Yes: “The OPN takes a very different approach. It says you should hear everything around you. So it doesn’t block out any sound. It may analyze and balance, etc, but it lets all sounds through. So how do you manage noise? It says let the brain manage surrounding noise. That’s how normal hearing people do it. They say the brain can learn to tune out the noise and focus on speech (or whatever they want to hear), if normal hearing folks can do it, so can hearing challenged folks. With this approach, you don’t have to live with the trade-off mentioned above (sounds around being blocked).”
But I still just struggle mightily in crowded, noisy places to hear the person right in FRONT of me unless I put my aids into the directional program. Now, maybe I’ve had some brain strokes and am unable to ever learn how to distinguish speech in a maelstrom of noise? So be it! It just seems blockheaded to toss that challenge MY way - that somehow, I’m missing out on life if I can’t hear EVERY last sound (needed or not) around me while some clerk is mumbling something about my order 2 feet from my face.
The whole point of aids is to AID us in hearing better. To insist that we adapt to the technology - again - just irks me. I’d like to take that techie from the bowels of Oticon’s development lab and say, “I’m going to put a blindfold on you, spin you around 10 times, and you’re gonna head for that $6,000 pot of money right in front of you!” Yes, the poor tech would LOVE to get his/her paws on the dough. But it may simply be impossible!