Oticon Intent user review

[Reginald]

@Stephen_H

but when I step outside the BT starts getting glitchy because the apartments nearby have cell towers on the roof and that seems to interfere with the BT outdoors for several blocks around.

That’s not why, outside you don’t have surfaces for BT to reflect off [it just gets dispersed], it’s an issue with many BT devices [especially Low Energy ones]. It might sound crazy but some people wear hats with wide brim to help with this.

[lewbobski]

Tinfoil hats with the wide brim?

[Reginald]

You joke, but that’s what people actually do, they line the brim with tinfoil

[lewbobski]

I am trying them again. Streaming quality doesn’t seem to change when I turn LF audio on and off. I will see how phones calls do with LE audio off and have to use the phone mic.

[Stephen_H]

That’s something I’ve never considered, but I guess it makes sense. You would think though with the importance that many of us place on blue tooth connectivity, that hearing aid and mobile phone manufacturers would work harder at improving the signal strength or receiving ability. Although I don’t own a pair I haven’t heard complaints about Apple’s Earpods having the same glitchy connection when outdoors. What do they do that works?

[WhiteHat]

@Stephen_H

haven’t heard complaints about Apple’s Earpods having the same glitchy connection when outdoors. What do they do that works?

They don’t have batteries that last all day. So their power constraints aren’t the same.

WH

[flashb1024]

@Stephen_H

What do they do that works?

What @WhiteHat said, and to add to that, they have more room to accommodate a larger BT antenna.

[Reginald]

Aren’t earpods actually smaller volume wise than most HAs?
I think the issues stem from the fact that manufacturers don’t put enough importance on streaming.
Also, even if it doesn’t look like from the outside, we’re still dealing with slowly evolving legacy hardware designs when it comes to hearing devices.

[tenkan]

Here’s some really useless facts I found, just to keep the thread going.

https://www.howtogeek.com/why-is-it-called-bluetooth/?utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=HTG-202404281500&utm_source=HTG-NL&user=aWtreTA3QGhvdG1haWwuY29t&lctg=7b788fac5db4698ac4d7bc63123831d92f4aae7ef56f544763b69641c2592d51

[DaveL]

Life was simpler when the option was to increase volume when I wanted to hear better.
The way my hearing aids were set up auto 4.0 didn’t help. It didn’t work because of mistakes made.

[flashb1024]

@Reginald

Aren’t earpods actually smaller volume wise than most HAs?
I think the issues stem

I quoted you up to the word “stem”, because it appears that’s where the antenna lives:

That’s from the ifixit teardown.

[brec]

@Volusiano

Oticon Genie 2’s ability to guess and set the MoreSound Intelligence DNN values based solely on the audiogram is not very accurate and can be more accurate with the input from the ACT test result.

And DIYers can guess and set an ACT value so that Genie 2 can guess and set the MoreSound Intelligence values. As you may have noticed, if an ACT value is supplied in Personalization, the questionnaire part of Personalization is disabled.

[e1405]

I am trialing the Oticon Intent 1. So far, so good. I will post my first impressions in a couple of days. Something I noted (sorry if I missed this) is that the Companion App now has two EQ options: “sound equalizer” and “streaming equalizer”. Sound EQ applies to ambient sound and has a range of ± 6 dB for Low, Mid, and High., while the streaming EQ ranges from -12 to + 6 dB.

Although late to the game, it is a very welcoming move from Oticon. I tried the sound equalizer while playing my acoustic guitar, and it is effective, to the point where I think it could help improve the overall experience for some of us having problems with music.

Sound EQ

Streaming EQ

[Volusiano]

Thanks for sharing this. I didn’t know about the Sound Equalizer (I knew about the streaming equalizer), so that’s a new breath of fresh air to have in the Companion app like you said.

[Luga]

Thanks for posting. Missed this in the latest update. I can confirm it also works on the Real 1’s.

[Diver50]

Thank you for the good review. Please update as soon as you have experience in a noisy environment. Was the background noise suppressed at all? How was speech? Thank you in advance.

[OldMusicGuy]

@Diver50

Please update as soon as you have experience in a noisy environment. Was the background noise suppressed at all? How was speech?

I have been trialling the Oticon Intents (and chose them). The speech in noise is noticeably better for me than ReSound Nexias or Phonak Lumitys. Background noise is still present but the voices of people I was speaking with were much clearer. I used them in some challenging environments where I have always had issues in the past and my speech comprehension was much improved.

[Volusiano]

@OldMusicGuy

I have been trialling the Oticon Intents (and chose them). The speech in noise is noticeably better for me than ReSound Nexias or Phonak Lumitys. Background noise is still present but the voices of people I was speaking with were much clearer. I used them in some challenging environments where I have always had issues in the past and my speech comprehension was much improved.

Thanks for sharing this, @OldMusicGuy . Your observation in bold above is probably the difference between using beamforming to suppress the background noise and using the DNN to suppress background noise.

There is no control on how much background noise can be suppressed in beamforming. The suppression by beamforming is just fixed and aggressive by the nature of the beamforming technology itself. But with the DNN, the suppression can be more flexible and selective between sound components. The DNN doesn’t “block out” the background noise like the beamforming does. It just reduces the volume level of the background noise relative to the volume level of the speeches (the term that they use is “rebalancing”). That way, they can still allow in background noise, albeit not at an intrusive level anymore, but at a subdued level that nevertheless still has a presence.

I don’t know this for a fact, but I see a possibility they can probably also play game to elevate the volume of the speech more than what it really is at, just so that they don’t have to subdue the background noise so much as to lose its presence altogether (like with beamforming), in a situation where the contrast level might have to subdue the noise to almost nothing if the speech volume were to be kept fixed as is.

With a DNN implementation, there’s a lot of flexibility in how a sound scene can be rebalanced, yet still retain the openness of the open paradigm.

[user990]

@Volusiano

There is no control on how much background noise can be suppressed in beamforming.

I thought that’s what Noise Tracker II adjustments did for the Resound products.

[user990]

@Volusiano

I don’t know this for a fact, but I see a possibility they can probably also play game to elevate the volume of the speech more than what it really is at, just so that they don’t have to subdue the background noise

That seems pretty close to what Resound does with their Environmental Optimizer II, although it’s used with their Noise Tracker II which reduces background noise.

https://pro.resound.com/en-us/research/features-explained/environmental-optimizer