@mirai.mizuhara: I’ve been wearing Oticon More3s for 16+ hours a day since March 2nd, after 6 years of barely wearing my poorly-fitted Unitron North Moxi Fit 800s at all. I love them - to say that they have been life-changing for me is not an exaggeration.
My evaluation of their suitability for me, my lifestyle, and my needs has absolutely zero to do with studying their technical specifications or marketing features.
There is a single criterion for success: can I better hear and make sense of speech and the other sounds around me?
But I would like to offer my personal clarification of what Oticon’s OpenSound Concept means to me.
It does NOT mean that:
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Any and all peripheral sounds are allowed to bombard me, indiscriminately, or;
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No noise reduction or fast compression is applied to sudden, loud sounds or;
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The hearing aids are not conducive to our brain’s ability to determine the directionality of sounds (both in front of, as well as around us).
OpenSound does mean:
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Sounds impinging on our ears from all directions are scanned and analyzed by the Deep Neural Network (a “reference library” of sound samples) 500x per second. Sounds classed as “relevant” or “containing speech” are enhanced and passed on, while sounds classed as “secondary” (think approaching car sounds or bird songs) are passed on, but in a slightly attenuated form. Noise sounds are even further suppressed;
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Sudden, loud noises are instantly limited and suppressed, while feedback is proactively detected and prevented from occurring, and;
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Because Oticon More3s supply the brain’s auditory cortex with a wealth of relevant information (even though some of it is “pixellated” by our damaged hearing apparatus) our brains are exquisitely-adapted pattern detectors that can make sense of even damaged neural code. Research has proven that the brain can successfully extrapolate the information contained by raw, incoming data whose integrity has been compromised by damaged hearing. This ability permits us to accurately pinpoint the origin of what we have decided are relevant sounds, upon which we need to focus.
Yes, fewer sounds from the rear and sides of our heads are filtered out completely, but these sounds are massaged and conditioned by Polaris (the chipset) and our brain is permitted to learn from the soundscape and decide for itself which sounds it needs to focus on and pay attention to.
(The “conditioning” applied by Polaris is complex and subtle, and is qualitatively very different from the "beam forming " approach adopted by most HA manufacturers. Oticon’s take on compression, frequency lowering, and noise suppression is also distinctive.)
So - YES, I’m a proud Oticonian - but if you choose the right audiologist, you can obtain a temporary visa to our Magic Kingdom and try our “benefits of citizenship” for yourself!
