I’ve been wearing the More1 for a few months now, having upgraded from OPN2. I posted a bit in another topic, but I’ve been back to the Audi, so I have a bit more — and more experience.
First, I love these. I would say they are a “wow” upgrade, but in a subtle way. The wow is that the sound is more natural. It’s much more the way I remember having normal hearing, and that includes the way music sounds — much better with these than the OPN2. They are much more “mentally comfortable” for some reason, I guess the naturalness. I feel like I don’t even have them in, and unlike the OPN2 I never feel like taking a break from having them in. For me with these things it’s just like I have normal hearing, which I think is the holy grail. However I’m aware that it’s not just hearing, but cognition, and for some people what they need from a HA is a lot more help to boost their ability to sort things out.
I don’t know everything that Oticon is doing here, of course, but I think the hardware has just gotten fast enough that it can put together a digital version of the sound stage that is much more realistic in real time, the way a modern computer can save a high quality jpg instantly. And the natural soundstage is analogous to that re-created jpg, which is made up of compressed tiles and not the original pixels the camera sensor created. So in that analogy, these are creating a very convincing, perfect jpg image in real time very transparently. No artifacts.
So I went back to my Audi and scrutinized the settings. I had her keep my main program 1 the way it was. She had initially set all the noise suppression to zero after knowing me — knowing that I do usually have the cognitive capacity to sort out noisy situations. It was also set in directionality to Full Omni instead of the Neural AI or whatever. So as I said, I love this program, and it’s working for me, so I kept it. My hearing loss is solidly “moderate” ski slope dipping down toward “severe” at one frequency, and I do better than expected (for my loss) at the test with a voice against background conversation.
I already had a “Voice in Noise” program, so that is what I tweaked. Afraid that I might be missing out on valuable features, I enabled some of the more sophisticated More1 features for that program. Noise suppression is maxed, and it’s set to Neural AI.
My intent was to try the “full More1” Voice in Noise program quite often and compare it. I admit I usually forget to try it, because I’m so happy with the main program. But when I do enable the more enhanced features, I find the sound is rather harsher and less pleasant. I think part of my individual “wow factor” in the way she first set them up is how natural the sound is. The processing in the other program is of course done well, but it is still more processing, and I can hear a kind of harshness. I don’t notice any diminution of natural background sounds, like the trickling of the fish tanks, bird sound etc with it. But somehow human voices are a bit harsher — I think boosted in a way that is a little bit over the top compared to the less ramped up settings. I find when I set it to that program I almost step back from the conversation, recoil, as voices just seem harsher and louder suddenly.
The voice in noise program is a bit better for conversation in a car, but if I’m driving alone I’ll keep the normal program and listen to music, which sounds so good now.
My life is still rather simple and influenced by the pandemic. I don’t go to restaurants etc. I am the grocery shopper for our family, and the grocery store is fine with either program (my grocery store does not play canned music loudly from speakers above every aisle, thank gopod ). I did go to a big family reunion with about 30 people in a big house with bright acoustics, and also time on their porch — also with bright acoustics. The full Omni setting vs the Voice in Noise program (again, not sure what the settings were at that point) in that context was not satisfactory. I could hear 30 voices very clearly all at the same time, and I struggled to pick out the person I was talking to. In that context I also tried the “Voice in Noise” program as she had initially set it up, but that was even worse, as it sounded very harsh.
In my experience, even at minimal processing (noise suppression down to zero, full Omni sound stage), the More1 does tend to pick out voices out of background. So there certainly is sophisticated hearing aid processing happening even without ramping the settings up. If I try using my AirPods Pro just in transparency mode with my audiogram input in there, I can tell what a drastic difference a real sophisticated HA platform provides vs a simple amplified microphone. (I try using the AirPods Pro as a simple hearing aid in a situation I’m sometimes in where I’d be rather likely to ruin my real HAs with water. The AirPods Pro might be better than nothing as a hearing aid, but barely (The AirPods Pro with my audiogram are fantastic for music and podcasts though))
I’ll be going to a wedding soon, so I’ll have a chance to compare the Neural AI and full noise suppression vs full Omni and no noise suppression, in that context.
Bottom line, I love these More1 aids.