” under the electrode or there may be any number of other things that can hamper good electrical conduction, and when the conduction is not good, my brain perceives a distorted-frequency-offset sound. How interesting.
I also asked Pam to install two programs into my processor to enhance music and to make it easier to hear in noisy environments (like when driving or when in a Casino). Now I have the following 4 programs installed:
P1 – Map with E21 disabled and some elements remapped
P2 – Same as P1, but louder
P3 – Map to reduce background noises
P4 – Music Enhancement
Quick results as Roxanne and I spent the rest of the day driving around, vising friends, and running errands:
Noise Reduction Program: works like a charm. SUV’s air conditioner: silent. Road noise: very quiescent. And Roxanne’s nonstop chatting while I was driving? I understood near 100% without looking at her…. a milestone if there ever was one. Also, the noise reduction program vastly improves my ability to focus and hear only what I want to hear in large, open, noisy places. Bliss.
The TV: Clear, easy to understand, and I can hear the TV program music. This is without the CI audio cable connected. I couldn’t do that before as the TV seemed to echo. Great improvement.
Music: Not 100%, more like 75% of what I want to hear. But what an step up from the previous mapping. The music enhancement program works well for some music, but most sounds better on my P2 map.
Played my guitar: Again, it was way, way, and far away better than before. The middle-C octave sounds good. Not as much fidelity as I would want, but this is so much superior to the previous map sound. I think I might actually be able to tune the thing without my electronic tuner now.
Flutes: I really want to try my flutes, but Roxanne says “I think I put them in a storage box…. um, someplace.”
Now I have climb a ladder, remove 30 boxes from the hanging storage in the garage and do a search and rescue mission for my long lost woodwinds. Which, I might add, have been sitting in a place where temperatures very literally range from 25 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit (this is Las Vegas you know!) Drat.
But that seems to be the only downside of the day. I guess I can live with it.
...dan...
(5574)
I went in for a new mapping today. What a difference that made. I actually feel like I have “normal” hearing again. It’s not “perfect” mind you, but I’m amazed at how everything sounds so much better. An order of magnitude. Easily.
I took Roxanne with me to the mapping. Also I took my laptop with the “keyboard” program (see NL-0034 CI Music Calibration Part 1). Roxanne went with me because she wanted to ask about why I could not understand her sometimes, yet I claim that I can her everyone else fine (I already told her it’s because she sometimes mispronounces a key word and I get totally stuck trying to figure it out). Poor, poor wife. Pam (my audiologist) told Roxanne the same thing. What a shock.
I was more concerned about the frequency translation issues that have been driving me nuts. I explained to Pam about the problems I was having with the central octave and the frequencies from 300 to 3000 Hz. She was agreeable to try to resolve the problems. (Pam also plays the piano, so we had some good common ground from the start).
I set up my keyboard tone generator program and played various tones from my laptop. Whenever I found a sour note, I called out the frequency of the offending sound and Pam wrote it down. Then we looked at the CI mapper program for which element(s) might be generating the corresponding sound in my ear. Then she modified the mapping program by deactivation an electrode or two, and I tried my tone generator again.
This was inexplicably like the scene from “Close Encounters of The Third Kind” where the mother-ship and the scientists are exchanging tones in order to communicate. Interactively calibrating my ear was way cool.
At the end of all this, we ended up deactivating electrode 21, which produces a tone at 294 Hz (“B” above middle C). The energy that would normally be emitted by that electrode was passed on to the two adjacent electrodes. Also, we lowered the max levels of four of the upper elements (seems that they were set slightly above what the CI mapper program recommended).
After programming the CI with the new map, sound was so much more crisp. Like the difference between night and day. Wow.
The explanation the Pam offered is this: When the implant was inserted into my cochlear, electrode 21 randomly ended up over a location where the channel energy could not conduct properly to the auditory nerve. Seems that there may be “really dead cells” under the electrode or there may be any number of other things that can hamper good electrical conduction, and when the conduction is not good, my brain perceives a distorted-frequency-offset sound. How interesting.
I also asked Pam to install two programs into my processor to enhance music and to make it easier to hear in noisy environments (like when driving or when in a Casino). Now I have the following 4 programs installed:
P1 – Map with E21 disabled and some elements remapped
P2 – Same as P1, but louder
P3 – Map to reduce background noises
P4 – Music Enhancement
Quick results as Roxanne and I spent the rest of the day driving around, vising friends, and running errands:
Noise Reduction Program: works like a charm. SUV’s air conditioner: silent. Road noise: very quiescent. And Roxanne’s nonstop chatting while I was driving? I understood near 100% without looking at her…. a milestone if there ever was one. Also, the noise reduction program vastly improves my ability to focus and hear only what I want to hear in large, open, noisy places. Bliss.
The TV: Clear, easy to understand, and I can hear the TV program music. This is without the CI audio cable connected. I couldn’t do that before as the TV seemed to echo. Great improvement.
Music: Not 100%, more like 75% of what I want to hear. But what an step up from the previous mapping. The music enhancement program works well for some music, but most sounds better on my P2 map.
Played my guitar: Again, it was way, way, and far away better than before. The middle-C octave sounds good. Not as much fidelity as I would want, but this is so much superior to the previous map sound. I think I might actually be able to tune the thing without my electronic tuner now.
Flutes: I really want to try my flutes, but Roxanne says “I think I put them in a storage box…. um, someplace.”
Now I have climb a ladder, remove 30 boxes from the hanging storage in the garage and do a search and rescue mission for my long lost woodwinds. Which, I might add, have been sitting in a place where temperatures very literally range from 25 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit (this is Las Vegas you know!) Drat.
But that seems to be the only downside of the day. I guess I can live with it.
...dan...
(5574)