" the leash tends to BOING outta my ears,"
Bluejay -
I’ve trimmed my “leashes” down to length with a nail clipper - take a little at a time as you can’t add it back if you cut too much off!
The OPN leashes “collar” bump around the back of the receiver irritated my ear canal though so the Audi slid the collar (and attached leash) off.
I’ve never looked back…
AHH! That is exactly the tip I need here! I was afraid to nip my leash for fear I’d get it to a short stubby length that would JAB my ear somehow. I absolutely LOVE the leash! It helps me guide the dome into my canal as well as remove the aids without pulling on the receiver every day. I also think I need my ear wire re-shaped and shortened. Ideally, just following the wire down in front of the ears with your index finger should ensure a QUICK insertion of the dome. But I’m definitely wiggle-waggling, twisting and turning these wire/leashes like a corkscrew to actually get the (L) power dome to seat right in my ears.
I find all’s GOOD when I put my hands over my ears and there is not one bit of feedback at all. This is another thing I love about the Opn flexible dome vs my old Agil Pro hard-case mold. FIT. It’s critical.
Thanks so much for your advice! I will get my clippers out and see where we go with this…
Think I’ll seal the deal soon with these, might be testing another run with widex or siemens, but will go with c-shell and 100dB once decided. No matter what people say about their “disappointment” they still sound better than anything out there and get the job done better… no matter how close they get to the marketing promise…
I think the disappointment is due to the marketing hype that set up the expectation way too high and incorrectly, especially on the noise reduction which makes people compare its noise reduction against the old traditional way. But you’re right that it still sounds better than many things out there.
After having had it for about 6 weeks now, and after understanding how/where they apply noise reduction better now, based on reading up on their white paper and watching their seminar on audiologyonline.com, which does a great job of explaining how they apply noise reduction differently than the traditional way, I found my experience as follows:
I’m not overwhelmed in noisy environments anymore. I think this is just due to the gradual brain hearing adjustment of getting used to the noisy environments as I wear these HAs more often for longer. The ultimate goal here is not expecting the OPN to reduce noise for you. The ultimate goal is to let your brain learn to tune out the noise for you. The same is also true in less noisy environment but there’s still a few nagging static noises, like fan noise or road noise. I initially was very annoyed by it but now my brain is also learning to tune it out.
Now that I’m not overwhelmed in noisy environments, and now that I understand better where and how the noise reduction is supposed to be applied, I no longer look for noise reduced ambience as the end result. Instead, I specifically only look for “clearly defined” speech as the end result I try to focus on. Even if it’s very noisy around me, as long as I can still understand what’s being said in between all the noise, I would consider that “clearly defined” speech as successful attainment of the ultimate goal that Oticon set out to do. I think where Oticon marketing went wrong is trying to oversell noise reduction. What they should really sell is clearly defined speech despite being in a noisy environment. That is the heart of their signal processing strategy. Noise reduction is not the end game. Noise reduction is only as a means to the end game, and the end game is clearly defined speech. Wrong marketing focus, Oticon!
Now that I understand that they use the rear half of the hearing plane as the noise estimate to filter and generate clearly defined speech for the front half, I have lower expectation of being able to hear speech coming from the rear as well. If it’s loud spoken speech, I still expect to hear it because they have a Voice Activity Detector that’s supposed to freeze the Balance and Noise Removal modules to preserve the speech information even in the rear half of the sound plane. But if it’s soft spoken speech, I don’t expect to hear it because it gets blended into the rear half of the sound plane and becomes part of the noise estimate. There’s nothing I can do about it, but at least I understand enough now to lower my expectation in such situation. An example of this is like when you sit in the front row of a noisy car at freeway speed, and there’s a soft spoken female voice in the back row. If the female voice in the back row is not soft spoken, I would expect to hear it OK, although I may have to turn up the volume a notch or two or three. But if it’s soft spoken, I’d consider it lost to the noise.
Justin, what connectivity can I expect between Oticon’s Opn-1s and my Android phone and tablet?
I’m still not happy with any kind of noise reduction on these Opns. When I shop at Costco, WholeFoods, Trader Joes, et al, I find the ambient noise SO LOUD that I simply can’t hear the cashier. Maybe my brain will learn how to sort out the human voice from the conundrum around it … but WHY, oh WHY does the onus fall on ME and my poor overworked brain? With my old Agil Pros, I put them in Program #2 (for “NOISY” environments!) and voila! I can hear the human voice from the distracting ambient noise A-OK. It’s just discouraging. And what did Oticon say 4 years ago about that benefit, I wonder? Probably something like, “You’ll never have to work hard again to understand speech in a noisy place! In fact, your lazy brain can just go “DUUUUUUHHHH!” and you’ll still hear absolutely A-OK!” Now which world would YOU rather belong to.
Yeah, I’m still grousing about basic functionality on these aids that I’ll likely buy anyway. But note to Oticon Marketing: Please don’t tell me that my old brain will magically LEARN how to separate out speech from a BANGING, cacophonous environment around me.
I hear you, 1Bluejay, about your dissatisfaction with Oticon’s new approach to noise reduction. It’d be interesting to see how many other HA mfgs will join the Oticon “Open paradigm” bandwagon, and how many will refute that paradigm as a flawed paradigm and continue to develop noise reduction the traditional way. I guess time will tell how many users will buy into the OPN HA and paradigm and continue to keep them instead of returning them. So far I haven’t seen too many reported returns yet. But it’s probably still too new to tell. Um Bongo did mention that some of his (or hers?) patients who are a particular brand of HA (Unitron?) don’t convert to the OPN well.
What disturbs me the most is why Oticon can’t do both. Obviously they were able to do the traditional noise reduction just fine like everyone else before, apparent from the Agil Pros that 1Bluejay has. So why can’t they continue to offer this same technology, on top of the new technology, to help patients have a more seamless transition from the old paradigm to the new paradigm?
Yeah, Oticon can claim that they offer a directional program in their OPN HAs. But I’ve tried this directional mode and it doesn’t do the same level of noise reduction as I’m used to before with my older HAs. Instead it adds static floor noise to the directional program.
I would like to hear from others on their experience with Oticon’s directional program specifically. Does it seem to do an effective job on noise reduction on the OPN as your old HAs do?
I had some tweaks done at my last fitting that seemed to help at least with ambient noises. The main program was tweaked to be less aggressive with the “open” approach since my main complaint was that ambient sounds were actually being amplified. I’m still getting used to the new program tweaks, but I think they made somewhat of a positive improvement with speech in noise. I had 2 noisy Christmas parties this past weekend that I got through fairly well hearing-wise. I have a separate noise program that I think I will ask to be turned into a more traditional directional program and see how that compares to the general program when there is noise in the background (which is basically always for me).
Thanks for sharing on this, Tony. And glad to hear that the tweaks seems to help you on the noise issue.
Do you know specifically what the tweaks were? You mentioned that the main program was tweaked to be less aggressive with the open approach. Exactly what does that mean? Which parameter did the audi tweak specifically?
And it sounds like the tweaks you had wasn’t by having a traditional directional program, because you’re saying that you want to try the traditional directional program next. I would love to hear your opinion once you have tried to the OPN traditional directional mode to see how well it works for you. Obviously as I mentioned before, it doesn’t seem to work well for me, so I’d love to compare notes to see if it’s just me or if other people think the same way. Thanks.
I have the programming kit which Buyhear uses to remotely adjust the aids so I can view the screen real-time for the different settings that are being adjusted. There’s an option where they can choose low, medium or high for how aggressively “noise” is handled. There’s several different options to be honest. My prior setting was set at “high” and now they are at “medium.” He made that adjustment after I complained that ambient sounds were being amplified. And correct, I do not have a directional program set up right now, but I plan to ask for one in to be set up.
Thanks, this is helpful.
In my regular program 1, with the 5 preferences I gave the software upfront, the noise setting in mine is set to medium in the first place.
When I complained to my audi about the ambient noise, she consulted with the Oticon trainer and the trainer advised her to have a second program for me where the noise is set to max to address the ambient noise issue. So it seems interesting that your audi decided to go from high back down to medium on the noise reduction setting in trying to improve the noise reduction. I think the difference there is that the low noise reduction setting is for a -5db reduction level, medium is -7db and max is -9db noise reduction.
It seems counter-intuitive that your audi went from high to medium noise reduction to try to reduce the ambient noise for you, because high noise reduction setting means maximum -9db noise reduction. But if for some reason it seems to work better for you then that’s what counts, I guess. And it sounds like you said it seems to work better for you now. anyway
As for my case, my program 1 (with medium noise reduction setting) and program 2 (with max noise reduction setting) doesn’t seem to make any noticeable difference for me. The most noticeable difference to me is that for some reason, the ambient noises don’t seem to bother me as much as initially anymore. I still hear them like before, it just that they no longer seem overwhelming or bothersome to me. My brain seems to now accept them as more normal now. So now I’m trying to focus more on whether I can understand speech in noisy situation or not, instead of having less noise in noisy situation.
But I agree that if you’re overwhelmed by the noise then you can’t focus on understanding the speech. You need to somehow overcome the noise issue first.
With regards to Oticon’s claim that it processes data 50 times faster than their previous platform. I know computer chips have made tremendous progress, but that really is an incredible leap. Any idea how they did that? They give a little info about their computer chip, but that info is not readily available for other hearing aids.
It may be that the previous versions (unspecified) did not try to maximize quantification despite the processor power to do so. If that were the case then a doubling or quintupling of the processor speed might allow such a claim. The same logic applies to the processing algorithm employed. If the software is more efficient it contributes to the 50x claim. I say this without a iota of real evidence. And I doubt it will be forthcoming.
The newer device has 11 cores, vs the 2 in the previous generation - 8 of which process sound. It’s the number of simultaneous operations done on 1.4v which is the clever part.
I’m not sure of the actual specs of the die layer, but it’s claimed that Oticon have basically designed the chip with the end product in mind from the white-board up. That means they aren’t making any generic compromises or using standardised layouts, so I’m guessing the performance leap is partially due to improvements in layer technology and partially the engineering freedom to design a bespoke chip for the purpose.
Thanks! Interesting that they used an odd number of cores. From the research I’ve done, I also find it interesting that they use a larger “process” than most modern cpus. (65nm instead of 14-16nm for newer smart phones and computers) So it sounds like a lot of the increase is because they weren’t really paying attention to processing power before, but now that they are using a new algorithm that can utilize (and needs) more processing power, they’ve stepped up their game. Figuring out anything about the cpus other manufacturers use is like divining tea leaves. I assume Signia uses a 6 core cpu, but that’s an assumption based on their Rexton product going from QuadCore to TruCore (6c). I wonder if hearing aid hardware won’t eventually “commoditize” like it has on computers and smart phones where they all use standardized cpus and product differentiation will be software and other features. Also wondering as hearing aids and smartphones seem to be developing a symbiotic relationship if some of the cpu load (and hence battery demand) couldn’t be shifted to the smart phone. Just rambling. Will be interesting to see where the industry goes.
Just guessing but 1 core for IoT etc; 2 core main CPU; 8 DSP.
65nm should be way less costly to get manufactured and would have greater energy requirements.
According to the Oticon white paper on the Velox Platform built for the OPN, there are 7 cores used for sound processing and 2 cores for wireless processes and 2 cores for MCU. There are 3 ICs, one for DSP (9 cores), one for the Twinlinks, and one Front End.
The 50x performance increase claim is compared specifically to their Inium Sense platform which powers the Alta2, Nera2 and Nia2 lines. They said that the Velox platform operates at close to 500 MIPS and 1,200 MOPS which is 50x more programmability compared to their Inium Sense. I read that the Signia Primax (currently their top of the line) can do 250 MIPS (compared to 500 MIPS on the OPN). The Signia Primax chip has 20 million transistors. The Oticon OPN has 64 million transistors.
They say a typical HA takes 0.02 MIPS to sample the input at 20KHz within one channel with 1 gain applied, just to give an idea of the amount of processing power it takes to do this. They say that the OpenSound Navigator (the DSP algorithm used on the OPN) uses about 3 MIPS at all times.
Razer Mamba?
^deathadder elite 
