Wow, what a great price from a brick and mortar HCP. Thanks for sharing!
yes I’m happy too, if they actually cover it for what I was quoted by epic their 3d party hearing aid company. It would be lovely to have my understanding of speech improve not just amplify the sound
I’m in the process of a More trial. My Audi suggested using batteries rather than the rechargeable HA’s but he’s given me a choice after the trial. He thinks the benefit of using batteries rather than rechargeable HA’s is the problem of forgetting to charge them overnight. Batteries are always available. I’ve always used batteries and don’t have a problem with them but I’d like to know other’s opinion about rechargeable batteries. What are the major benefits of rechargeable HA’s?
I think this question has been hashed out quite thoroughly already. You can probably find quite a few threads to discuss this if you search the forum. My impression, including my personal experience, is that many people are OK with disposable batteries but when they followed the trend and tried out rechargeable systems, they learn to like it a lot after a while and have no regret with their switch.
I think the key thing is to have a backup charger so you’re not dead in the water in case the main charger is dead. Forgetting to charge overnight is not as big of a deal because even a 15 minute quick charge can get you back on track for a couple of hours to tide you over until the next opportunities for more quick charges.
I’ll say the benefit is not having to carry around batteries. Assuming you don’t sleep with your HAs in, what do you do with your HAs every night when you go to bed? I would suggest just putting your charger in wherever that location is that you put your aids, so when you go to sleep, you drop your HAs in that charger. Voila! Also, there’s a whole thread for this which may be more appropriate:
1 Like
I’m tacking this on to this thread because creating a new thread doesn’t seem justified and this appeared to be the best place should someone be searching for More comparison info . . .
I spoke yesterday with my audiologist about my changed experience going from the More 3’s to the More 1’s. From the difference in the listening experience, I thought she may have increased the gain, but she had not. She confirmed that she had intentionally avoided making any changes whatsoever from the defaults, to avoid skewing my comparison.
I felt that the More 1’s were a lot more “open,” to the point that I was even a tad startled. My audiologist explained that this was exactly what had happened: I was literally hearing more at exactly the same level of gain. When Genie prescribes for the More 1, features like the Sound Enhancer, Spatial Enhancer, and Spacial Sound are opened up in MoreSound Intelligence and, as determined from the Listening Preferences, the HA settings will be changed and enhanced, potentially to a substantial degree.
Speech-in-noise is not high on my priority list. My audiologist and I are shooting for effectively handling this within the P1 program, but she said it is likely that I will want a custom speech-in-noise program (the default was not very helpful). She has already set one up to try, it is set to “Full Directional” in MoreSound Intelligence which effectively disables the DNN and turns the More into a beam-forming HA.
For those for whom speech-in-noise is important and the open paradigm not very significant, then the choice between the More levels may come down to simply how much noise suppression and speech clarification (from the DNN) is needed in their environment. For that matter, if speech-in-noise was my topmost priority (like when I worked in a large machine shop) and the open paradigm not particularly of interest, I would probably be looking at a more traditional beam-forming HA.
YMMV and no doubt will.
2 Likes
@mingus: Thanks for posting this informative addendum. It’s interesting and sometimes confusing how individuals’ perceptions of the same thing can differ.
When I upgraded from More3s to More1s, I didn’t have the experience you described, but then, our situations are different. In the confines of my house, where I spend most of my time, the More3s sounded to me pretty much as good as the More1s. The More1s handled the dentist’s office and grocery store better, but the clincher for me was the availability of the ClearDynamics feature (unavailable on More3s) for playing music on my instruments.
Over time (maybe as a function of my brain learning once again to hear sounds of which it had been deprived for 6 years) I’ve said that More1s definitely have a “je ne sais quoi” that More3s lack. Maybe that corresponds to your perception of the sound scene opening up. I can’t explain it, but I’ll keep it!
Thanks again for the update.
1 Like
Thanks for sharing your More 3 vs More 1 experience here.
Just to clarify, there’s no Spatial Enhancer per se (the bold part above), and your audi was probably talking about the Spatial Balancer. The screenshot below shows where it is in the flow (for Difficult Environment only). It uses as an MVDR beam former to create null directions to attenuate the most dominant noise sources (well placed noises) to keep it in the background of the sound scene. The second screenshot below illustrates how.
The More 1 uses 100% of this functionality while the More 2 and 3 uses only 60% of this functionality. Although Oticon doesn’t say 100% and 60% of what specifically, my guess is that in the OPN, the Balancer (now called Spatial Balancer) operates on 16 frequency channels, but in the More, it now operates on 24 channels. So 16/24= 0.67, close enough to 60%, so I’m guessing that the More 2 and 3 operates only 16 channels while the More 1 operates on 24 channels. The higher number of channels allows more null directions to be created if necessary, in principle allows the Spatial Balancer to control up to 24 sound sources on each side of the head (up to 48 for both sides total). And each null direction is updated 125 times per second independently in each of the channel. If more sound sources that are noise can be attenuated and kept in the background of the sound scene from the More 1, I guess that should help more with the overall clarity.
There’s no mention of the Virtual Outer Ear here (which applies only to Easy Environment), but the More 2 and 3 have only 1 option for the VOE (Balanced) while the More 1 has 3 options (Aware, Balanced, and Focused). If Aware is selected in the More 1, you’ll definitely hear more around you than the only option of Balanced for the More 2 and 3.
The Sound Enhancer only applies to the Difficult Environment, and the More 1 has Detail, Balanced and Comfort, while the More 2 doesn’t have Detail, and the More 3 only has Balanced. So if the More 1 is set to Detail and the More 3 has only Balanced, you can perceive to hear more sounds with Detail compared to Balanced.
The Spatial Sound feature lets you know which direction the sound is coming from. The More 1 has 4 estimators and the More 2 and 3 has only 2 estimators. Estimators are basically estimation of the overall (average) volume difference between the right ear location and the left ear location for a sound. This has to be estimated because the volume difference may vary across different frequencies. So the 4 estimators is when the frequency spectrum is separated into 4 parts, and 2 estimators is when it’s separated into 2 parts. Overall, I wouldn’t say that 4 estimators in the More 1 would let you hear more sounds that 2 estimators in the More 2 and 3. However, if you can tell better where the directions of the sounds are coming from with 4 estimators, maybe it’ll give you a perception of noticing more sounds coming from everywhere rather than sounds coming from less directions being “combined” into a perception of hearing less sounds.
Just to clarify here, setting the Directionality Settings to Full Directional will force the More into front beam forming mode all the times, essentially achieving a very similar effect if you enable the MoreSound Booster feature in the ON app. BUT it doesn’t disable the DNN at all as mentioned.
As you can see in the screenshot below, selecting Full Directional in the Directionality Settings only turns off the Virtual Outer Ear option (my guess is that it’d be set to Focus all the times). But other than that, you can adjust all the other parameters and the DNN is fully operational. It wouldn’t make sense for Full Directional (front beam forming) to turn off the DNN anyway, because you still DO want the Neural Noise Suppression to continue helping you out to suppress the noise in the front just like before. That’s almost the whole point of going to full frontal beam forming in the first place, to block out the noise further to focus in front. But there’s still also noise in front, not just on the sides and back, which does need to be suppressed just the same.
2 Likes
I’d say that the most noticeable differences between the More 3 and More 1 in terms of hearing more surrounding sounds would be the Virtual Outer Ear feature for Easy Environment, and the Sound Enhancer for Difficult Environment.
BUT, it’d only be different if they’re set with different values (Aware for both VOE and Sound Enhancer on More 1, and Balanced for both VOE and Sound Enhancer on More 3, the only options there for the More 3 anyway).
If you have had both of these parameters set to Balanced in your More 1, Jim, the same as you have had set in your More 3, then you probably wouldn’t have noticed much difference anyway.
The Spatial Balancer of 24 channels on the More 1 vs 16 channels on the More 3 is primarily for more possible null directions to attenuate more noise sources. But if you’re in a simple situation where there aren’t that many noise sources in the first place, or enough noise sources that the 16 channels would have sufficed, then 24 vs 16 channels would not have made much difference anyway.
And yes, Clear Dynamics is important to hear loud music better, but doesn’t make you hear more sounds. Same with the Spatial Sound (detecting where sounds are coming from). It would help know know more easily the direction where sounds are coming from, but it also doesn’t necessarily let you hear “more” sounds.
1 Like
I understand, @Volusiano. Your previous detailed posts and explanations have really helped me to understand what the differences are, to communicate effectively with my HCP, and to get the optimal performance from my More1 instruments. I have appreciated them very much.
As time passes, I’m having largely the same experience as Chuck @cvkemp and @mingus - I’m feeling very well-connected to my sonic world, in a comfortable way that is not the least bit overwhelming.
I wish I had the ability to understand the technical reasons behind my perceptions as well as you do. At least I can understand the gist of it, but there are still finer points that escape me, such as why turning my NeuralNoiseSuppression all the way up to 10dB results in some things sounding indistinct. I don’t know whether that is the objective reality of it, or simply my insufficiently-habituated brain playing tricks on me. (I think I’m going to ask my audi to turn that value up again, during our next scheduled appointment in January).
These devices we wear certainly are sophisticated!
2 Likes
It’s escaped me, too, Jim. On the OPN 1, I’ve always had my noise reduction for Complex set to -9 dB and I never had any issue with something not sounding clear.
But that is noise reduction by simply subtracting the noise model from the speech in front. The DNN does noise reduction in a completely different way via the rebalancing so who knows what kind of limitation they have. Nevertheless, I think it’s hokey pokey to sell a 10 dB noise suppression for the premium More 1 then not recommending audis to set it at 10 unless really necessary. It’d be better if they’d just explain up front clearly what the trade-offs are instead of playing games like that.
1 Like
Mea culpa. The combination of getting older, two double martini’s, and haste last evening, was clearly not good.
I think what she actually said was “spatial features”, which I took to mean Spatial Sound and Spatial Balancer. She was speaking quickly. Your hypothesis that the Spatial Balancer correlates to number of channels is reasonable. I wondered about Spatial Sound and the additional Estimator. Your explanations make sense and explains why I didn’t see anything specifically about this in Genie.
My second error re disabling the DNN was, again, the result of semi-soused haste. I think she simply indicated that it would provide full forward directionality; my translation of that was front beam-forming. As far as the DNN being disabled, I meant that the Virtual Outer Ear is disabled, as you point out. Checking my notes though, there is this interesting wording in the Genie Help re Neural Automatic: “We recommend this setting to achieve the full effect of MoreSound Intelligence”. I may be parsing this too finely, but that wording seems to imply that the other settings Full Directional and Fixed Omni do not achieve “the full effect”, whatever that may mean specifically.
Thanks for keeping me honest. I won’t make this mistake again (at least, not on this site with guys like you over my shoulder 
).
@Volusiano: I agree. I’m going to see whether I can get my audiologist to reset my NNS ti the maximal values for Easy and Difficult scenarios, prior to January. I’ll try to get myself into some more complex noise situations and take good notes so I can post a comprehensive report here.
No worry, @mingus. It’s not at all about accusing you of anything, everyone says something wrong when they meant something else all the times. It’s just for clarification because many folks can be reading this, so it’s more about setting things straight to avoid misunderstandings from other folks, that’s all.
I think the full effect as mentioned in the bold part above simply infers to the “open” paradigm while being able to still achieve a more balanced sound scene. Naturally if you set to Full Directional then you won’t get the full effect of the open paradigm. You’ll hear less or weaker sounds from the sides and back. On the other hand, if you set to Fixed Omni, then you’d basically employ only the one mic that’s set for the omnidirectional pickup and you won’t be using the other back-cardioid mic at all.
The Spatial Balancer uses the combination of both mics to do MVDR beam forming to create the null-directions to attenuate dominant noise sources and keep them in the background of the sound scene. By going Fixed Omni, you’ll have probably disabled the Spatial Balancer functionality altogether and you may end up hearing more noise than you bargain for. However, the DNN for Difficult Environment would still be in full operation and you’ll probably get the Neural Noise Suppression like before, although the sound scene would not be as well balanced as before so that’s probably what they mean by not getting the “full effect” when not in Neural Automatic.
But of course, for a music program, you’d still want Fixed Omni and even turn off the Neural Noise Suppression altogether. In this situation, however, you’d still be able to set the values for the Virtual Outer Ear functionality.
1 Like
Here we go, again!
We smothered this topic to pieces in the Oticon Neural Noise Suppression topic back in September.
Again, this was all explained in September.
Don’t crank it up to 10 just 'cause you can.
It’s there as a reserve, for those that really need it…
As you’ve pointed out, cranking it up, can & will result in “suppression” of sounds other than what your primary focus is.
Being a musician, you could equate that to turning your Marshall amp up to 10 just because you can.
Can you say “clipping”, and distortion & feedback?
Genie 2 fitting software determines the setting based on your personal script.
@SpudGunner -> I believe you’ve had it at 10 dB before for a while, no, Jim? But I think you did change it back to 8 maybe? What was your reason? And by the way, if you have a program to spare, just do it in that program only so that if you don’t like it, you won’t be stuck with it until your next audi visit again.
If/when I get my More when my OPN 1s give up on me, for sure I’m going to try it out to see what all the fuss is about.
@flashb1024 -> yeah, I know we beat this horse to death, Flash. But I still don’t like it whenever I think about it. So I took the chance when @SpudGunner opened that door so I can whine about it again. 
1 Like
You know, 
Flash , it’s probably just because I’m not as smart as you with this technical stuff - I stil don’t understand it very well. I’d like to see whether I can get a better handle on it. I hope that’s not a problem?
2 Likes
Makes sense. Thanks!
Can you please elaborate here? My impression was that MoreSound Booster’s effect was all around, not directional.
(Btw, I didn’t take your previous clarifying reply as accusational, not in the least. I appreciated it.)
Attached here is a video from Oticon when they introduced the OpenSound Booster in the OPN S. They simply changed the name to MoreSound Booster for the More, but it’s the same thing. This video has Don Schum explaining what the OpenSound Booster does explicitly, so that’s why I’m showing this video to you instead of the other MoreSound Booster videos that don’t do as good a job in explaining its feature, specifically the directionality feature.
