noisy bipap

hi there. i'm new here but have been lurking the last week or so as i go into about my 6th month of attempted therapy. i really got some great advice from this site already. especially regarding my insomnia and trying to keep my mask on....but enough about my neurosis...

i used the phillips auto SV with humidifier...big bulky, good machine....because i was told i had central or complex apnea on my sleep study. i'm not really sure i actually have this because i dont think i actually slept much during my sleep study.

in my most recent checkup we noticed irregular breathing for the first 45 minutes of cpap....followed by about 2 hrs of quiet sleep....then i always get up and rip off the mask...( i know i'm learning to put it back on)

anyway, i maintain i am not asleep those first 45 minutes but rather "fighting" the AUTO settings on my machine. i want to try bipap or straight cpap and see if i actually have central events at home. for some reason the auto breathing is really tough for me to deal with.

so i was lent a newfangled bipap, phillips newer smaller sleeker model....its much cooler but after a few minuted i realized it made a horrible darth vader noise.

what i'm getting at is the old bulky machine has a background white noise so i cant hear each breath...the new machine (i have on loan now a brand new autoSV small version) (another long story) but i am wondering other than buying a white noise machine is there a way to quiet this down....white noise is fine...darth vader noise had me unable to fall back asleep at 240 am last night even though i tried in good conscience to put my mask BACK ON

thanks for ur help so far...

What exact machines are you discussing? Both of them, please.

1) Does it say "Philips Respironics" or just "Respironics" ?

2) Is it shaped like this:


3) Is there some sort of name printed near the display?

Other than that,

Are you using the humidifier? Try setting the machine around the corner, in a drawer, put a cardboard box over it, sit it on the floor, behind the bed, whatever.

yes it is shaped like that but with a second button under the dial on the other side and with a built in humidifier making it much wider.

the "old" machine with the background noise (that i like) looks like this...but with a humidifier on it....

http://www.respitek.com.tr/en/urunler.a ... ator_(ASV)

i will try tonight to muffle it somehow....i'm just surprised that the newer machine makes a more annoying (IMO) noise....

What's the name on the new machine? It should say something near the display.

You know, sometimes one of my CPAP machines would be noisy, and then sometimes it wouldn't. Try unplugging all the hoses, take the humidifier off, remove and reinstall the water tank, try it with a little water and a full tank, double check the filters, sit it on a phone book, turn it around backwards, etc. Be sure there's no water in the hose. I never did really figure out why mine sometimes did the Darth Vader act and sometimes it didn't. For some reason, it was sometimes a lot noisier than it was at other times.

Some CPAP machines will be noisier when doing EPR than when not, but I don't know if you'd want to turn off any options on your machine.

BTW, what pressures and other settings are you using?

I'll also add you'll probably get used to the noise eventually.

lucky you to have the new ASV; mine became a purchase right before the new one came out. About the breathing during the first 45 minutes: I'm with you on that one and had the same argument with my therapist and doctor. Fighting the machine can skew all the results, so they need to look at a single night's charts, and hour by hour at that to really see what's going on.

Here's what I did with the breathing problem. I turned the rise rate as high as it goes, so that it doesn't accelerate as quickly (yeah, that confused the person who did my titration - upping the setting slows it down). My doctor and I also changed the minimum pressure support to 2, which also means that it accelerates in slower increments. That eliminated the struggles that I had with the pressure increasing too much as I was still exhaling and decreasing too quickly and "shocking" me out of an inhalation. Turning the bpm to auto or way down also helps.

How wide is your auto setting? You may be waking up when the pressure goes up from "chasing apneas" - sometimes the pressure doesn't get a chance to drop off after addressing one apnea before you have another and the pressure goes up some more.... and then the mask ends up leaking because of the high pressure and range..... my doctor tweaked that for me to by setting my min IP to closer to my 90% IP and I'm not waking up to high pressures during the night.

Titration these suckers is a delicate process.

Don't know what to tell you about the Darth Vader noises. I get them from my mask, not the ASV.

thanks for the info. i think i understood about 77-79 percent of what you said. my dme and i have gone through a lot of adjustments and now went back to square one. not my plan but hers and i was willing to go along for a week. my next step though will be to go to straight bipap or cpap and then see for myself if i actually have centrals or not. there is so much to this all...medical, physical, psychological. trying to get it all lined up has been a journey. i am not doing well with a "good" night being 3 hrs, but i am NOT giving up!!