Gosh it’s looking like I keep my Preza
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on One vs the Prezas. Thanks for keeping us posted:)
In the Resound One fitting flow for professionals on page nine it states “ M&RIE combines the two traditional two microphones with a third that fits discreetly inside the ear canal as an integral part of the receiver module. It uses the unique shape of the ear to collect sound the way nature intended. The result is an immersive and individualized hearing experience with greater direction and depth.”
This means to me that all six microphones are working together. Isn’t that what the word combines infers? Some posts imply that this is not the case, so I did some research because I am getting the RESOUND ONE next week and would not be interested if the ONE was just another dual microphone set.
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Yes, it implies, that’s how many of us understood the advertising.
However, software and as you can check quotes above, say otherwise.
They supposedly automatically switch between those mics, but they don’t utilise all 3 at once (per ear).
If you test it, let us know how it works in real life 
On how it supposedly works, ReSound has a couple of videos on listening in difficult situations with and without the M&RIE mic.
Also if you scroll down the page the video occurs on, you’ll find two short videos “Windy Walk With and Without M&RIE” and “In a Restaurant.” Scroll down on this section of web page: Hearing aids ReSound - ReSound ONE
The real test will be from users not trying to sell you anything but it’s pretty impressive if the M&RIE mic is really as good as the videos would want you to believe. Like one wonders with the competitor’s HA’s in the mannequin’s ears for the video linked above whether they even bothered turning on whatever wind noise suppression those HA’s might have!
Edit_Update: Actually, on reading the audio transcript of an Audiology Online course on M&RIE in-the-ear microphone, wind suppression might not be on for either Brand X or the M&RIE receiver. What ReSound might be demo’ing but not (sneakily) explaining clearly in the basic set up is that if you put the microphone in the ear, it’s very much shielded from the wind by the pinna (ear lobe) but not so much when the mic is behind the ear. There can be as much as a 14 to 19 dB difference, depending on the wind speed. A good RIC or BTE HA in omnidirectional mode can suppress wind noise tremendously with sound processing but set at maximal level the processing also tends to degrade speech recognition. So I’d bet rather than deal with all those complications, they’re just demo’ing in the ear vs. behind the ear with no applied wind noise suppression and not being very straightforward as to exactly what the demo is showing.
@d_Wooluf has found a pretty good review of ReSound One with M&RIE receivers by Geoffrey Cooling, a well-known Brit hearing aid reviewer and user: LE Audio and the Future of Hearing 
Edit_Update: (just to minimize nagging by forum “AI”). Here’s another ReSound promotional video on the supposed superiority of ReSound One M&RIE to Brand X hearing aids in various difficult situations:
The ReSound spokesperson looks a little like the mannequin! I wonder if that’s intended?!
And yet more videos. The 3D sound videos are the most interesting. Rotate around to hear what the HA wearer is supposedly not hearing so much of thanks to ReSound One. You, the viewer, are supposed to be the HA wearer and the sound you receive varies as you turn your head using the navigation controls.
3D Directionality Videos
Link to Dr. Cliff, AUD videos on ReSound One and Bluetooth LE Audio posted by @d_Wooluf, LE Audio and the Future of Hearing
My conclusion from sw is that they basically merged ITE and RIC, but they’re switching between the two, not using them simultaneously.
We know ITE works for a lot of people very nicely. We know that RIC works for a lot of people very nicely.
This way people will have 2 HAs that will swap places automatically.
However what we don’t exactly know is when the switch happens. I remember seeing that for custom program you can pick either 2 or 1, but not all 3. Also, didn’t study too much part for automatic noise control switching, maybe somewhere there is some information hidden.
As always, the best info for us we’ll get if we try it on ourselves and compare with current solution.
After a bit more reading of the background info, I’d say that’s a good assessment. It doesn’t look like they’ve gone the whole hog and made it a six mic stereo beamforming array. Perhaps that will come with the next model.
There’s a definite benefit in offering an omni mic that can take advantage of natural pinna cues and bilateral summation where there’s no background noise. It’s sort of ‘the best of both worlds approach’ which is actually not a bad thing, especially if there’s a good switching algorithm.
It might not provide the absolute refinement of a six mic array, but the engineering compromise could work well, especially if the user has ‘tunability’ over the degree of the Omni/Comfort vs. Hard Directional. This is the reason why some prefer the OPN over the Sonova product (and vice versa); if you’ve got an aid that does both, it might have a wider appeal.
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I’ve just dug up to find if I can figure out how it switches. Not sure still.
But found this:
https://pro.resound.com/en-us/research/features-explained
Specifically
https://pro.resound.com/en-us/research/features-explained/controlling-directional-sound-processing
For choice of mics, I see this:
Ones:
Omni
soft switching
all access directionality
M&RIE
Quattros;
Omni
Soft switching
Natural directionality II focus ear
Natural directionality II monitor ear
Spatial Sense
Binaural Directionality III with spatial sense
And you can choose only one.
I don’t know if for Ones under soft switching they now put that ‘when to turn on ITE and when RIC mics’, since that link above looks like it’s for quattros.
I think many of us hoped for 3 mics that will work together for difficult situations eg background noise and speech babble.
Definitely agree!
I’m not sure how it exactly works, since sw doesn’t explain everything it does and how.
But it could be beneficial to some people, I’m sure.
I don’t need help in quiet for spatial awareness, my phonak RICs do the job great, also wind and whatnot.
So only thing that interest me would be more mics that work together for speech babble noise situations and similar very difficult environment. So for my case, 1 mic + pinna doesn’t look like an improvement for such environments, which you also implied, and 2 RIC mics are what I already have
I’d like to see phonak come up with the third mic, since I definitely like target sw more and it’s tweaking possibilities 
And then all of that in their autosense, oh boy, that’d be awesome
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Its unfortunate that Resound does not made it clear regarding the use of the three mics in each hearing aid, but drawing conclusions that the three don’t work together based on software and other marketing literature is interesting to me as well. I watched the videos that Jim posted and no where did any video state that the extra mic in the M &RIE only works in certain situations? In the video the person clearly made the statement that all three mics working together in various real world scenarios will be demonstrated.
I also went through the software fitting brochure and could not find anything that states that all three mics don’t work together in certain situations. If I missed this somewhere, please correct me by referring to a page and figure or sentence.
That aside, I intend to trial the Ones starting next week against my current Resound Preza’s. I am biased against the Ones because if I find them to be exceptional, then it will cost me another $2000 plus to accept them and return the Preza’s; so you can see my bias.
I intend to trial both sets of hearing aids in as many real world scenarios as possible, but I am a bit concerned about how to go about testing the M&RIE mic. Do I go around and stick my finger into the mic and then remove my finger to see if there is any difference in speech recognition in the worst conditions, i.e., outdoor, restaurants, noisy meetings, etc. Any advice about aiding my test plan would be most appreciated, because based on the posts in this thread, many of us have valid concerns regarding the advertised value of this third mic.
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I guess you could always ask your HCP is there is a way to turn off the M&RIE mic and do part of your trial with it turned off. Um_bongo or Neville or Eric.Cobb or some other HCP might know but I think that there are really advanced audiological setups where you can have “surround” sound in your environment and listen with just your HA’s on your ears, no headphones. So if ReSound or anyone else provided the right multi-channel audio recording with speech coming out of one channel and noise out of all the other channels, one could really test in a “lab” environment how the HA’s work. ReSound provides all these fancy audio situations in their infomercials - they ought to provide similar advanced audio recordings to HCPs to demo the value of what they’re selling and we as consumers ought to request such in-office demos. Seems pretty primitive for a profession that issues Ph.D.'s to tell the client - “Sorry! I really can’t demonstrate the features of this $7,000 device in my office. But do go out into the real world and try to figure out all by your lonesome what the dang thing does in the next few weeks before you fork $7,000 over to me. Good Luck! All the best in your lonely, uninformed quest! See ya later when you’re ready to pay $7,000!”
Edit_Update: Even better if the hearing care professional could cook up a set of standardized “real-life situation” tests that are widely know and accepted for 3D listening ability just as there is a WRS score and a SIN test, etc., (although the exact ones applied might differ). When REM equipment is $15,000 or whatever and a dedicated sound booth must be quite expensive, surely the profession for the $$$ and Euro’s and every other denomination charged could afford standard 3D audio tests, including one’s users could download and try out on their own speaker systems.
Totally agree. BTW, DR CLIFF just posted a new video about the Resound One earlier today and how the M&RIE works within the pinna. I made a post to ask him about the use of the third mic in various situations. Sometimes he answers them.
I also sent an email to Resound explaining that there is confusion (at least on my part) regarding the overall use of the third mic in the M&RIE.
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Heh, that might be word play. I mean, they do work together, but not simultaneously.
That part I wouldn’t be concerned if I decided to test them. I mean, if I’m super happy with them, who cares how many mics are working?
Especially since you have something to compare with - current aids.
Easiest way - remove that receiver
But it seems that no one currently knows what’s exactly hidden under those ‘soft switch’ and other options.
There’s one definitely that is clear that’s ‘just ITE receiver’, but for others, it’s definitely not clear.
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I think the basic thing if one tries to read between the lines in the ReSound literature is that ReSound’s philosophy is most of the time all mics are not working together as an array but depending on the speech/noise environment around you, different mics on different sides of your head will be doing different things, the mics on the quieter side of your head closer to the speaker will be more focused in the direction of the speech and the mics on the noisier side of your head will be more in an omnidirectional mode to pick up the greater noise on that side of your head and remove that noise, as much as possible, from what comes out the receivers, with less speech input from the noisier side of your head. That would be what ReSound touts as the “All Access Directionality” mode. The other thing ReSound touts as its “secret sauce” is something like “multiband frequency processing” - low and high frequencies are presented to the user in more omnidirectional mode to preserve time differences in sound reception between the left and right sides of your head whereas midrange frequencies are more directionally focused towards the speaker and apparently the processing to focus the sound destroys timing cues. They do say that the M&RIE receiver might be considered the new omnidirectional mode. The literature does seem to says it’s mostly used in quiet situations whereas the mics behind the ear dominate in noisy situations but they don’t say why or exactly how the transition occurs. They also say that all premium HA’s use some form of “multiband frequency processing” - claim ReSound’s is superior and don’t say why. So it seems like the usual whitepaper type of stuff - lots of claims with insufficient clear explanation of the mechanics (trade secrets, no doubt) to back up exactly what’s going on. Here’s a transcript of an Audiology Online course by ReSound entitled Comprehensive Hearing in Any Environment with ReSound All Access Directionality and Ultra Focus that provides some details but not enough to make real sense of it all.
ReSound does say that it’s M&RIE receiver (MM in datasheets) is only for people with mild to moderate hearing loss and the existence of recoverable high frequency hearing is very important to recover the high frequency speech localization cues from multiband frequency processing that will give the extra umph to speech recognition in noise - if I have read and interpreted correctly what they are vaguely saying.
Edit_Update: See following post for illustration from ReSound Feature Demonstration media on how the M&RIE microphone in the ear works in conjunction with the BTE mics on ReSound One HA body in different speech-in-noise situations: GN Hearing introduces ReSound ONE
Also, I think the audi says in the Audiology Online course that I reference in the link just above that their studies show that they gain on average 2 dBs advantage in speech recognition by favoring the less noisy side as opposed to a strict binaurally focused unbiased beam, when there is a significant difference in noise between one side and the other, but the idea, just as for Oticon with the OPN, is to not throw away environmental awareness and go with a highly focused beam all the time, unless absolutely necessary for speech recognition.
Going to take a dumb guess since I’m too lazy to do research. Thinking receiver in the canal is strictly for receiving amplification directly to the ear and nothing more. Also thinking RIC can’t be software adjusted since it outside the aid body. So it works independently from the other two receiver inside the hearing aid. So the third receiver should offer/increase incoming sound to user’s ear, but with the understanding that the additional incoming sound (through RIC) is constant and not adjustable.
So I look at it as some what of a power booster to the two ITE receivers. Not sure how that all blends in together from a “hearing standpoint” but three mic’s should out perform two mic’s, even if they work independently. Seems to me three mic’s is the direction HA should go to assist those with severe to profound hearing loss, but as the number of mic’s increase I wonder about aid overload, feedback and general sound quality.
Give in 6 to 12 months to see if GN can perfect Resound One and pull off something “new” in hearing land.
ReSound provides illustration of all 6 mics (or 5) (or 4) working together.
OK. This is from Feature Demonstration in Smart Fit v1.8, under M&RIE. It shows how the activity of all 6 microphones varies with sound in the environment relative to speech and relative to where the user’s head is positioned. Because of copyright, I cannot post the 40 sec video animation but have screen-captured (fair use, I hope!) the different situations.
Quiet conversation. All 6 mics active.
Noise on left (other speech not in direction user facing), all 3 mics active for omnidirectional noise cancellation
Quieter Right Ear, M&RIE mic off, BTE mics beam focusing on speaker
Noise moves to right (other speech not in user-facing direction), mic focus shifts
All 3 right mics including M&RIE now on, 2 left BTE mics beam focused, left M&RIE off
Severe noise behind user (noisy vacuum cleaner)
Both M&RIE mics off, both set of BTE mics beam focused forward on speaker
The diagrams also relate to the info in this post and the Audiology Online course referenced: GN Hearing introduces ReSound ONE
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Ok Resound, you have to be reading all these discussions and resulting confusion among very smart users of hearing aid products, including yours; why can’t you enter into this discussion and explain your new M&RIE product and accompanying technology and how it works in real life situations. Come on! I am very interested in the new ONE, but feel I am going into a trial next week ignorant. Why does that have to be??
I also know the MM receiver will barely cover my loss or it may not, but it’s crazy that I don’t have a better understanding going into the trial. It may be that I simply am not smart enough to grasp your marketing literature. HELP US OUT!
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In the transcript of the Audiology Online course that I cite above, ReSound rationalizes the hocus-pocus by saying (users) shouldn’t have to know (from page 14).
They’re just going to think, oh, this hearing aid sounds a little better than the other one.
Why? I don’t know. And they’re going to say they don’t know, and that’s good. They
shouldn’t have to know, because this is a brain process that we don’t think about,
we’re born with. So, “It just sounds better,” is what we’ve been hearing in the studies
and what I hope you will hear as well.
So I guess if you take what the woman audiologist says literally, ReSound really doesn’t know, either. And she only seems to promise it MIGHT sound a little bit better - for a bunch more money! So it’ll be great to hear what you think when you get them.
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Lol for this ‘users shouldn’t know’ approach. Why not?
Information should be available for those who want to know.
Usually it’s, if it works, we don’t care. And that’s fine. If that’s our choice.
But implying that we shouldn’t care because they say so or we shouldn’t bother knowing is just silly.
I definitely want to know how gadget of 7000 money works. And why should it be better than gadget of 1000 money.
Thanks @jim_lewis for digging up the info! Those pics are worth thousand words, definitely!
Why it was so hard for resound to just release that loud and clear?
I don’t like when they think we should be dumb and just give money.
ITE devices use pinna. So I wasn’t surprised with what marie does.
RIC uses 2 mics. Again, nothing new.
But it really looks like they managed to use both and do switching. And they failed to clearly explain that. 
I mean, they forget that their competitors also include their old aids. So if they want people to buy new and more expensive, it only makes sense to properly explain the value new aids could bring.
Saying ‘you could hear a bit better’ is 
I think this could definitely make some difference to some people, depending on their loss and brain.
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A white paper published by Resound GN titled “An innovative RIE with microphone in the ear lets users “hear with their own ears” gave me the information I was looking for. I quote from the article.
First , as several of you pointed out already the M&RIE MM receiver is “ Intended for those with milder hearing loss,” and secondly, “Within this strategy, people who are fit with the M&RIE will have the microphone in the ear canal active when they are in quiet, speech only, and relatively uncomplicated listening environments with limited interfering noise. In other environments, the strategy switches to use the microphones on the ReSound ONE devices to enhance SNR while maintaining access to surrounding sounds. M&RIE can also be activated in dedicated listening programs. For example, due to the significant protection against wind noise and the superior natural sound quality, M&RIE is selected as default in the Outdoor program.”
What all that says in layman terms is that the M&RIE mic is not always turned on. It is on in quiet situations and in dedicated programs like outdoor, in other situations only the two mics on the outer ear within the case are on.
I love it when Resound uses the term “the strategy switches to use the microphones on the ReSound ONE devices”, when what they mean is the algorithm within the devices switches out the M&RIE mic in certain environments. Why does it have to be so hard to figure out literature? Maybe they need to hire a layman to translate technical language into words we can understand without hours of discussion and confusion ( at least on my part). Please forgive me if I am ranting too much.
I still intend to trial the ONES next week, but must admit I am not optimistic.
.
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