Thanks for the update. It’s great to hear you’re happy with it. I wonder if you may post your audiogram to your profile just so we can see what kind of hearing loss you have, just as another data point to see how the More perform on different hearing losses.
As for the cracking sounds, if you haven’t already set the Transient Noise Management feature to High, maybe have your HCP set this to High next time to see if it can help take the edge off those loud noises. That’ll prevent you from keeping having to adjust your volume down when that happens.
A while ago we compared the OPN 1 and the OPN S1, and you felt that the S1 really was only significantly better than the OPN 1 in terms of handling feedback.
What about the More 1 vs. the OPN 1? Is the More 1 noticeably better than the OPN 1 in complex noisy environments?
In terms of Feedback, way better. I don’t want to say it’s zero-feedback from MORE1 but almost none. From OPN1, I approached my head towards to the door or my heads moving in front of vehicle seat, really annoyingly I could hear but I assumed that it’s normal.
Complex noisy environment, that’s the one of reason I switched into MORE1 from OPN1. Yes way better. There are lots of noise and sounds but I can hear the word from the person I wan to hear. Quite surprising.
I tried to upload the audiogram on my profile but I couldn’t find where I should do it. I will look into it later. This is the copy I had from the previous hearing aids Audiogram but it was done less than 1 month. So I would say this is the most updated one.
Q. I was told that for my hearing loss… Speech rescue is not really beneficial?
I tried before with OPN1 with speech rescue ON but wasn’t very good to me because I could hear the sound is mumbling a little bit. I don’t know why. Anyhow, I’m not using it yet. However, for the MORE1, I’m wondering if it will be different.
Yes, after asking the audiologist, he set up the Transient noise management as high. It’s helpful but still I set the volume as -1 because it is quite comfortable for me now. Maybe later… I will set as (0) volume on the app as default.
Thanks, it’s been a while since I uploaded my audiogram so I don’t remember, but I’m sure someone will chime in here to help with that.
Your high frequency loss is only moderate so amplification should be enough to compensate for it to make it sound the most natural for you. Speech Rescue is only helpful where high frequency loss is so severe that amplification compensation there becomes a (almost) lost cause.
In the set up page initially when your audi starts out with the programming for you, there’s a Personalization setting (see example below) where you can choose to prefer sounds to be either sharp and distinct or soft and round. Maybe if you change this to soft and round (if not already), that’ll help with the crackling so you don’t have to keep the volume at -1. Of course if you intend to restore it to the 0 default eventually as you get more used to it, then doing the above is not necessary. But if you prefer to round out crisp sounds more permanently, that’d be where you can choose to personalize it for you.
The last personalization choice of preferring a more comfortable sound at the expense of loss of softer details may also be a candidate to consider.
I only own the OPN 1 and I don’t own the More 1 yet, so I can’t tell you my personal experience of whether the More 1 is noticeably better than the OPN 1 in complex noisy environment yet.
Many folks who had upgraded to the More 1 from the OPN 1 reported noticeable improvement, but they were honest that it wasn’t a WOW factor like they expected. It was only incremental. Some decided to not upgrade yet after their trial. But others thought it was worth it enough to stick with the upgrade. Notably if they had feedback issues before with the OPN, and the More (as well as the OPN S) has a significantly new technology to help improve via feedback prevention.
I would say that if you find complex noisy environments are a challenge in the OPN 1 but still fairly manageable, I wouldn’t rush out to upgrade yet. That is the situation that I’m currently in. My OPN 1s are still working just fine and I don’t have feedback issues (already barely on the edge of it), and I do OK in noisy places, although not exposed to it much lately due to covid, so I’m going to stick with the OPN 1 until I really have a need to upgrade (perhaps when my OPN 1s starts acting up). Hopefully by biding my time, when I’m ready to upgrade, the More pricing will be more affordable.
I find that prices vary depending on whom you go to. Zip Hearing is quoting an online price of $4800 for a pair of More 1 and I think they’ll hook you up with a local provider affiliated with them for service.
When Oticon came out with the OPN in 2016 and introduced the open paradigm that’s the basis for the Oticon OPN, it wowed a lot of people (me included) because it’s a new approach/paradigm for the hearing aid industry. It became popular with many people, but I wouldn’t say it’s game changer because the rest of the industry still fare just fine and not everyone likes the open paradigm. It’s a different approach, but not necessarily a better approach that works for everyone.
The More was released with a lot of fan fare about its deep neural network technology so a wow was to be expected. The fact that it didn’t wow every OPN owner just goes to show that the OPN and OPN S are already pretty good hearing aids to begin with. But it doesn’t mean that the More lacks merits. It takes a lot to up the game and I think the More has done that.
For me still OPN1 was fine but only due to the pandemic I couldn’t deal with and I didn’t want to deal with stress in terms of communication under the mask and face shield. That’s the main reason I had looked into new hearing aids.
Yes, it’s pricy. Unfortunately my coverage can’t cover it yet because it covers every 5 years. I had been thinking very long before purchasing the MORE1 due to the cost. However, I did it for my mental health.
Right now I’m happy with MORE but the bottom line is, previous version of hearing aids such as OPN or OPNS are still worthy to keep using.
The Oticon OPN aids was the first step on Oticon’s journey to the open concept, the OPNS1, was the second step, the More is the third step. I see it as the steps needed to help as many of us as possible. I also believe it may not be for everyone. I have friends that don’t want to be bothered by any sound other than speech. I need all the speech understanding I can get but I also want all of the sound information around me that I can get but have the environmental sounds to be dampened down when speech understanding is needed. For me OPN1 aids were a wow compared to what I was use to, It took my Audiologist and me a whole lot of work and adjustments to get use to the aids, but my hearing loss required receivers with more power. So with the VA’s approval my Audiologist got me the OPNS1 rechargeable aids with the 100 dB receivers, they maybe the 105 also I am not foresure which. I did see a minor wow due to the the extra power. I am getting the More1 aids on June 18th, my Audiologist hasn’t explained to me why I am getting new aids again other than they should take me closer to the speech understanding we are pushing for, and also the sound information of my environment I so much want. I am a hiker and I go out alone a lot or with my 4 legged walking partner. I am also the historian for my American Legion Post, as well as a study leader for our Men’s group at church. I am also doing volunteer work at the VA clinic. I maybe in my 70s but I am not going to slow down yet. This last year was so boring for me, I am so glad we are getting back to close to normal.
I will let you know my feelings on the More aids in about a month.
Does the Open paradigm really work, in fact? I have moderate hearing loss, and I’m not sure that I hear noticeably better with my OPN 1 hearing aids in noisy environments than with my unaided ear.
As I commented to my audiologist, hearing with hearing aids mainlyt makes the world sound “less dull.” I hear more birds chirping and the rustling of papers, but the intelligibility of voices against background noise is another matter.
I just don’t understand how Oticon’s algorithms can effectively accentuate just “important” sounds — how can they “know”? What is “important” is highly dependent on the situation and on the thoughts of the person listening.
Would the Phonak Paradise with its more conventional, directional approach plus ANC be more effective?
If I undersood right, you only use HA in one ear, as me ?
For me 360 degree sound field and hearing is essential, because I want my bad ear hearing to integrate with better ear as good as possible. I have had only Oticons ; first Nera Pro Ti, then Opn 3 and now I’m getting More 1 after trialing it two weeks. I think that More 1 is best of these, and it’s only that truly betters my speech regonizion. Also with music it’s clearly best. One extra bonus seems to be that my tinnitus (hissing sound) decreases with More 1.
Your hearing loss is fairly mild. Maybe moderate but only at higher frequencies. Up to 2 kHz, it’s normal. That’s why hearing aids mainly makes the world less dull to you, but you don’t perceive the full positive effect that hearing aids can give to harder hearing people than you. So I don’t think any hearing aids in the world can “wow” you anyway.
I would say that your mild hearing loss is a perfect candidate for the open paradigm. It lets you hear everything you’re already accustomed to hearing. But the open paradigm is not a big deal or even necessary for you either, because most likely you’re being fitted with open domes so your normal hearing up to 2 kHz already can pick up the unamplified sounds through the wide open vents of the open domes just fine, and just about any decent hearing aids can be helpful for you.
Also because of the open domes, intelligibility of voices against background noise remains a challenge for you if it’s already is a challenge for you with unaided hearing, because all the noises go through your open large vents just the same to muddy the water just the same. Maybe the amplified high sounds help you with some more clarity, but that’s just about it. Maybe trying a bass dome with a double vent can help with this because it gives you some of the isolation from the noise, but not at the expense of total occlusion.
It’s actually not that hard to understand if you understand how noise cancelling headphones works. The NC headphones don’t need to “know” what’s important. There are 2 discrete sources of sound for NC headphones, and what is important is the streaming content from your device, and what’s not important is the surrounding noise picked up by the mics which get inversed to cancel out the “invading” noise.
The Oticon OPN creates a noise model of sounds from behind and from the sides using mics that create a back and side facing cardioid pick up pattern. This noise model then gets subtracted (inversed) from the omni pattern (ONLY) when speech is going on to help clarify the speech in front. In this sense it’s similar to how noise cancelling headphones work.
The important difference is that with noise cancelling headphones, even if the streaming content is stopped, the noise cancelling is static and the noise is constantly being cancelled. On the OPN, however, the noise cancelling is dynamic and only cancelled during the short bursts of speech. You get to hear everything again as soon as speech stops, as if the surround sounds never left the sound scene.
This way, your brain gets the help with better signal to noise ratio when speech is going on. But when speech stops, your brain decides which sound it wants to focus on and which sounds it wants to ignore. If it’s speech it wants to focus on, then it’s great that the speech is cleaned up of the noise to help with the focus. If it’s something else (like the background music for example), then the brain focuses on that. This is the part where the brain hearing has to get to work for you. For example, when I first got my OPN, fan noise and road noise or street noise bothered me a lot. After a while, my brain hearing learns to just ignore them. But if the AC fan kicks on, for example, I notice it just fine in the back of my mind. If the microwave sound is running, I ignore it. But the notification beep when it’s done gets my attention. That’s brain hearing at work.
So the hearing aid doesn’t have to “know” what the listener wants to hear. The hearing aid only has to make available all sounds and lets the listener’s brain pick out what it wants to hear.
The More doesn’t need to employ a noise model to subtract it out to help with speech like the OPN. The More uses an entirely different approach to do this. The More is “trained” to have a virtual human-like brain to be smart enough to process sounds to be able to “rebalance” the sound scene whenever necessary, giving speech sounds priority (by more volume) and reducing other sounds (by lower volume) while speech is going on. This gives a lot more control flexibility to the user to tell the More to give them more “help” by doing more “brain hearing” work for them so their own brain hearing has to do less work, if that’s what they want. With the OPN, you have less flexibility and most of the brain hearing has to be done by your own brain.
Thanks for your incredibly informative reply, @Volusiano! You are indeed correct in surmising that I use open domes — and therein lies the problem with noise cancellation (and a key difference from ANC headphones): ANC is much more effective when outside noise isn’t easily reintroduced into the audio stream coming from the hearing device.
I understand that my domes are open because my hearing is quasi-normal below 2 kHz; however, in a noisy environment, when hearing aids channel into my ear canal sound “cleansed” of much background noise, that same background noise comes back into the ear canal through the open domes, greatly reducing the effectiveness of the mise cancelling, doesn’t it?
You may know that the latest noise-canceling headphones offer variable ANC which also allows for varying degrees of reproduced external sounds to mix with the processed audio stream. Indeed, they even offer a fully transparent mode where uncancelled audio is being reproduced faithfully and fed into the ears in order to overcome the passive noise cancellation offered by the earphone/headphone design.
So why don’t hearing aids do this as well? (i.e. occluding the ear canal so that noise can be cancelled more effectively and accurately reproducing and reintroducing sounds from outside)
Hearing aids have inherent physical limitations and cannot effectively reproduce the sounds especially in the low frequencies and very high frequencies (above 10 kHz), so options like you mentioned are limited. If you have good low frequency hearing like most people, you want the open dome so the fidelity of the low sounds are passed through to be heard faithfully. This limitation becomes very obvious when you listen to music, especially on the bass portion. ANC or VANC headphones may possess the size to reproduce adequate bass volume and bandwidth to please you enough, but the tiny hearing aid receiver simply is nowhere close to a match on that physically.
I will set as (0) volume on the app as default. 