Oticon More 1 Firmware 1.3.0 update - Hands Free

Hearing Aids
#21

The lack of documentation is well known by a lot of us Oticon hearing aid users. I have complained to my audiologist who always passes my complaints and likes on to the VA Oticon rep that supports the clinic I use. A number of my emails to my audiologist has gone as high as the corporate level, but very little seems to be done about it. There are a good bit of information on the Oticon.com website if you go to the very bottom and and click on the Download center, but even then it seems to be mostly pointed at the audiologist and not the end user.

that a look at this link

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#22

I visited my audiologist yesterday (UK) but no sign of a firmware update! I have been wearing More1 since March last year.

#23

More than likely he hasn’t downloaded and installed Gene2 2022.1

2 Likes
#24

my question is, the new possibility of hands free is an option or a must ? I meen you can choose either to have a conversation with the classic mode by listening from your hearing aids and talk to your Iphone and either a complete hands free call, or you have only the possibility of hands free calls ?
I tested some Phonak p90 R that they work only for hands free conversations that i didn’t like because the person that you’re talking to cannot hear you if you speak ina a normal tone or when you speek from open places like road with traffic etc.

#25

My experience is that it is an option.

You can turn off the HA mics by setting Input Options to Off in the Hearing Devices menu

When you turn the Input Option to Off, that seems to stick from one call to the next and survive a reboot.

I have not tested the HA mics in noisy places yet. While in a quiet setting, it seems to do ok and no one has yet said something is weird or that they can’t hear me. YMMV.

Hope that helps.

3 Likes
#26

For veterans that get their aids from the VA, Oticon claims it is the VA that doesn’t update there software for fitting hearing aids except at the signing of the new contracts. But of course is could be that both sides are saying it isn’t my fault.

#27

Not while on a call!!!

#28

When streaming phone calls your phone is essentially on speaker anyway.
I don’t see what difference having HA mics on would be, same ambient noise.
And don’t forget it’s Bluetooth, so more that 15-20’ you’re gonna lose it, it’s not cellular.

Mike

#29

That’s correct. Once you are on a call you can’t change mics. You have to decide up front.

1 Like
#30

Like I said:

I don’t see what difference having HA mics on would be, same ambient noise.

Mike

#31

Yeah…I also wonder what the real value is.

Before the iPhone 13 the iPhone mic is able to do noise cancellation and it’s unclear if or how that works in the HAs. Also the MFi wireless communication between the HAs and the iPhone is subject to interference from other signals.

Because of this I would expect the iPhone mic to do a much better job in many situations than the HAs.

That, coupled with the lack of ability to answer a call from the HAs probably makes the value marginal.

#32

The other thing you can do to check that the firmware update has been made is to turn off your iPhone and then turn it back on again. That seems to update the firmware version.

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#33

While this is common sense thinking, I can’t help but think that Apple must have done their due diligence to design the mic on their iPhone to be more uni-directional and only pick up the sound from the zone that’s limited to the nearby area where the mouth is placed relative to the iPhone only, as to subdue the ambient noise as much as possible by only picking up the sound in the close proximity and not all the ambient sound all around.

The More mics (there are 2 of them on each hearing aid) are designed to be omni-directional most of the times to pick up everything, and only unidirectional when selected as such in a program. So if you’re in the default P1 which is usually omni-directional pickup, the unprocessed wide open field you hear from the More mics may be what your caller hear on their end, instead of the fully processed sound that you hear from your receiver.

But that’s just a guess and I don’t really know which sound the iOS protocol is designed to pick up, the unprocessed sound or the fully processed sound. But somehow, I think it’s more likely the unprocessed sound because if it were the processed sound, then a Mute in the ON app by you (to hear the streaming caller better without the ambient sound) would have rendered the same muted silenced on your caller’s end, which is not a desirable outcome anyway.

Bottom line is that there may actually be a difference if the iPhone mic were used as opposed to the HA mics. Not sure how one would be able to test this, short of simply ask the caller on the other end to tell you how they hear things as you switch between the 2 options while you’re in a very noisy place.

#34

There are echo back (echo test) phone numbers you can call.

#35

I didn’t follow what you were saying. Are you saying that the iPhone microphones only have noise cancellation in iPhone 13? I thought other and older iPhone models did.

And are you saying that More microphones don’t have noise cancellation that iPhone 13 has?

#36

I don’t know anything about the HAs. But iPhone mics had noise cancellation available from versions 4 to 12. iPhone 13 doesn’t have noise cancellation available. There is some kind of voice isolation setting for FaceTime. But hope that helps.

WH

1 Like
#37

I haven’t had anyone complain about noise on calls with my iPhone 13.

#38

A number you can call is 925.259.0082, it is in HD and will let you really see the full quality of the HD handsets.
From Ooma website.
https://forums.ooma.com/viewtopic.php?t=17773

Mike

#39

Before IPhone 13 model, the iPhones have an option in settings to turn on noise cancellation. This feature seems to remove ambient noise when you put your receiver to your ear. I also read it uses the camera microphone to figure what is the extra ambient noise. Look at this article….

That does not mean that iPhone 13 sound quality is poor. I might just mean that Apple found a different way to implement better sound quality in the hardware without a separate feature as (as @cvkemp ponited out) iPhone 13 mic sound quality is just fine.

My point is the same as @Volusiano …. The hardware/software on the iPhones are specifically built to provide a good experience in noisy environment when using the microphones on the phone.

It is unclear to me how the Oticon HAs (and the MFI protocol) handle environmental noise during a phone call but, so far, the experience is that the iPhone microphones do a better job if you are in a noisy environment as compared to the HAs. YMMV.

#40

I have an iPhone 7 Plus and like @Luga said, I can go to Settings → Accessibility → Audio/Visual → Phone Noise Cancellation and enable it. The note below it says “Noise cancellation reduces ambient noise on phone calls when you are holding the receiver to your ear”.

Now if we’re streaming the phone call with the new iOS hands-free feature and choose to use the iPhone’s mic to pick up our voice, I don’t know if that will enforce the Phone Noise Cancellation feature or not (if that feature is enabled), because technically we’re not holding the receiver to our ear like the note says anymore.

I assume that if you don’t put the iPhone in speaker mode, then it assumes that you’re holding the receiver to your ear normally. But if you have an MFI connection to your HA, then the iPhone gives you a third option (and usually automatically routes the sound to this option) → your HA. So it’s unclear to me if this third option to route to your HA considered the equivalent of holding the receiver to your ear or not when it comes to the Phone Noise Cancellation feature.