Excellent! I’ve yet to see an AuD at the VA, or the private Oticon Authorized clinics even open the MSI screen!
I’ll go one further than that, for me it just creates more distortion, and artifacts.
The settings of the MSI, in my case are next to useless, and until I turned off MSI, I was never comfortable with the Mores.
Without MSI I’m enjoying More with my More!
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Some people just prefer them to be ‘less switchy/processed’ - this is often why the Bernafon is a better choice, especially for more experienced hearing aid wearers.
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Perfect description, Stephen, thank you!
Too bad the VA in the USA doesn’t carry Bernafon, but the Mores are very acceptable without the “switchy/processed” MSI applied.
When the time comes, I have every Intention of applying the same settings to the Intent to get More Real joy!!
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So you finally upgraded from the OPN 1 to the Intent 1, @Volusiano?
I do see that the maximum Neural Noise Suppression on Intent 1 is 12 dB, whereas it is 10 dB on Real 1 (also, I don’t think there’s a “very complex” sound environment option).
I’m still confused about one thing: the ACT settings only work with the Intent 1, right?
I think I might be able to finally get the Intent 1 this year with my new health insurance after all, since I have a very reasonable max out of pocket amount of $1275 for individual in this new plan that allows me to buy hearing aids. I’d have to start looking for in-network HCPs to find out more what they offer first.
Yes, it looks like Oticon has been able to eke out another 2 dB more of Neural Noise Suppression on the Intent compared to the Real, so now it can go up to as high as 12 dB. It looks like the 5 environments haven’t changed from the Real to the Intent. They are Very Simple, Simple, Moderate, Complex and Very Complex. The MoreSound IntellAigence interface for the Intent is graphically a little more fancy for the Intent, but they really still just have the same parameters, with the Sensor Technology option being the only new item for the Intent.
But the Real 3 of course is subjected to crippled limitations on the capabilities, for example, it only has 3 level of resolution for environments: Simple, Moderate, and Complex, while the Real 1 has 5 environments as mentioned above. Of course, the Real 3 is also limited to 0 dB Neural Noise Suppression for Easy, and only 4 and 6 dB for Difficult (vs up to 10 dB in the Real 3 for Difficult). And no adjustment options for the Virtual Outer Ear and Sound Enhancer.
Nevertheless, as far as ACT goes, both the Real (any tier) and the Intent (any tier) settings seem to be driven by the ACT value. But note that the lower the Tier you go, the less available capabilities and options you have available that can be set or driven by ACT. Do note that the Intent now comes with 4 tier levels, unlike the OPN, OPN S, More and Real, which come in 3 tier levels. The Intent 4 is so limited in its capabilities that there’s really no option available to be driven by the ACT value anyway.
Other than the Intent and the Real, the other older models like More, OPN S, OPN, etc, don’t seem to be driven by ACT from the MoreSound (or OpenSound) Intelligence settings, even though ACT is still allowed to be set and chosen as an option for these models. I don’t really know if their gains are affected by ACT at all either.
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Excuse me if my question is impolite. Don’t Americans make enough money to buy hearing aids without insurance?
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That’s an interesting observation. Simply put, no. For the average blue collar worker trying to raise a family and all associated costs a $7000 pair of hearing aids is a lot. Thanks to this forum we have options that help tremendously to make them affordable.
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My Audi says what the manufacturer advertises as maximum neural suppression is not the same as what you actually get. The actual value is around 6.5 dB for most hearing aids. I need a minimum of 8db to hear properly. We’ll see. I get my Intent 1s in a month.
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Oticon uses floating noise reduction - the louder the noise, the stronger the noise reduction. The setting you’re talking about only specifies the upper limit of the noise canceling strength.
No.
Different Americans make different amounts of money, so really the answer is that it depends. But hearing aids are not a one time expenditure as new technology is constantly being introduced. So, repetitive upgrades make it quite costly in the long run. Finally, heading impairment is largely a condition of aging. Many people have less money available when they’re retired than when they were working.
The US does not provide the services that many other countries provide either without cost or with significant subsidies. Especially in the area of health care, what services Americans have available varies widely.
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Thank you for answer! And one more question. Do deaf people in the United States experience hidden or overt discrimination in hiring or during work? This also affects salary levels and the ability to buy new hearing aids.
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You should probably start a new thread to discuss these things just so that we won’t be too far off topic on this thread. But while I’m writing this post here already, I’ll just post a short answer about it. My family has a hereditary issue with hearing loss, so 2 of my youngest siblings were born deaf. There are always overt discrimination in any society against disabled people, but I think in America, there are laws that help protect disabled people seeking work, or some of the services they’re entitled to because of their disabilities (like having a sign language interpreter). Deafness (not just hard of hearing) is considered a disability in America.
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Oticon aids, ever since the OPN, has always been about specifying the maximum noise reduction, which doesn’t mean that that value is always applied no matter what. Oticon has always tried to apply the correct value that is deemed appropriate for the complexity (or simplicity) of the environment. But it’s definitely possible to get up to 10 dB noise suppression in the Real, and 12 dB noise suppression on the Intent (if you have the Tier 1 models of those). But you probably would have to be in an exceedingly noisy place before that level of noise suppression is kicked in.
However, your level of hearing loss, as well as your ACT value (if you can manage to get it tested), or your manual selection in the MoreSound Intelligence for what is Easy and Difficult environments to you, will affect the level of noise suppression, and how early (or how late) the extra level noise suppression will kick in to help you with the noise. So you “can” push the max noise suppression level to kick in sooner if you’re telling it that you need A LOT of help by specifying that all 5 environment levels, including Very Simple would be in the Difficult category for you. And also set the max neural noise suppression to the max available value instead of leaving it at the default value. But I wouldn’t start out doing that right away. I would start out with the defaults that Genie 2 suggests and only go up incrementally if you’re not satisfied with the default help values.
Your audi is over-simplifying in telling you how Oticon noise suppression works by suggesting that everybody only gets 6.5 dB worth of noise suppression no matter what.
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My Audi says that intent is explicitly not covered by any insurance. Oticon made this decision so that they help hearing aid dispensers make higher profit because other the other models that are covered by insurance have very small profit margins.
Are other people hearing the same thing? I can buy one pair with my coverage but apparently not the intent model.
Sounds like your audiologist is trying to make extra money. I just noticed that the INTEND is already showing on the oticon site as going to be on the VA contract c9me May 1. Maybe that is true for your insurance provider but i do not believe Oticon is doing that asa way to make private audiologist extra money.
If possible i would shop around
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The dB of noise supression that manufacturers measure in ideal lab conditions and then market is not the same as the dB of noise supression that users get in their real day-to-day environments.
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Thanks Neville!
DaveL
Thanks for the clarification. It does make sense that measurements in ideal lab conditions tend to not be so in non-ideal day-to-day real life. But relatively speaking, an improved measurement in the lab should translate to an improvement in real life, even if the real life absolute number will never actually be as good as the lab number.
For example, with the Real, it was measured to be 10 dB max noise suppression in the lab, but in real life, let’s say that people only could only get as much as 7 dB out of it (this is just a made up number for the sake of argument). Then with the Intent, they were able to get an additional 2 dB in max noise suppression measured in the lab (12 dB now instead of 10). Then in real life, it’s most likely that people can now get more than 7 dB noise suppression on the Intent compared to what they had with the Real. Maybe they can get 9 dB now for the Intent. The point is that the improvement as measured in the lab should translate over to real life, even if the real life measurement (if it can be measured) might always be lower than the lab measurement.
Yes, one would think.
Depending on how they are choosing to measure it in the lab and how well that translates to the real world. And noting that they are typically measuring for a closed fit not an open fit.
I do absolutely believe each new release brings incremental speech in noise improvements, it’s just hard to say precisely what they are and for which types of acoustic coupling. I saw one really nice real world assessment presented at a conference in which four people with iPads went out into real world situations and took turns speaking what was on their screen and identifying what words the others were saying, so they were all acting as listeners and as target speakers for controlled lists of words. But I haven’t seen the paper published, which is unfortunate.
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