It might be a good idea to try the Philips – the problem with Costco is that they don’t offer trials for free or a small fee. You actually have to fork over the $1,800 (which would be refunded in case of dissatisfaction). Short-sighted, I know.
The goal may be the same, but I’m sure you’ll agree that they have very different ways in which they attempt to reach that goal.
What’s strange is that there are astonishingly few reviews of the Philips. The anecodotal evidence that Abarsanti presented in a hearingtracker thread in which you participated isn’t resoundingly positive. If the Philips really were as effective in separating speech from noise as their design focus would have us believe, wouldn’t there be more testimonials about how good they are have appeared during the year since they were released?
Whereas, the Whispers seem to have garnered some rave reviews in this respect in a relatively short time.
A hardware upgrade doesn’t have to be “entirely new” to constitute a noticeable improvement. In the case of the Whisper, because this is an initial product, I would expect relatively rapid improvements, but of course we just can’t know.
Also, Whisper has committed to substantial firmware upgrades improving the sound every 3 months or so. These occur via the app, without the intervention of an audiologist. I imagine that any Costco-sold hearing aid will require a trip to Costco for a firmware update.
I was in a restaurant on Saturday night with two friends at a small table and heard basically nothing. A phrase here and there, sometimes just enough to make a contribution. I know it’s a classic ‘challenging’ environment but I do believe that many very knowledgeable people fail to understand how some people with similar audiograms to their own struggle with that. Threshold shift plus synaptopathy is a killer. This is why I find the promise of the Whisper so alluring. Luckily/unluckily, not living in the US I don’t have a decision to make.
Way too far ahead to predict pricing I think
My crystal ball says that a mobile, ambitious company with a new product still under development might release upgraded hardware more often than an ‘old guard’ hearing aid maker. We can check back in a year or so and compare crystal balls I guess.
Maybe the subscription system makes a backup less attractive. I’m assuming that there would be replacement of lost or broken hardware? Maybe the testers can say?
After watching football I went to the grocery store wearing the Whispers. I went to change programs or volume and I didn’t hear the voice saying “custom” for program change, or “six” for a volume change when I pressed the buttons. There was no light on on the Brain.
I assumed that I had hooked up the Brain to the charger incorrectly the previous night and it hadn’t recharged. I put the Brain onto the charger for a couple of hours. When I disconnected the Brain from the charger the light on the Brain showed as charged but the buttons didn’t react to pushes.
I had to use the Whisper iPhone app and iPhone settings to reconnect the Brain to the app and to the earpieces. I then noticed that sometimes the volume and program buttons didn’t respond to button presses. So I think what happened before is I tried to press the buttons at some point and then, after not having heard the expected voice announcing a volume or program change, I continued to press the program change button and inadvertently turned the Brain off.
So I think my trial with watching football and a movie on TV earlier today was likely done with the Brain turned off. I then watched the Sunday night football game with different announcers and a louder crowd . Even with the Brain turned on I had a harder time following that game.
Then I watched some Sunday night adult cartoons, like “Bob’s Burgers”. I was able to hear those pretty well.
I changed to the “Custom” (restaurant) program and back. The custom program seemed to have a 5-10- second lag before kicking in. I had my NuWave oven going and the water running at full volume in the kitchen sink to create some background noise to compete with the TV. It was kind of cool to hear the background noise recede gradually as the custom program kicked in. I could hear the TV voices better with the custom program, but I had to really listen for the change to kick in gradually. The Oticon program changes are sudden and radical. The whole soundscape changes immediately when the program change kicks in. I’ll post again soon when I have something more to report.
This is based on reading and interpreting white papers, with no personal experience of any of the three aids you mentioned, right?
@ziploc said “Walking around with the Whispers I had the sensation of hearing things I hadn’t heard before. It was like when I got my very first pair of hearing aids, with shopping cart wheels squeaking and cellophane wrappers crinkling, but not nearly as pronounced as when I got my first HAs.” That’s in comparison with the Oticon Mores he’s been wearing for months, presumably. I interpret this as a greater degree of openness.
As for my experience: Data logging of nearly 3 years’ use of my ReSound Quattros shows that the mics in my left aid (my better side) were in omnidirectional mode 97% of the time, and the mics in my right aid were in omnidirectional mode 75% of the time. So my Quattros have been largely open, not beam-forming, and I do hear people calling from behind, cars approaching, household noises, etc. But with Whisper I hear far, far more of the sounds around me. Whisper is very open. Yet I also hear speech clearly, without competition from the other sounds.
P.S. Other than the term “DNN”, I don’t understand why you consider the Philips HearLink to be an apt object of comparison with Whisper.
Pricing prediction can be based on past and current pricing. The first gen HearLink was $1800, and the second gen HearLink is still $1800, so it wouldn’t be a wild guess to predict that the third gen HearLink would still be $1800, if not lower. It’s rare to see HAs go up in price.
It’s not necessary to predict the Whisper pricing. It’s already in their announcement, $179/month unless you participate in their feedback program, then it’s $97/month. There’s talk of a further discount to $89/month currently? But nevertheless, Whisper has already confirmed that the price will go up to $179/month after the 3 year discounting price, so no need to predict anything there.
A backup is for while you have to wait for a replacement for a repair or a loss. A backup isn’t meant to be a permanent replacement in itself. So it’s not about having a replacement. It’s about having something else to tide you over while waiting for a replacement, which can be a few weeks.
Regardless of which billing system it is, you may need to wait for a few weeks either way until the replacement can be available to you.
Yeah, that’s kind of a shame if your financial situation can’t spare $1800 from a savings account to do this. But on the other hand, you get 6 months to try it out, not just a few weeks.
If you put it on your credit card, you can time it so that you pay for it right at the beginning of the billing cycle, then return it maybe 3 weeks later before that billing cycle closes, you may not even see it on your credit card bill at all. If that doesn’t work out, you may be out of $1800 for only a month then you’ll recover it.
Even if they model their DNN differently to achieve the same goal, and more than likely they do use different models because that’s their real secret sauce and the DNN is just the framework around which they implement the model, who cares how they model it if the only thing that matters is the result? But if it’s the DNN that’s the mechanism that allows the big breakthrough, then it’s apt to see which company uses this breakthrough technology more effectively.
I think an “astonishingly few reviews” of the Philips is quite an overstatement. If I really want go into the forum and take a tally of the number of threads on the Philips HearLink vs the number of threads on the Whisper, I can almost bet that there are at least about the same if not more Philips thread than Whisper threads. There’s nothing to crow about with either, though. I’d say only a handful for each brand. There are only 1 Whisper owner and 3 Whisper trialers so far. I can probably find more than 4 Philips owners registered to this forum if I really want to look.
I thought that @Abarsanti was very positive about the 9030. But as an Oticon OPN user, he’s probably already more used to the more open paradigm of the Oticon, so that’s why he wanted to try out the More and decided to stick with the More. Not because the 9030 is bad. More likely because he likes the openness of Oticon HAs better.
Other than the DNN? What else is there that many HA mfgs are touting out there as their latest breakthrough technology, beside AI and DNN (DNN being a subset of AI)? AI/DNN is not just a term. It’s a whole new approach to processing audio signals. Oticon is doing it. Philips is doing it. Widex is doing it. Starkey is doing it. Whisper is doing it. If I miss any, those others will probably be doing it sooner or later.
Other than the DNN? Surely the reason you guys flocked in to try out the Whisper is not because of their brain or their subscription model, is it? Surely it has to be because of the well touted Whisper DNN that delivers the speech in noise holy grail you guys are looking for, no?
It’s also BECAUSE of this DNN approach that Whisper needs an external brain to host it, because it can be a wieldy little monster that can hog a lot of semiconductor real estate.
If posters on this forum are only allowed to strictly speak of their own experience and not be able to discuss about anything else that they don’t own, then what a sorry place this forum will become. Then maybe we’ll greet each other with a “Hi Hitler!”
Do you want me to gather up and list out your own posts on this forum from threads that discuss HAs which you don’t own or haven’t tried out? I’m sure I can come up with a long list.
The Whisper website says “For a limited time, Whisper is $139/month (regularly $179/month) for a 36 month term.” So $139 is the monthly price for now, outside of the Brain Trust program.
When I’ve needed service, my audiologist has never left me without a hearing aid comparable to the one I own. That’s from them, not ReSound. I imagine I’ll get the same service if I lease Whisper from them, but I don’t know if it’ll be their service, an informal deal between them and Whisper, or a formal service from Whisper.
Edit: Along with the Whisper lease agreement comes a relationship with an audiologist, hopefully a good one. With the lease model, it seems simple enough for Whisper to supply their audiologists with spare hardware for their patients.
I’m trying Whisper because of the Brain. How their expert engineers leverage the 100x greater processing speed, and larger memory, to provide me with the speech-in-noise holy grail is up to them. Besides greater speed and memory, the Brain architecture lets them learn from end-user environments, another potential advantage. But no, I wasn’t excited about the neural network aspect of it. It’s real and it’s also a buzzword.
Like @d_Wooluf, I’ve never heard of a patient needing to go without their hearing devices for weeks during a repair. But regardless, you know that I already own a pair of OPN 1s.
I didn’t mean this forum, which of course is highly anecdotal. I meant that I really couldn’t find any reviews of the Philips by such people as Cliff Olson, who regularly produces YouTube video reviews of “the best hearing aids of 2021” (which hasn’t yet reviewed the Whisper and doesn’t list the Philips), or the Evergreen Speech and Hearing Clinic, which has. The Oticon More has been reviewed far and wide.
If the Philips hearing aids that you mention were really outstanding, wouldn’t they receive more press? (and Cliff Olson does cover hearing aids sold by Costco). And they’ve had a serious market presence for quite a bit longer than the Whisper (and are merely an improvement over the previous version).
The Whisper hearing aid is being touted as a breakthrough device (unlike the Philips) even though it may use DNN techniques, and there are some testimonials (Evergreen Speech and Hearing) that support that idea (including my own personal experience). Has anyone made a similar claim for the Philips, which happens to be made by the same company that is the parent of Oticon?
It ultimately boils down to time and money. I really don’t have time to tinker – I want a hearing aid that works for me and then move on. There would be a lot of hassle involved in trying the Philips – which I would accept if they appeared promising – but I just don’t see any compelling reasons to do so.
Sure, it’s definitely fair enough if you’ve already found what you’re looking for and want to stop there. I don’t really have any skin in the game between the Philips or the Whisper aids to promote one over the other anyway. It just occurred to me so I’m just throwing it out there for anyone who may be reading this thread in the future and are curious and want to try out a DNN-based HA but can’t afford the premium prices of the higher end HAs, that there is another more affordable option out there to explore.
Here’s something I wanted to consult you all about.
As you know, I’m on a trial of Whisper hearing aids with a mobile audiologist (she has a van w/sound booth inside) to whom I was referred by some sales guy at Whisper.
She’s very nice, but toward the end of the first meeting, she told me that she can’t do REM (because it’s not possible to do it inside her soundproof booth or something like that – does that make any sense?) and that when she did do REM, her patients often didn’t like it and so she had to restore the settings from before REM.
There’s one other distributor of Whisper hearing aids in my area, who is much farther away (well, the first audiologist basically comes to my house) but who is part of Cliff Olson’s network of approved providers, so it is absolutely certain that she performs REM.
The question is: should I switch to the second audiologist? She too includes a year of office visits in the subscription (perhaps that’s a Whisper requirement). It’s really no REM vs. REM and the inconvenience of travelling about 10 miles each way for each visit.
I was watching a YouTube video and I decided to see if it sounded any better with the custom program. I used the button on the Brain to switch and the voice said “Custom “ as I expected. I noticed a little change, mostly a slight reduction in volume.
I remembered that I had discovered an additional setting in the Whisper iPhone app. When you use the app (rather than the button on the Brain) to switch to the custom program an “Environment “ option appears on the app to choose between “Noise” or “Music”. This “Environment” option disappears when you switch back to the default “Dynamic “ program. I didn’t notice this Environment option at first because you have to scroll down to see it, at least on my small iPhone.
When I started up the app, the app said that the Brain was disconnected (does that mean disconnected from the app or from the earpieces or both?). It prompted me to go to settings to connect the Brain. I did so and then I noticed a more pronounced and positive change in the listening environment.
I don’t know what that means. I didn’t go to the app to disconnect the Brain before I put it on the charger before bed last night. Maybe you have to pair the app with the Brain every morning after charging it. It seems that the Brain works more effectively when the iPhone app is running and the Brain is connected to the app. That’s another variable introduced into the trial.
I’m glad I have a 45-day trial. If I’m right and the Brain needs to be connected to the iPhone app to achieve optimal performance I’ll bet there have been some people on a short trial that never experienced Whisper at its best. If so, I think that’s a big deal.
I think REM is normally done in the office and a sound proof booth is not needed. The measurement is taken place inside the ear canal anyway, and the sound used for testing is generated from speakers mixed in with the office environment. You need some space to place the speakers and the REM equipment, so maybe her mobile setup doesn’t have room for those things.
I think saying that most of her patients don’t like the REM result is kind of a cop out, although not necessarily a lie, but it can be half-truth as well. If they’re first time patients, and the REM adjustment corrects for the underperforming HAs (the gain is increased in underperforming frequency spots to match target), then the patient may feel overwhelmed with even more gain on top of what may already have been overwhelming to begin with from the original gain. However, that’s why there’s usually an acclimatization feature to lower the overall volume and gradually increase it over time. It’s better to do REM (even if it means more gain in places where it’s needed) then just reduce the overall volume initially then gradually increase it over time as the patient gets more and more used to the gain.
If you have the hindsight to know that your HAs under or overperform (less likely to overperform though) to target, then REM is needed to know how to adjust to target. But if REM is done and it shows that the HAs perform very close to target to start with already, then no REM adjustment is necessary, and in hindsight, REM wouldn’t have been needed. But you don’t have hindsight, so you just can’t know if REM is needed or not. The safer bet is to just do REM so you’d know one way or the other.
Since you already started with this mobile audi without REM, I would just continue with her, on the caviat that if even without REM, you still find a good enough improvement to want to go for the Whisper, then put a condition to her that in the case you decide to go with it, she will have to perform REM (at her office, I assume she has an office) and make any necessary adjustment to target upon your buy-in. That way, if REM adjustment is needed, hopefully it can usually only be better than what you had before. If what she’s saying about her patients not liking the REM version and you find it true to your case as well, you should try the acclimatization first, and if that still doesn’t help, you can always have her remove the REM adjustment and just use the original prescription.
On the other hand, if you trial the Whisper without REM and didn’t find enough improvement to justify signing up for it, it may be because it simply underperforms to target and if you had REM done, you may find out that you’ll like it better when/if it performs to target. So in this case, instead of deciding not to go with Whisper, insist that REM be done with Whisper so you can try it out again and maybe you’ll like it much better after REM.
Sorry for the long winded answer, but the short answer is that REM is important even if in hindsight you find out that your HAs match you target already and no REM adjustment is needed. That’s because without REM done in the first place, how would you even know that? And of course if REM shows that your HAs underperform to target, then REM adjustment is necessary to bring it up to target. So REM is important either way.
If the iphone is a necessary part of the experience and you’re doing a Brain’s Trust trial, you’d think that they would make you absolutely aware of that.
I had a look at the manual (https://whisper.ai/whisper-owners-manual.pdf) and it mentions that you can use the iphone app to check the connectivity between brain and earpieces but it doesn’t say an iphone is necessary.
Edit: I’ve looked through the manual (if you can call it that) and nowhere does it say how you connect the brain to the earpiece without the iphone app. None of the lights on the brain are for brain-earpiece connectivity. So how do you know without the phone app? Maybe the app is necessary? That would be a fly in the ointment for me.
I forget who it was who stated this, but you definitely don’t need the app to determine whether the earpieces are communicating with the Brain – and that’s a good thing, because the connectivity betweeh the iPhone and the Brain is kind of iffy.
All you have to do is press one of the volume buttons on the Brain; if you hear a voice telling you the volume, the Brain is talking to the earpieces.
I guess I could bring up the REM issue again (but she has no office other than her mobile one!). It’s kind of true that there isn’t enough room to do it. The other audi offered to do just a REM – for a mere $350!
I’ve been using the Whispers since the beginning of the trial without REM.
It means that the Brain is disconnected from the device on which the app is running. So by selecting a program once there’s a bluetooth connection, that’s what changes your perception of the listening environment.
As long as she does have the REM equipment, and if she said that she did it for other patients before, then it implies that she does have it, then she can bring it and set it up inside your house to do it if you’re amenable to host her inside your house. Again, this is only if you decide to go with Whisper after the trial, then you’re going to want to have REM done for your real use.
If her mobile office has the proper power outlet for the REM equipment to be plugged into, then I don’t see why it can’t just be done outdoors but it’s probably too cold to do outdoors by now unless you live in a warm climate state.
You may well have lucked out with a good fitting, but I wouldn’t want a long-term relationship with an audiologist who doesn’t do REM at all. This brings up the question of switching Whisper audiologists. I remember reading in another Whisper thread that Whisper pays the audiologist a substantial fee upfront when a patient signs up. I don’t know how reliable and up-to-date this is. In any event you haven’t signed up yet, so the financial implications for Whisper, if you switch, shouldn’t be so big. Seems like you should ask your Whisper concierge (incidentally, I haven’t dealt with a concierge because I went directly to the audiologist, with whom I already have a relationship).
$350 sounds high for doing just a REM, but it involves basically bringing you onboard as a patient, with no expectation that you’ll continue with them. So I don’t know if you should hold that quote against them.
It’s my understanding that office visits are included with a Whisper subscription. In a webinar, Dr. Schum said something like “all your hearing care for $x per month”.
As for convenience, that’s a personal decision. There are two audiology offices a short walk from where I live, but I drive 6 miles, 20-30 minutes to get to my audiologist’s office.
