Oticon Intent Bluetooth LE Streaming Quality

Hearing Aids
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#1

Dr. Cliff mentioned in his recent review of the Oticon Intent that the streaming quality is way higher with a LE enabled phone compared to iphone MFi bluetooth. It’s at the 9 minute mark. I noticed that streaming quality compared to nice earbuds is generally pretty poor on hearing aids and am wondering if anyone knows anything more about this?

I’ve tried Philips hearing aids in the past because of my genetic RSHL and though I don’t currently use any, I know I will need to get some in the next few years and it’s exciting to stay on top of the new technology.

If the audio quality is really better it really makes me hope that iPhone will support new bluetooth LE protocols eventually, because I recently switched from Android.

#2

I have the Oticon Real and More aids, I have to have backup aids always available due to my hearing loss. I have the Samsung galaxy S23 phone which sounds much better tome than any of the iPhones i have owned in the past. Now do they sound better than ear buds I don’t have a clue as ear buds flat don’t work for me.
Also there is a difference between Bluetooth le and Bluetooth le auto, le auto is newer and much better and I wish my aids had it as my Samsung S23 has it.

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#3

I’m about to cross the 48-hour mark with new Oticon Intents. I haven’t done much if any streaming in that time, and will pay attention going forward and report back. I did have a long cell phone call last night with a friend and asked him about the sound quality on the receiving end. He said it was just fine. I have an iPhone 13 mini. I suspect the LE stuff may be on newer phones and I’m a long way from switching phones.

I will have three days of “speech in noise” in two weeks when some friends come in from abroad for a reunion and we do four restaurant meals, so I will be better able to judge the Intent’s performance across the spectrum of my uses.

Eliot

#4

@eliotb → I invite you to share your Intent’s personal experience on one of the 2 Intent announcement threads in this forum. I believe that you’re probably the first Intent user that I’m aware of on this forum. It’d be great to hear some personal anecdote after you’ve had some experience with it in noisy places, but I’m sure earlier on experience would be much appreciated as well.

I’ve seen doctor Cliff’s comment about how the BT LE audio experience on his Samsung S23 is substantially better than his MFI streaming experience on his iPhone. I’m not so sure how a hearing impaired person can really discern the fine subtleties in audio quality between different audio formats in the first place, in light of the limitations from the tiny receivers in their ability to reproduce good bass sounds to begin with.

To me, the main difference between what sounds good and what sounds not as good for an average hearing impaired person with the typical ski slope loss is in the ability of the receiver to produce the low sounds, due to its size limitation. The closer to normal hearing of a typical ski slope user can discern very well the inability of the receiver to reproduce the low frequency sounds faithfully. The HA receiver are good enough in reproducing the highs and mids, but what separates it from a bigger ear bud or a pair of headphone is mainly in the low frequency reproduction.

The main advantage of the BT LE audio is the LE part (low energy). I don’t have any doubt that it might also have a better audio format compared to MFI audio. But I have doubt that an average hearing challenged person might be able to tell a difference easily between the two. I suspect that Dr Cliff has a milder type of loss so maybe he can discern a difference better than the average HA wearer. But to hear him say that BT LE audio blows MFI audio out of the water is a (not very believable) surprise for me. I’m already happy enough with the MFI sound quality. I’m only not happy with the receiver’s ability to reproduce low frequency sounds well. But that’s the receiver’s physical limitation, not an MFI audio format limitation.

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#5

It’s more to do with Apple’s shocking quality control when it comes to releasing new iOS or devices with regards to accessibility and connectivity. The connectivity issues with iPhone 15 Pro models was an absolute fiasco and took three months to resolve with Apple engineers. Not what you would expect for a company that is experienced with Made for iPhone connectivity so I’m glad that Oticon is starting to provide more options for better connecting to other devices including LE Bluetooth.

I’m being fitted with Oticon Intent in the next three weeks so I’ll update the forum too with regards to my experience using rechargeable for the first time and compared with my Oticon Reals.

#6

Glad to offer my thoughts. I also laid on one of my once-in-a-decade visits to movie theater as well, but at the fitting I had the audiologist turn off the telecoil setting that had been opened in the Real 1s because I go to large public venues so rarely. And I’m not inclined to buy a new phone just to try out the super-duper streaming of this BT LE stuff. That can wait a few years until we make a phone upgrade again.

With those caveats, I’ll report back after I take my visitors to several restaurants during their visit and see the movie.

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#7

Yeah it was my understanding as well that sound quality was due to the hardware of the receivers. That’s why I was so surprised to hear him say that, assuming the MFi audio quality didn’t just get worse somehow! Hopefully streaming quality can get better, as that’s one thing I’m really hoping for before I need to switch to full-time hearing aids in the next few years. My sense of music quality has been spoiled by fancy airpods.

Chances are very low that there’s someone else comparing a new android and iphone sound quality on the Intents and posting things online, but I thought I’d check. Always exciting to see what newfangled things are happening

#8

Just FYI, prompted by Volusiano’s request, I streamed a series of different tunes from my iPhone to my hearing aids last night. I was impressed at the clarity, though a lot of bass was missing. Mid-range and upper range tones were very good, better than I expected. It’s hard to compare with the Real 1s which I no longer have, particularly that I really never streamed too much with any of my prior hearing aids.

There were occasional random moments when the quality seemed to waver/fade just a bit, but in the main, I was really pleased. I picked a series of tunes with which I was very familiar as a musician and long-time devotee of the artists – tunes I have picked apart from the standpoint of the various instruments and vocal parts. As I mentioned, all that was missing to any noticeable degree were some of the bass lines. I can’t imagine a tiny speaker could really handle much bass anyway.

It was also not clear to me if I was listening via MiFi or LE. I have an iPhone 13 mini so someone more versed in these things than I will know that.

I’ll add this in when I do my review in a couple of weeks.

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#9

It would be MFi if you are using an iPhone :slightly_smiling_face: Glad the Intents seem to be streaming well.

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#10

how about day by day quality sound?
you hear better? is the sound you hear more clear?
thanks

#11

I can’t really answer that very well at the moment as I have little interaction with folks other than my wife, and i always have to turn down my aids to get her voice to where it’s manageable! I will be with friends for several days in about two weeks and I will have a far better idea of the performance. I will say that going from Real 1 to Intent 1 was not filled with any “oh, that’s what that sounds like” moments. It seems to be an incremental change. Some of that may be due to the fact my hearing decline has, for the moment, appeared to stabilize somewhat.

#12

While Oticon was able to eke out an additional 2 dB of SNR on speech for the Intent compared to the Real (from 10 dB max on the Real to 12 dB max on the Intent) thanks to the new DNN 2.0, if you’re rarely in a very loud and noisy situation, this improvement would not have much effect on you anyway.

Then it also depends on your audible contrast threshold performance (if you ever had it measured, most people have not because it’s a relatively new thing). If you have a good ACT value (lower number), then the 10 dB max noise reduction in the Real is probably already enough for you in the first place.

The 4D Sensor on the Intent might help vary the SNR speech contrast envelope more or less to make the balancing of the sound scene more accurate based on your listening intent, assuming that the sensor algorithm guesses your intent correctly in the first place. But that’s all you get from the 4D Sensor, a better balanced sound scene between your need for speech SNR contrast and other sounds. Maybe this will help you notice other non-speech sounds better than before because they’re might not be suppressed unnecessarily like before with this added intelligence.

So if the Real has already performed well for you in complex environments, the Intent will probably seem like just an incremental improvement, if even that at all. But for folks who have worse hearing loss who still struggle with the Real in complex environments in terms of understanding speech, then the improvements on the Intent may be more significant for them.

Because the DNN 2.0 claims to have been trained with more “diverse” sound scenes, whatever that means, it may result in the “quality” of the sounds to seem more accurate than before, although that’s a fairly subjective thing depending on the person. At least Oticon showed measurable improvements in a number of metrics when they compared the Intent against the Real. How it translates to real life depends on the person and their level of hearing loss, I guess.

Dr. Cliff Olson said that normally he doesn’t recommend upgrading from a previous generation to the next generation of model because most of the times, it’s only just incremental. But he’s willing to make an exception to the Intent. But I think that’s also considering the fact that the Intent has BT LE Audio support while the Real doesn’t. Without this BT LE Audio addition, I’m not sure if he would have made an exception in his recommendation with just the 4D sensor and the DNN 2.0.

#13

I’m about a week into my trial of the Oticon Intents (with an Iphone 15 Pro). While I was a bit disappointed that the streaming quality wasn’t significantly better than my trial last year with the Reals (didn’t purchase) there is SOME improvement. I still get the occasionaly drop out or glitch when I am outside (inside is almost flawless) and today I was streaming audio from my Spotify playlists while riding my bike in noisy traffic. There were only a few glitchy moments and those disappeared when I moved the iphone from my front pocket to the breast pocket of my jacket - so it seems it is mostly an antenna power/distance issue. My only complaint is that I don’t seem to be able to raise the streaming volume as much as I would like, especially in noisy situations. The volume is definately lower than regular earphones/buds. Adjusting the volume sliders on the app doesn’t make a difference to streaming volume and I don’t have the hearing safety feature turned on in the Iphone settings. I’ll discuss this with my hearing aid fitter later this week to see if it is a built-in Oticon safety feature or just a limitation. Other than that I’m pleased with the Intents so far.

#14

You should be able to ask your HCP to increase the streaming volume by raising it to a higher value from the default. See the screenshot below on Phone Loudness for reference. You can also reduce the M(ic) Relative to Phone volume down to a lower level as well so that the environmental sounds don’t interfere with your streaming audio as much, as also seen in the screenshot below.

Adjusting the volume slider on the app might have a combination effect of changing the streaming audio volume and the hearing aids’ mic volume in unison, although sometimes I have seen 2 separate sliders in the MFI menu (and also in the Oticon app), one for the mics and one for the streaming content. I don’t remember exactly when both volume sliders become available though. That’s something you might have to experiment yourself.

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#15

I’m streaming audio using Intents but on an Android phone. I can get the streaming volume really loud using the volume on the phone. However, the only way I can eliminate traffic noise is to mute the the external sounds using the mute button. The volume slider for me only controls the external mic level, it does not affect streaming volume. Have you tried using this to reduce traffic noise?

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#16

I think the phone option as shown on Genie 2 works for either iPhone or Android phone.

I thought you said that your only complaint is that you can’t raise the streaming volume as loud as you want, but now you’re saying that you can raise it to really loud with the phone volume buttons. So I’m confused as to what problem you’re complaining about.

Because the Intent only has 1 button on each aid, and it’s rechargeable, Oticon relegated the Mute functionality to the phone app and you aren’t given any option using the HAs’ buttons to Mute. That functionality now (usually a long press) has been reserved for the Shutdown function. Otherwise, for disposable battery versions, it would have been available for Mute because a shutdown for disposable battery versions is simply to open the battery door.

So I take it that you can the down button on the left aid of the Intent to reduce the mic level (or the right one to increase the mic level), but for Mute, you must go to the phone app to mute, right? The volume buttons on the phone is probably for the streaming volume then, and not the mic volume. But don’t you have 2 sliders on the phone app, one for the streaming audio and one for the mics?

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#17

I think you are confusing me (OldMusicGuy) with Stephen_H. I’m the one that can raise the streaming volume very high.

#18

Oops, indeed I am. Thanks for the clarification. I should have paid more attention to the names.

#19

I discovered that I could modify the streaming sound directly through my music app (in my case Spotify but also available on Apple music). I played around with the various preset options plus the sliders and found for me that the “lounge” option produced the best results, but that probably vary for each person. Bottom line was that the quality of the music was much better, richer than the basic settings on my Intents and in the Companion app. Give it a try.

#20

I believe it was a different user who said they were able to get their streaming sound really loud using their phone buttons. My volume is limited but apparently that can be adjusted by my fitter, who I am seeing today.