My Whisper AI trial vs. Oticon More

Hearing Aids
#186

If REM was never done then your fitting is incomplete, and maybe that’s a problem. As mentioned earlier, a sound described as “mid-rangey” doesn’t call to mind strong enough highs to make speech clear. And Whisper apparently does still need that.

Meanwhile I made a suggestion to them along those lines. According to one of the white papers, Whisper uses the Brain’s processing speed to identify speech in segments of sound, rather than running the sound through a cascade of processing that hopes to highlight speech. So, if I understand correctly, when they finish with a sound segment they know where the speech is, within the limitations of their algorithm. Why can’t they emphasize the highs in the speech-containing part of the segment? Seems like this could be an alternative to what we’re all told now, “Accept shrill or tinny sound overall in the interest of speech intelligibility, and you’ll get used to it”. Could also help with feedback.

#187

While this comment was directed @ziploc, I think it was @happymach who mentioned that he had a mobile audi who doesn’t do REM, but in a recent post, he said the he switched to a new audi who did REM for him.

So I presume that @ziploc had REM done on his Whisper for him, but it’d be less confusing if @ziploc can confirm that he did have REM done on the Whisper to clarify the situation for everyone here.

#188

Please see message 12.

#189

Thanks for that, @x475aws. You have a good memory. In fact I was the one who asked him if REM was done and he said no in post 12, but I didn’t recall it until it was pointed out here. Thanks again.

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#190

I got an adjustment a few days ago on the Whispers. I had been afraid that I would not be able to get an adjustment before my trial ended, but the dispensing clinic got me in within a reasonable time frame.

I told the audi about the problem I had been having where hearing background conversations and noise was interfering with my ability to hear target speech. I asked for more directionality.

When I left the audi office I felt immediately like the adjustment was an improvement. I have not always had that feeling after an adjustment with other HAs. Voices sound “sharper”. So much so that I feel that any additional “sharpness” would be too much. Even this level of “sharpness” might be too much for most people; but for me it seems just about right. It DOES sound a bit more robotic and artificial, but that’s fine with me if it improves my speech comprehension. I feel like my ability to comprehend both male and female speakers has been improved, at least a bit.

I haven’t switched back and forth with my Oticon Mores very often since the adjustment. I’ve been trying to get used to the new Whisper adjustment and I figured I would have a few days afterwards to switch off.

But now I have been around someone who subsequently got sick and tested positive for Covid. So even though I feel fine and tested negative right after that contact I feel that I should isolate for a few days. So I haven’t had much opportunity to switch off in noisy situations.

Could the Oticons be adjusted to achieve the same level of “sharpness “? I don’t know. But, at this point, with this new Whisper adjustment, I feel like maybe I will lease the Whispers after all. The speech in noise performance is better since the adjustment, although far from perfect. If the Whispers’ SIN performance is better now than the Oticons’, then maybe I could look forward to even more improvement as more Whisper software updates are released.

Another thing I’ve noticed with this recent adjustment is that when I increase the volume on the Whispers it doesn’t seem to get overwhelming and distorted as quickly as when I increase the volume with the Oticons. All this is totally subjective of course, but I’m just reporting my impressions. We’ll see as (hopefully) I can make some head-to-head comparisons right before my trial expires.

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#191

I noticed the same thing with volume adjustments on my Whispers vs my Oticon Opn 1’s. Not as overwhelming at all.

Have you tried the Custom Noise program?

#192

Well I’m back with the final results of my Whisper trial. I decided to return the Whispers. It was a difficult decision. Whisper and the dispensing audiology office were both very helpful and cooperative.

My trial was much longer than a usual trial due to having to negotiate a tricky situation with my insurance, and my having to reschedule an appointment due to a very mild bout with Covid.

Ultimately my decision was based on three factors:

  1. I paid a lot of money for Oticon Mores only a year ago and I was reluctant to consign them to a back-up HA role so quickly.
  2. The details of Whisper’s lease/buy agreement cast some doubt on whether I could physically obtain the Whispers now and still qualify for an insurance benefit next year when I would receive the planned new Whisper hardware.
  3. I thought the Whispers sounded maybe a bit better than the Mores, but it was not a night-and-day difference in speech comprehension.

It was a difficult decision because there was a possibility that further audi adjustments and/or further Whisper updates could have significantly improved the sound.

I did tell Whisper when I first contacted them that I wouldn’t be buying the Whispers unless I felt they were head and shoulders better than the Oticon. Whisper agreed with that, so I don’t feel that I abused the trial. I think that if I had done this comparison between Mores and Whispers before I bought the Mores that I would have chosen the Whispers. The idea of the frequent updates that Whisper plans (and has actually delivered) are exciting to me. I really believe in Whisper’s concepts.

The dispensing audi said that there would be no problem with me doing another Whisper trial next year when there will be no question about insurance reimbursement. I plan to do so. I’ll do another post shortly about my detailed impressions of the Whispers vs. the Mores.

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#193

Thanks for sharing your experiences. Sounds like it was a tough call to make.

#194

After having the opportunity to compare Whisper with Oticon More, here are my impressions: one of the main things I noticed was that when I woke up in the morning and saw my rechargeable Oticons sitting in the charger, and then saw the Whispers with their battery compartments open and the Whisper Brain in ITS charger I found it was easier to just reach for the Oticons and put them in my ears. The Whispers were pretty terrible for battery life and I always dreaded frequently hearing the battery low message on the Whispers. Also a couple of times I forgot to put the Brain on the charger before bed. Admittedly this is pretty minor. But it highlighted how much I’ve become used to rechargeable HAs.

The mid-rangey tone that I mentioned about the Whispers at first seemed to sound more natural to me once I had worn the Whispers for a few weeks.

After I had the audi do an adjustment on the Whispers they sounded like they were adjusted to a rather “extreme” point, kind of like they were adjusted almost to the point of feeding back. But they never fed back. I LIKED this extreme adjustment. I felt like it helped my speech comprehension just a little.

Unfortunately a lot of my trial happened just as the Omicron wave was forcing everyone into lockdown so I couldn’t go out and socialize in noisy environments as much as I wanted to. In the last few weeks when I started to go out again I tried to pay attention to the differences between More and Whisper. There were times when I thought I sensed Whisper’s “sound separation engine” working to separate out the target voice. But it was VERY subtle. Too subtle. It might even have been just my imagination. All in all I don’t think there was much difference in my speech comprehension between the two models.

The impression I got was that there are no adjustments in the audi’s software to turn up the effect of the sound separation engine. I would really like to play around with Whisper’s programming software to see what adjustments are available but it’s apparently not available to consumers.

I would recommend a Whisper trial to anyone looking to buy new HAs. I’d be happy to answer any questions from forum members.

3 Likes
#195

Thanks for sharing, @ziploc . I really look forward to your detailed impressions of the Whisper vs the More.

I was going to suggest the same thing that you can always sign up for the Whisper lease next year if the insurance aspect is going to be a sure thing next year compared to this year. However, if you only get a chance to use the insurance once every few years and not once a year, if I were you, I would maybe wait yet another year, at least until your Mores fall out of its 3 year warranty before leasing the Whisper, simply for the reason as to not waste whatever warranty coverage you will have left on the More. Of course, this is assuming that you don’t find the difference between the More and the Whisper big enough to justify having to pay a lease on the Whisper while the More is still under full warranty.

Who knows, maybe if you will have kept wearing the Mores while still under warranty and it develops some kind of problem that warrants replacement, then you can get a brand new pair of More as replacement then move on to the Whisper lease and relegate the More as backup. But if you retire the Mores too soon such that you never get a new replacement pair before the 3 year warranty expires, then the original Mores are more liable to fail sooner rather than later. I know reliability is not a big concern anymore for just a backup pair of HAs in the first place, so your priority to get a pair of HAs you may like better may trump getting a new replacement for the More.

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#196

It looks like you’re going to be in a unique position to see for yourself in your second trial of Whisper (that you’re going to be doing next year) whether in one year time, Whisper is going to be able to deliver any kind of breakthrough improvement in performance like many of the Whisper users on this forum is hoping they can as promised or not.

The unique position I’m talking about here that you’re going to be in, is that as compared to others who signed up in the “hope” of frequent breakthrough updates, you don’t have to sign up then hope, but you can trial again the second time and see for yourself first hand, whether the promise of frequent breakthrough update on a yearly basis will actually happen or not. After all, this seems to be a big selling point from Whisper that has drawn in many curious folks who want to believe in the concept.

#197

If it’s your final conclusion that speech comprehension (in noise) is fairly even between the 2 models, and you really like the concept of frequent breakthrough update, then is it safe to assume that this is going to be the key differentiation for you on the second trial you will have next year? To see whether Whisper will deliver significant enough update by then to tip the scale and make the Whisper speech in noise performance significantly better than the More?

After all, if they still perform almost the same in your second trial, and you prefer the rechargeable convenience of the More over the high battery drain of the Whisper ear piece, surely the Whisper brain’s ability to accept breakthrough updates more frequently is no longer a selling point but will then become more of a liability (to carry around) between the 2. I don’t know if its lease concept a selling point for you or not, but you did say that frequent breakthrough update is a selling point for you.

Also, are you a DIY person with the More? The reason for the question is that you mentioned above you’d like to play around with the Whisper programming for further tweaking but it’s not available to consumers like it is with the More. So it makes me curious to wonder if you’ve played around with the More programming already.

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#198

@Volusiano , Whisper is going to release a hardware upgrade (hopefully sometime this year) with rechargeable earpieces. Microchip availability might delay the release (Or maybe microchip availability will be replacing “due to Covid” as every business’s catch-all excuse for delays)

What I am looking for and hoping for is a breakthrough that will allow me to easily and comfortably understand speech in challenging situations. How this breakthrough happens, if it ever does, is immaterial to me. If I could ever find a combination of a HA and the proper programming to achieve that breakthrough I would buy immediately at almost any price.

I downloaded the Oticon software but I do not have the NoahLink yet. I have been either too busy or too lazy to try to learn the software and tweak my Mores. I might yet get into it.

I am so frustrated by the whole audiology industry model. I don’t blame the individual audis or audi practices, but in a perfect world I would be able to try every HA model and every possible programming tweak to see what worked best.

I’ve never tried Resound One or Starkey Livio. Would one of those HAs, programmed by an experienced, intuitive audiologist, maximize my hearing and make a huge difference?Does someone like Paul McCartney spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on audiologists and HAs to get the absolute best combination of HAs and programming? I wish I could. Would it really make that much of a difference?

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#199

@ziploc: I very much appreciate your courage and candor in sharing your Whisper experiences with us. Thank you.

I’m always tuned in to this thread, awaiting your further insights. Peace…

2 Likes
#200

Thank you @ziploc, it is interesting to read your observations, and conclusions on Whisper…. And due to circumstances outside your control, you have completed your trial, and unfortunately you did not feel the Whisper aids, merited more outlay, but at least you can have another trial next year, and a year is a long time in technology…… Hopefully there will be a big improvement on your previous trial? In truth, I don’t believe there will be a technological breakthrough for hearing aids, in loud background noise, anytime soon? Especially with aids in their present form, it is encouraging to see Whisper are moving away from the norm, so hopefully they might make that leap or partial leap? Cheers Kev :wink:

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#201

@ziploc, how would you compare Whisper’s rendering of the sounds all around you, to More’s rendering, while they’re delivering similar speech comprehension?

#202

@x475aws, that is a good question. I didn’t really notice any major differences in directionality vs. “openness” between the two models. I also didn’t notice much difference when I switched from Whisper’s default “Dynamic” program to the speech-in-noise-oriented “Custom” program.

Another thing I didn’t mention in my most-recent posts is that, with the Whispers, I missed the ability to use the volume control switches on the Mores’ earpieces. Increasing or decreasing the volume on the Whispers entails pressing a button on the Whisper Brain.

I kept my Whisper Brain in my front pants pocket, so if I wanted to change the volume or change the program I had to fiddle around in my front pocket until I found the Brain and then try to feel around the Brain with my hand (in my front pants pocket) to determine which way the Brain was oriented in my hand and which button would do what I wanted it to do.

As you might imagine, I quickly realized what that might look like to a conversation partner and so I found myself ignoring the need to increase the volume. These changes can also be done on the Whisper app, but that entails pulling out my phone, opening up the Whisper phone app and making the change, all in the middle of a conversation with someone who doesn’t know I’m wearing HAs. It’s much easier and less conspicuous to touch behind your ear for a second to increase the volume or to change programs, IMO. Hopefully the planned new Whisper earpieces will include a switch on the HA earpieces.

#203

This “pocket pool” Whisper feature might prove irresistible to my friend @kevels55, whose hearing might be shot, but who is reputed to have a hawkeye, as seen looking down the shaft of an :8ball: 8-ball cue :8ball:!

:chair::chair::chair::chair:, Kev!
:potato::gun::potato:

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#204

I’m very curious to hear your results. Are you also concerned that your own brain needs time to adjust to each set of instruments? In other words will you be switching off in the same environment or every day or after a month or more using each set?

#205

Please disregard my reply. I’m confused about how to navigate the forum and not paying attention to dates. Hearing loss is apparently not my only issue. :sleeping: :wink: :wink: