Yes, I have been using a battery pack like yours to charge my HAs since I got them back in March. I went that route for 2 reasons:
It works fine, and my battery pack gives me 7+ days of charges!
For my OPN 1 with disposable batteries, I get a rapid shutdown within 5-10 minutes of the low battery warning all the times, so I think it’s normal. There’s no option to choose to get the low battery chime warning earlier or anything like that. You only have an option to enable the low battery chime warning or not, that’s all. See screenshot below that shows the page where you can choose to enable the low battery warning.
The low battery warning is based off of the voltage reading from the disposable battery. That is why the battery level for disposable batteries on HAs is notoriously inaccurate, because the nature of the disposable Zinc Air battery is such that the voltage level is fairly flat while being drained, then all of a sudden abruptly drops precipitously when starting to become depleted. So it may read full for a long time at 100% or 75% and you think you’d still have a long time left because you’ve been using it for that long and only burned 25%, so by extrapolation, you should have a lot of charge remaining. But that’s not so, the voltage is fairly flat until the end then it just drops off the clip with very little/short warning. See the second screenshot below for the battery curves of 312 batteries of various brands. Mind you, this is a low constant drain of only 1 mA that gives you around 175-200 hours of usage. So if you only get around 50 hours of usage on HAs, it may behave even more abruptly than what you see here.
In the second screenshot, you see that the Duracell brand seems to outlast all other brands, and its voltage also drops more gradually. So if you pick the brands that exhibit less of a sharp drop off, you MAY get longer of a warning. I say MAY here because their behavior may look different at a higher drain (like for HA drain) compared to the lower 1mA drain in the drain test done. So you never know unless you can find a similar result here, but done a typical streaming HA drain level. If I were you, I’d just accept this limitation and be ready to get interrupted and having to replace new batteries on a dime while you’re in a middle of something.
This was one of my contentions in arguing for rechargeable batteries, that I’d run out of disposable battery juice at the most inopportune time while I’m in the middle of a face to face meeting at work and can’t or don’t want to change batteries in front of people, if I even have them in my pocket in the first place. Tenkan (a forum member) at the time lectured me if I never heard of a low battery warning chime that gives you plenty of time for a heads-up (he claimed that his chime gives him at least half an hour to change battery). I told him that his HA brand/model may give him 1/2 hour warning, but my OPN 1 only gives me a 5 minute warning. And we were discussing the Oticon brand in that thread, not his HA brand/model. So his experience is irrelevant in that discussion.
Yeah, please share with us how many hours a fresh set of disposable batteries would last for you in the More, and how much streaming you do. Also, what brand battery you use.
I get around 4 days with my OPN 1 consistently with maybe 2-3 hours of streaming a day using the Costco Kirkland batteries and PowerOne batteries (they last the same amount). If you can get around 4 days with the More just the same, then at least that’s a non-negative for the disposable battery argument.
I am currently using the Costco Kirkland hearing aid battery brand
Also I would observe 2-3 day (22-33 hours) battery life with the OPN where I’ve had to change batteries more often than your observations of 55 hours. I’m assuming I use the aids for minimum of 11 hours a day.
I also see a low battery chirp warning setting here and do not know how it’s different from the Genie setting. I also turned off the announcement of the program name since it’s too long and annoying, and I am unable to quickly cycle through the programs using the hearing aids (OPN allowed me to cycle through the programs before the beeps we’re finished for faster speed. Here in the More, I have to wait for the beeps to complete to cycle. Maybe I just need to master the timing better)
It’s cool that they now put the option to enable the low battery notification in the ON app for users to choose. I suspect it’s the same thing as the one you can set in Genie 2, and the ON app selection probably would override the selection in Genie 2 if Oticon does it right.
It seems to make sense that you get 2-3 day battery life with the OPN since your hearing loss is pretty heavy and probably requires the 105 dB receivers which probably would drain the batteries faster than the smaller receivers.
That’s a good point. Level of hearing loss, battery brand, length of streaming, and time worn will affect battery life.
Not so at all. The batteries can be read at at any level until they drop off, and even if you only get 10min on your Oticon models it’s still plenty of time to change your battery which only takes about 30 seconds.
Yeah it’s a good battery in most cases, but sometimes get a difference between batches made.
A a smart man would make sure if it was that important, to be sure to change batteries “before” that all important meeting, or have fresh batteries installed on the day if your not exactly sure what time it could take place.
I’ve never “lectured” you, just letting you know my experience.
Yeah it’s a bummer 5min is not much.
Oh not again, sorry your still a bit put out that another brand could possibly do something " different" then your Oticon’s.
Well, a smarter man would probably switch to a rechargeable system if he has a chance, especially if he doesn’t particularly want to be bothered by the hassle of having to remember to install fresh batteries every day for important meetings that happen everyday at work.
And you actually don’t have the fact on what I actually did to work around this issue when I was still on disposable batteries. I had to do what you suggested (guess I’m a smart man in your book after all), and I ended up with too many half-used batteries which I couldn’t bother to remember how much is left in them so I ended up wasting more batteries than I needed to, because it seems like every day I almost always had important meetings. It’s not an efficient, clean and non-wasteful workaround that you suggested in that situation, but it may be a necessary workaround if you’re on disposable batteries and don’t want to be interrupted by low batteries at an inopportune time.
And I think I already replied to you about my other point -> I want to replace batteries at MY convenience, when and where I want to, not when and where the low-on-battery chime dictates me to do. It may not be a big deal to you, but it’s a big deal to me. Like I said before, I don’t like to carry batteries in my pockets all the times.
Actually I never knew what brand you wear before that, and even after you disclosed that your brand gives you at least half an hour low battery warning, I couldn’t care less because it’s not pertinent to the Oticon brand that was being discussed in that thread. I’m only a bit put out that somebody was comparing apples to oranges,
Thanks for your input,as always.
I use iCelltech batteries on OPN1 aids with 105db receivers and after low battery chime, iPhone disconnects and the battery lasts for another hour before going completely dead. Single iCelltech battery lasts at least 63 hours with occasional phone call streaming. I have obtained a set of Ray’O’Vac Loud’n’Clear and Proline Advanced batteries and I’m currently testing them. I will post their longevity results in 2 weeks.
Does your audi sell Starkey aids? Can they give you the new evolv AI for trial? If you can try out the latter, please share your experience and compare it with Oticon More.
A loaf of bread cots 0.50 back in the 60s who cares and what would that tell you???
Mike
I have been reading in the hearing aid subgroup on Reddit that these artifacts are caused by the feedback suppressors hearing some musical sounds as feedback and eliminating them! Apparently, there are two feedback suppressors, one in the manual settings area and one in the automatics. When both are deactivated, music sounds much better. Of course, you get feedback!
That’s an astute observation, Jim, because I don’t remember seeing any mention of artifacts specifically in this thread either.
But I do know that @flashb1024 has mentioned, although in other threads but not this one, about the fluttering he heard with his OPN S, and also with the More after he initially got it (despite Oticon telling him that it’d be fixed in the More), although it seemed to be almost gone after he did some tweaking (most likely turning the MoreSound Optimizer feedback in the Automatics menu to Low or Off).
The feedback suppressor in the manual settings area that @JeremyDC mentioned is the traditional Feedback Shield in the Genie 2 Feedback Analyzer section that is a reactive feedback manager. The artifact in this case would be the fluttering created by Feedback Shield due to the 10 Hz frequency shift strategy that causes the user to hear the actual sound coming into their ear (most noticeable with single tone type sounds) and the 10 Hz delayed amplified sound from the hearing aids. They are slightly out of phase and at times partially cancel each other out inside the user’s ears, hence the fluttering being noticed by users.
The feedback suppressor in the Automatics menu in Genie 2 that @JeremyDC mentioned is the newer MoreSound Optimizer feedback prevention technology that was introduced in the OPN S going forward. The artifact due to this is probably the STM (Spectral Temporal Modulation) signals that got artificially inserted into the spectrogram to stave off the onset of a potential feedback event. This can be heard by some users if they’re in the frequency band(s) that the user still has good hearing on. In the new Genie 2021.2 version, I guess Oticon added a Low value (it was just On or Off before) to help reduce the chance of this artifact being heard, but not having to turn off this feature completely.
@Volusiano: Thanks, V. I thought I was losing my reading ability (I do miss things sometimes, especially when I’m tired).
It’s a long thread to reread, but I did so twice, and still can’t say that I know what we’re talking about. I haven’t noticed any “artifacts” in the MyMusic program, myself. It is pleasant to hear music through, although I find it pretty useless for anything else. That’s what makes me wonder how “true-to-life” the processed signal fed to my ears really is.
This is a hard one to explain, so I’ll try it in point form:
I still find that the program is pleasant to listen to, but I’m starting to wish that I could get the old Music program back - I think I’d have much more confidence in my stage or studio mix using the previous Music program than if it were done through the “artificial ears” of MyMusic.
These are only the opinions of one old musician - YMMV
Maybe the old Music program is still around and available to use as well. I can’t verify if this is true or not because I don’t have a real More with the updated firmware with me so verify. But maybe someone who has the More 1 and the Genie 2 software can verify it for you. I think @flashb1024 has access to Genie 2 to be able to confirm this for you conclusively. Maybe you can have both even.
Wow, Volusiano,that is a terrific explanation. Thank you.
I thought I was answering a comment about instruments that weren’t heard correctly. Sounds like Oticon is on top of the issue. I haven’t personally experienced the issue, and hope not to. Just read about it.
