Another user's experience with 120 channels.

As a parent, I'm on a couple of forums full of adult CI users, and love hearing them share their experiences in ANY way they can. I think adults really describe their experiences better than my 3 and 7 year old CI users. Reading adults' stories helps me better understand what my boys may be going through with their hearing loss and CIs.'

That said, I've come across another great forum posting from a lady going through the AB 120 channel trials. Below I've pasted excerpts from her post on a forum re: her experiences. None of the testers are able to give their specifics, but I find what is said to be exciting.

"There is absolutely so much to understand about how the virtual technology works that I am not going to go into all of it. My excitement in the 120 channel software is not from what I am reading or even from what I want to believe or any hopes I might have...it is because I am using it and can actually realize first hand what kind of improvements are taking place for me and also my friend, Judy. We compare notes often.

We are both amazed in what is happening with music! Music with HiRes is fantastic as compared to the traditional strategies I have used. I have used three previous generation CI speech strategies and HiRes blew them away. My test scores with HiRes were very unexpected for a person with 31 years of nonstimulated deafness. I had been told by independent researchers that there was absolutely no other speech/sound strategy to date with any company that could possibly have given me back what HiRes has.

The new 120 channel software is another notch in the right direction...it has to be heard, and experienced to be believed! Michael Chorost explained it well in his "Wired" article...he explained how much his pitch discrimination had improved with the virtual technology. I know what he means!! Did you read it? Here is the link if you are interested. My experiences with music are similar to what Michael is experiencing and what Judy is getting. Michael's experience with speech is not similar to mine. I have not noticed any differences with speech and he has...but that just goes to show how different we all are and as with anything else...it will be a personal journey._http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/bolero.html?pg=1&topic=bolero&topic_

With HiRes no sounds are dropped out of the signal, because all sounds are important. Since everyday sounds like speech, environmental sounds, and music have many different pitches and components to them, HiRes looks at the LEVEL of each of these components and stimulates the corresponding electrodes at the level relative to the strength of the signal. For instance if electrode #9 might have a very strong presence, electrode #4 might have a small presence and electrode #1 might have a medium presence etc. All of the electrodes are stimulated during each cycle, but at different levels, providing a full and complete picture. Nothing dropped out or sacrificed. With the 120 channels presented on 16 electrodes, the accuracy of the pitch presented will be improved because the same spectrum is divided into smaller parts (120 instead of 16). Combinations of electrode stimuli are used to present at the most accurate pitch and level for each component of the sound. Electrodes are the number of physical contacts that can stimulate, and channels are the number of pitch divisions that sound is divided into across the entire electrode array. More channels mean more sound detail....that much is simple and easy to understand.

I don't pretend to understand this in depth, I will leave that to the scientists and engineers. Working with the engineers at AB has made me realize how much I don't know....but I am very very very grateful and confident that they know what they are doing, I am living proof of that!
Deb H"

Deb also has a blog online, found at: http://debrah.blog.com/ .