Oticon More Sound Booster Vs Speech in Noise

Hearing Aids
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Oh, spudster, your main program is in fact P1. However, if your audi labeled it VAC+ under the Client Program Name in Genie 2, it would show as VAC+in the ON app.
There are 4 program slots available, and your audi can label them any way they like for your edification.

@mingus I truly enjoyed reading your description, and conclusions about MSB. Thanks for that.
@Volusiano Crazy, I’ve never felt the need to even try MSB!
Beetween you and mingus, I now know I’m not missing anything, really.

My concept of it is similar to Phonak Autosense, where it just kills everything but the front facing speech.

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I’m going to post about this elsewhere, but the new Whisper hearing aids are head and shoulders above everything else I’ve tried for speech in noise. The difference is marked. They finally do what hearing aids should have been doing all along.

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The need for an accurate description of what users can expect from a features like MSB should not be underestimated,and here’s why I believe this to be true:

  1. Hearing perception - especially where that sense has been damaged - is subjective, so much so that HA users usually have a difficult time finding a common vocabulary or glossary of terms to describe to other users what they are (or aren’t) able to hear. A good description of a feature from a hearing aid manufacturer provides a platform of words and phrases that users can adopt as a common language for talking to one another about their expectations, results, methods for taking the best advantage of the feature, etc. Left to our own devices, we often end up arguing over the words we are using to describe our successes or failures using the device in question, instead of discussing solutions to our shared problems
  2. Because our damaged auditory mechanisms force us to guess at what we are hearing, notwithstanding the fact we wear hearing aids, our perceptions and our beliefs about what it is that we are hearing are highly plastic, and subject to manipulation by suggestion. Depending on whom we are talking to about what we are hearing, these suggestions can change, and along with them, out beliefs about what it is that we’re actually hearing. I believe that it’s this plasticity and susceptibility to suggestion that accounts for much of the divergence of opinion about MoreSound Booster that we detect in the Forum from thread to thread, and even from day to day. Oticon isn’t telling us what to expect from their product, and they are not providing us with easily-understood concepts and concise terms of reference to discuss things with. So we remain in the dark, and susceptible to the power of persuasion: a poster for whom we have respect suggests what we’re hearing, and that’s what we hear. Another poster with good credibility suggests another possibility, and so that’s what we hear. Our own ability to decide what we’re hearing, as well as our ability to put it into words are compromised, and our constructive dialogue becomes embroiled with chuntering about what we are trying to say, instead of understanding what we’re hearing - or not.
  3. Because of the oligopolistic nature of the hearing aid industry, makers either have, or pretend to have, treasure chests filled with revolutionary technical secrets which they are loath to disclose. The relatively few “white papers” that actually talk to the technological specifications of hearing aids stop short of full transparency, even to highly erudite Forum members with backgrounds in engineering or audiology, so we are deprived of any means to either prove or disprove the claims about their products made by the Big6 makers. Thus, there’s no way that we can prove that Brand Y is every bit as capable as Brand X of highly directional beam-forming, despite the fact that Brand Y is marketed as a device whose core competence is in processing incoming sounds from all directions. As users, we are, once again, left to our own devices to figure out what we believe we are hearing, and the extent to which those auditory perceptions coincide with the expectations the makers have caused us to have by virtue of their marketing suggestions and persuasive selling tactics.

My point is this: @Volusiano’s remarks about the indistinct descriptions we are fed by the companies that make the devices we wear are accurate, and they merit being taken seriously, because - as hearing devices become more and more complex and sophisticate - we users will be left more and more in the dark with respect to the reasonable expectations we should have about the performance of the devices we put into our ears every morning. And the more in the dark we are, the greater the extent we are susceptible to the power of persuasion, with the result that, at the end of the day, we will be hearing only those things that the Big 6 have told us that we are hearing, in comparison to those who have suffered no hearing loss.

As for me, I’d like to one day understand enough about these things to make up my own mind as to whether I’m hearing the beautiful little spring peeper frogs, or whether the guide pulley on my old van’s water pump is about to let go.

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Yes, that’s just what he’s done, relabeled it. What’s your point, Flash?

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69

Yes, I have the same, just checked, though I rarely use P4 these days. P4 is a copy of P1 with some slight modifications which I requested for testing purposes. The other two: P2 which is the Speech in Noise program and P3 which is the MyMusic program, do not have the MSB option.

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70

I have my default program P1, t-coil windows microphones P2, TV adapter, and remote microphone. The remote microphone is because I have the connect clip. I will use the MoreSoundBoost when in some of my meetings.
I personally find I don’t need the speech in noise program. And my audiologist needs to enable the MYMusic program which I guess will become P3.

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After all of this discussion I may go into a noisy environment where there are a lot of people talking at the same time, leave P1 on and engage MSB and see if it is helpful. I have tried it in a noisy environment with fans, a TV and a washing machine all going at the same time. While it took the edge off the fans and washing machine, it was not terribly useful.

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@JeremyDC:.Jeremy, I’m having lunch with a good friend on Friday. We like frequenting a small Korean restaurant that’s surprisingly noisy for its small size.

He wears a More1 in 1 ear (his other one is normal) so we’ll be able to compare notes. I’ll post a report Friday night or Saturday.

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73

My point?
You stated in another post you do not have a General P1 program, but a VAC+ Program.
I was only attempting to enlighten you as to the correct description, which is indeed P1.
's’all good man.

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I don’t wish to challenge your very extreme high quality of intell.
So, ok

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@flashb1024: Please just go back and read post #46 …

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Actually what @flashb1024 and @SpudGunner are discussing here brings up an interesting question.

I also thought I heard from somebody (maybe @mago ? but I could be wrong) that they have a copy of the P1 program which is VAC+ as well (of course if VAC+ is what’s selected in P1) but slightly altered, and they could enable the MSB in this “copied” program as well. For example, if this copied program is in P4, then both P1 and P4 let you enable MSB.

I’m guessing that the built-in Speech in Noise program also started out with VAC+ as its baseline and Oticon altered/tailored it slightly to become SIN, maybe we’ll call it VAC+ SIN. Similar to the built-in Lecture program, we’ll call it VAC+ Lecture, etc.

Then let’s say that I pick P1 to have NAL-NL2, then P2 to have the vanilla VAC+, then P3 to be the built-in Speech in Noise (the VAC+ SIN), then P4 to have the vanilla VAC+ as well, but I modify some stuff in the programming to make it different than that of P2 which is also the vanilla VAC+.

Then I assume that the Oticon ON app is smart enough to not allow MSB for the P1 and P3 program (because it’s NAL-NL2 and VAC+ SIN respectively), but the ON app will let you enable MSB for P2 and P3 because they’re variations of the vanilla VAC+?

I’m not asking any of the non-DYI folks to test this out because their set up is already fixed as is. But it’d be interesting to understand the basis of when Oticon would allow MSB to be enabled. My assumption is that if you have a garden variety of the vanilla VAC+, but not when you have the specific built-in VAC+ SIN or VAC+ Lecture, or VAC+ Comfort, etc. And for sure not for VAC+ Music or for MyMusic for that matter as well.

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Q: Are “P1, P2, P3, P4” actually programs, per se, or are these designations merely “placeholder names” for caches, into which the various “flavours” of fitting programs can be written (and then called by whatever label the user desires)?

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They are designations that the ON app uses by default but can be edited. In my iPhone control panel it doesn’t show the P designations just the names that my audiologist placed in the Gene2 software

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@cvkemp: That was my impression of how they worked, too, Chuck - the Pxs were just placeholder names to be overwritten at will by the audiologist and client.

Thanks for the clarification.

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I would say that P1, P2, P3, P4 are place holders for programs, but they represent the order in which these programs are cycled through if you were to use the hard buttons on the HAs to cycle through them. Meaning you’ll start out with P1 on boot up, then if you cycle up, you’ll go to P2 next, then another up click will take you to P3, another down click will take you back to P2.

If you didn’t have any TV Adapter or ConnectClip Remote Mic, then an up click from P4 will take you back down to P1 (circular connection). Similarly, a down click from P1 (without the TV Adapter or ConnectClip RemoteMic) will take you up to P4.

If you have the TV Adapter and/or ConnectClip Remote Mic, an extra program placeholder is created for the TV Adapter and another for the ConnectClip Remote Mic, and these will be inserted between the P1 and P4 connection.

When you choose and assign one of the built-in programs from the Genie 2 menu for a program place holder, Genie 2 will automatically assign a name to it. For example if you choose VAC+ in P1, then P1 will be assigned the name General. If you also choose VAC+ in P2, then now P1 will be called General 1 and P2 will be called General 2. Let’s say if you choose NAL-NL2 for P3, then P3 will be called General 3.

If you choose and assign Speech in Noise for P2, for example, then P2 will be named Speech in Noise. If you also choose Speech in Noise for P3, then now P2 will be called Speech in Noise 1, and P3 will be called Speech in Noise 2.

You can edit any of these automatically assigned names to anything else you want. For example, you can change General 1 in P1 to “Jim’s Most Used” or something like that. Well not YOU in the ON app, but your audi in Genie 2. It appears that you can edit 2 of these program placeholders to have exactly the same name too, as long as it’s not a blank or space (which are not allowed). If they have the same name, then the only way to be able to tell them apart is to see which one is assigned to which P. For example, we know that program “Same Name” in P3 is different than program “Same Name” in P4 thanks to their associated assignment to their respective P.

You cannot edit the name for the TV Adapter or the ConnectClip Remote Mic, however. They don’t even appear as programs alongside with P1, P2, P3, P4 in Genie 2. They appear in a different menu as Accessories. If you have the EduMic, it seems to be bunched together with the TV Adapter. I’m not sure why Oticon decided to bunch them together because I think there’s a possibility you can own both at the same time.

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Can one use multiple connect clip or tv adapters?

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The TV Adapter manual says that you can pair as many HAs as you want with it. But you can only pair your HAs to 1 TV Adapter at a time. If you want to use a second TV Adapter, you’d have to pair your HAs with that second TV Adapter, and in the process lose the pairing you did with the first TV Adapter.

I suspect that the ConnectClip works the same way, although the manual of the ConnectClip does not explicitly say that you can pair as many HAs as you want with it, like the TV Adapter manual says you can. And it also doesn’t say that you can use 2 ConnectClips with one pair of HAs. I don’t see why you would want to either. I can see why you may want to in the case of the TV Adapter if you have multiple TVs in different locations and you don’t want to keep moving the TV Adapter back and forth. With the ConnectClip, it’s portable and you simply just pair your ConnectClip to however many devices you want.

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If the Philips TV adapter works the same as the Oticon one, you can have multiple adapters and your hearing aids paired to all of them.

I have two TVs and two adapters, and can select either one in the app.

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@Volusiano: So, then, if I understand correctly we could take the default program, go to the Neural Noise Suppression sliders, and choose different permutations and combinations of the Difficulty slider and the maximum NNS values to be applied. We could then label them NNS-10/NNS-8/NNS-6 (or what the correct values are) in the ON app, but it wouldn’t matter if we mislabeled anything, because the HAs would always present the programs in the same order: Bootup/Slot1/Slot2/Slot3/Slot4, which always have the same indicator beeps associated with each slot, correct?

Then, we would easily be able to toggle an A/B/C/D comparison of the NNS cap values whenever we want, and do experiments to test whether NNS really applies the brakes gradually, or all at once, correct?

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