My Whisper AI trial vs. Oticon More

Hearing Aids
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I’ve never heard any change in the sound when I reestablish a lost Bluetooth connection between phone and Brain.

There are two things you can only do from the app. Muting the aids is one of them. The down-volume button on the Brain takes it down to 1, but not to 0. The Brain can unmute the aids.

The other app-only action is choosing which Environment is active on the Custom setting. My system is set up with two Environments, Music and Noise. Up until now I haven’t used Noise, because Dr. Schum has said that Whisper handles noise fine on the default Dynamic setting. Now that it has come up, I’m using Noise at home, but it’s fairly quiet here today, and I’m hearing little difference from Dynamic.

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I had a couple of experiences today. When I got up this morning I put the Whisper earpieces in and heard the voice saying “Right ear turning on” and then lest ear. I then unplugged the Brain from the charger where it had been charging overnight and tried a volume button. Nothing.

So I checked on the iPhone app and it said the Brain was disconnected. So I went to settings and connected the Brain. I noticed the difference when the Brain connected. The app said the Brain had only a 13% charge, although it had been on the charger all night. Soon this went to 1% and then zero, and I heard the Brain turn off. I plugged the Brain into the charger again and when I looked at the app on my phone again after less than a minute the charge had gone to 99%. I don’t understand what happened.

Later I went into a bar where I perform sometimes to talk to the bartender briefly. The voices of the other patrons interfered with my understanding of the masked female bartender’s voice. This has been the main problem I’ve experienced with the Oticons.

So I used the Brain to switch to the custom program and it got even worse. After my short interaction with the bartender I went outside and I realized the “Environment “ setting on the custom program on the app was set to “Music” rather than “Noise”. Could that have made such a big difference in the speech comprehension? Very possibly. So I learned to make sure the “Environment” setting on the custom program on the iPhone app is set to “Noise” before I enter what might be a challenging environment.

Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow with a large family gathering should provide many opportunities to compare the Whispers with the Oticons and compare various Whisper settings. I hope everyone has a great holiday.

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I think it is still true that audiologists are paid directly by Whisper. And yes, the subscription includes 1 year of free visits (again, presumably paid for by Whisper).

Who is the Whisper concierge? I only dealt once with a sales guy who referred me to my current Whisper audiologist.

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The Whisper concierge is basically the customer service person. When I first told the concierge that I wanted to do a trial the concierge said someone would call me back soon.

The next day I received a call from an audiologist who said she was a Whisper employee. She offered to come to my house to set up the Whispers for me, which would have meant a short plane flight or a very long drive for her. I chose to go to a clinic about a 45-minute drive away.

I think if I have any questions for Whisper I am supposed to call the concierge and she will refer me back to the dispensing audiology clinic or the Whisper audi, whichever is appropriate. I actually like that I can talk directly to Whisper. I tried calling Oticon for support once, figuring that they would have a technical specialist available to talk to me, but they just referred me back to my audi.

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By the way, do you hear a tone or voice when you change programs? I seem to remember that someone indicated that they did. The only time I hear something is when I change volume.

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Yes a voice says “Dynamic “ or “Custom “ when I change programs with the button on the Brain. But no voice when I change the program using the iPhone app.

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@ziploc: I’m sorry you’re experiencing problems with your Whispers rig, but it’s almost to be expected with a brand new, sophisticated getup like theirs.

[Thanks for your reports. I find it easy to imagine the situations you describe.]

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The status displayed by the app, immediately upon opening, isn’t current. It jumps around like you saw, and eventually shows current info. So the Brain was charged, but you didn’t see it right away. The iPhone app in the App Store is five months old, a surprisingly long time for a product that’s still under development. I assume they’re working on a new app, in conjunction with updates to the Brain software.

Here’s how things work for me: I take off the earpieces at night and turn them off, and put the Brain on the charger. The lights on the Brain change from solid peach to solid orange, to show it’s charging. The next morning, the Brain lights are solid green, indicating it’s charged. I put on the earpieces, and take the Brain off the charger. By the time I get to check the status on the app, the earpieces are connected to the Brain. I haven’t tried to narrow down exactly how long it takes for the earpieces to connect. It isn’t instantaneous, but I don’t think it’s long.

I recall Dr. Schum saying, in my audiologist’s Whisper webinar, that the Noise program isn’t really necessary because Whisper is designed around dealing with noise, and the default (Dynamic) program works fine in noise. But they do give us the Noise program. Like I said above, I haven’t used it much myself. Have you used Dynamic? If you’re controlling Whisper with the Brain instead of the app, then going into Dynamic assures you that you’re using a program suitable for speech in noise (unlike Music). But if you’ve set Noise as the environment for Custom, then it should stay like that as long as the Brain is on (and maybe even if it turns off? I don’t know).

Some of the monthly fee definitely goes to the audiologist. The question is, are payments to the audiologist spread evenly over 3 years, or is the audiologist’s compensation front-loaded? If it’s spread evenly (aside from a fitting fee, maybe), then changing audiologists during the contract ought to be possible, money-wise at least. If it’s front-loaded, as I read here, then it might be harder.

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Thanksgiving dinner with most of my siblings and their spouses yesterday. I arrived wearing my Oticon Mores. Everyone (ten people) was in the kitchen area having animated conversations. All hard surfaces. Hardwood floors, granite countertops, etc.

An absolute cacophony. Overwhelming speech noise. I tried switching to the Oticon speech in noise program. Tried lowering the volume a bit. Not much better at all. I guess I could have kept wearing the Oticons and tried to adjust but it was just too overwhelming.

I excused myself after just a couple of minutes and changed to the Whispers. Big improvement. I wouldn’t say that it was great but it was much better than with the Oticons.
I could hear individual speakers much more clearly. I tried lowering the volume and found I was most comfortable at about 3 or 4 in most situations, especially when everyone was gathered in the same room all talking. A couple of times I tried the Whisper custom restaurant program and found that it was superior to the default dynamic program. But there wasn’t that much difference.

This was the first time that I felt that the Whispers were significantly better than the Oticons. Maybe I’m getting used to them. They don’t sound as artificial and mid-rangey as they did when I first got them, but I still notice a pretty big difference in the general sound of the Whisper compared the the Oticons. The Oticons still sound more natural to me.

Maybe the Whispers are adjusting to me from my having worn them for nine days now. My impression tonight was not that the Whispers were great but that the Oticons were not good. I don’t know why I feel so overwhelmed with background speech noise with the Oticons. I don’t remember having that feeling so much with the Oticon Opn. Maybe my hearing has changed in the last couple of years and Oticon no longer suits me. All in all, a big win for the Whispers in a big test yesterday.

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@ziploc: I don’t want to be perceived as defending the Oticon Mores - that is far from my mind. However, I want to say that I found that the default values to which Neural Noise Suppression is set in Easy and Difficult situations made a big difference to the effectiveness of my SIN program. For some reason, everything seemed to work better for me when my NNS value was set at 8dB, which is less than the 10dB, of which the devices are capable.

This is just offered as an observation, interesting because the result was the first and only *WOW" experience I’ve had since getting More1s. And that experience was in a mechanical garage, and not a family dinner. I’m just suggesting that a small teak of your More1s might, conceivably, give you better results for the sake of comparison with your Whispers.

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@SpudGunner, A few months ago I had the audi increase the neural noise suppression to the maximum setting upon @Volusiano‘s suggestion. I thought a helped a bit. In October I asked the audi to have the Oticon representative be present (by phone) at my adjustment appointment.

They made some minor tweaks, but the Oticon rep largely seemed to agree with what the audi had already done. The main problem I have been having with the More is that background speech interferes with my ability to comprehend the words of a target speaker.

Despite the audi’s and the Oticon rep’s best efforts I get the impression that they have done their best and have reached the limits of their ability to improve the problem. It seems pointless to go back repeatedly and just say that I’m still having the problem.

@Volusiano has suggested that I try self-programming. At this point I feel that that is my only possibility to improve my experience with the Mores. I would prefer not to have to tinker with the programming. I would just like my HAs to work and to be able to forget about them. At this point it seems like the Whisper offers the fastest and most direct path to that goal.

I still have over a month left on my Whisper trial. The Whispers were superior yesterday but I will continue to make comparisons in other situations during the rest of the trial period.

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@ziploc: Please don’t misconstrue my comments as being unneeded pressure to revisit the Mores time and again. I think you made it clear from the outset that you would refrain from doing so. I put in my $0.02 this morning only because I, too, followed the suggestion of maxing out NNS, and experienced a disappointing result. My More1s performed better when the default value was restored. I feel that a “recalibration” might be justifiable in the name of a better trial basis, because I think the maximum cap value setting interferes with the native abilities of the More platform.

I wonder whether maxing out the cap somehow makes it more difficult for the DNN to distinguish between a cacophony of loud voices and actual noise? Is it perhaps saying to itself “Gee, I’d like to classify that as noise and suppress it, but there are too many speech cues for me to do that! I’m confused?” Maybe that’s what interfered to such a great extent with the DNN’s usually great discriminant ability.

[Yes … I realize that I’m grasping at straws! :confused:]

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@SpudGunner, your theory might well be correct. Maybe I should try restoring the default neural noise suppression setting. Maybe @Volusiano might weigh in here. I know this is what’s great about self-programming: you can just go in and make a quick tweak to a setting and then quickly and easily undo it if desired.

BTW I didn’t perceive your last post to be argumentative at all. I always appreciate you sharing your opinions and suggestions, even if they might be different from mine.

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My impression is that overall, the Whispers are significantly better than the Oticons, too.

You mention a Restaurant program on the Whispers. There’s a music one as well, isn’t there? How many programs or “presets” are offered?

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@ziploc: FWIW, my theory is thus:

  1. The More1 NNS is set for 10dB, and is “loaded for bear”;
  2. It hears noise in the background (meaning sides and back) and says to itself “We can squelch that!”;
  3. Then the Speech Observation Officer steps up and says “Boys, you can’t squelch that - there be SPEECHES in there!”;
  4. The gunners inside the More1s say: "We took an oath to amplify Speech and to squelch Noise. There be no Noise here to suppress, but we’all gots plenty of SPEECH, and we can still amplify! Amplify all the Speeches you can find, and to the Devil with the rest! GIV’ER!;
  5. And … wah-LÀ! We got us a DIN in the middle of a CACOPHONY!

… is my best guess.

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it’s odd how often other people’s hearing aids classify my speech as noise…

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The first question I want to ask you is whether you feel that the Whisper gives you the exact same openness like the More does overall or not, especially in a noisy room where many people are talking. One possibility I can think of is that the More, in trying to preserve the openness that its open paradigm espouses, and especially in situations where there are all kinds of voice cues existing all around the room, it may try to preserve all the voice cues too hard and not drop any of them in favor of any particular one (primarily the front one) that it allows them to compete against each other and therefore make it a harder job for you to zoom in and focus on the one voice cue you want to listen to. Having too many voice cues competing all at once can be overwhelming to you for sure. If you’re in that situation often enough, maybe you can learn to sort them out better. But if it’s only a rare occasional thing, you won’t have the practice you need to make your brain hearing fit enough to be able to sort them out by itself without resorting to some kind of directionality help.

One thing I don’t now if you’ve tried out in that scenario or not yet, is to invoke the MoreSound Booster in the ON app. It’s supposed to give you a more directionality focus toward the front and reduce the sounds and babbles (other voices) on the sides and the back of you. If you didn’t try it then, I wonder if it might have helped you more in that situation. After all, that’s what the MoreSound Booster is designed for, to deal with exactly the kind of situation you were in yesterday.

I really don’t know if the Whisper puts any kind of directionality focus on the front to help you hear better or not, so that’s why I asked you earlier how “open” do you feel the Whisper is in that same situation. Did you feel like the Whisper allowed you to hear all the voices the same way the More did, to the point of not knowing how to zoom in and focus on a particular voice? Or did you feel that the Whisper seemed to know which voice you wanted to focus on and changed the balancing between the voices to favor the one you wanted you hear. If so, was the voice you wanted to hear in front of you usually because you may tend to turn your face toward the voice you want to hear to focus on it better?

@SpudGunner made a good point about maybe backing up on the max NNS value to 8 dB to see if it helps or not. But lacking the DIY ability to set up both to toggle back and forth, I’d still rather you had the 10 dB setup to try that out first in a very complex situation because those situations do warrant a 10 dB setup and it seems like your audi and the Oticon rep concur on this point. If the 10 dB weren’t going to be helpful in that situation no matter what, then it’s Oticon’s bad to make the 10 dB available but yet can’t be helpful to the users when they need it the most in the first place.

This reminds me of @abarsanti’s comments about how he thought the Philips HearLink 9030 was very good in doing speech in noise suppression with its DNN, probably even better than his OPN 1, but in the end he went with the More anyway because he felt like he’s willing to sacrifice that superior SIN performance from the HearLink if he can get back his openness that the More gives him. So the one thing I’m very curious about the Whisper is how “open” it really is, in less complex situations, and also in very complex situations. Almost all of the 3 or 4 Whisper trialers seem to have commented that the Whisper seems very open just like the Oticon open HAs. But I still wonder if you really pay attention to the “openness” between the Whisper and the More, whether you find them equally open or whether one is more open than the other.

This may have a bearing on perhaps why the Whisper seems to outperform the More in very complex SIN situations, if the More chooses to be more open at the expense of having a lesser performance, and the Whisper chooses to be more directional at the expense of being less open. Of course, this is only a hypothesis on my part, I’m not saying this as a matter-of-fact-ly at all. Only you guys can form this kind of opinion based on your first hand experience.

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In addition to Dynamic, I have Noise and Music. Restaurant wasn’t included on mine. I could get it added, I assume. What do you have?

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@happymach, there are only two program slots on the Whisper. One goes to the default “Dynamic “ program. For the other slot the user must choose only one of: restaurant, car, music, or , I think, one other option. I chose restaurant.

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@ziploc: Does @x475aws have different hardware, perhaps?