I had the same experience switching from Resound Linx 3D (which I trialed for a few weeks) to Oticon OPN3. The OPN3 had me running around the house trying to discover what it was I was hearing – refrigerator compressor, furnace turning on/off, fountain in pond behind my condo. I used the Oticon Genie software to tone things down a bit. I decided to keep the Oticon.
I have an iPhone. I use the OPN app to switch to Speech in Noise.
You can use the buttons to switch between programs or change volume, depending on how your audi set them up.
“I decided to keep the Oticon.”
Yes, me too. I want my hearing experience to mirror a person’s with normal hearing. They have difficulty hearing in noisy environments too, and learn too “extract” the sounds they want to hear. This is a real plusi n group settings, where you have no control over the current speaker.
Some of this must be fitting or setting differences. I’m wearing ReSound LiNX 3D 961. On the all-around program, which I use most of the time, I hear air whooshing from the A/C, the thermostat clicking, the refrigerator running, cars approaching from behind when I’m walking, birds tweeting, whatever. Based on advice I got here, I pushed my audiologist to get me up to full prescription gain ASAP.
member98, in order to take advantage of the Opn “directional” setting, it has to be programmed by your audiologist. This step involves dedicating one of 4 programs for directional use only (the others can be default, and set for other listening preferences).
Now the bad news: No matter HOW many times I had my so-called “directional” program tweaked by my aud-guy, I was simply never ever able to hear with those Opn aids in any kind of ambient noise. The situation was so dire, and dragged on for so many months, that I was able to get a trade-in on the Oticons for a pair of Phonak Audeo B-Direct aids.
Now, are the Phonaks any better? YES! But even so, I’m convinced that NO (as in nada, zip, zilch, never) pair of aids that sit behind the ear can deliver true directionality like a pair of old-fashioned in the ear aids. The mic is simply not positioned optimally in the BTE aids.
If you are not satisfied with your Oticon’s directional capability, you may have to dig your heels in and demand a better solution from your hearing aid dispenser. GOOD LUCK with it!
1Bluejay is correct that there is a directional setting for the OPN that you can have your provider set up for you in one of the 4 programs. And 1Bluejay is also correct that the directional setting on the OPN is not aggressive like the other traditional directional noise reduction hearing aid brands/models are. The OPN may put the focus to the front in its directional setting mode, BUT, not everything else around you is all of a sudden quiet and all you hear is the front speaker. That’s not how the OPN strategy is designed and works.
The OPN strategy is to let you hear everything, and it solves the speech in noise issue by doing 2 things:
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Clean up the noise from the speech in front of you, so there’s better clarity.
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Still let you hear everything else around you, and expect your brain to learn to tune out what you don’t want to hear and focus on what you want to hear. Once you can focus on what you want to hear (the speech in front) and separate it from what you don’t want to hear, this speech in front will be delivered to you with better clarity than before.
So basically the traditional way is to block out everything around you so you can hear the speech in front more, but this speech in front may be still be muddled by the noise diffused into it. The OPN way is the remove this diffused noise from the muddied speech in front, but not remove the other sounds around you.
Beside removing the diffused noise, it also DOES use directionality always (but a different kind called NULL directionality) to balance out the sounds by removing well placed sources of noise. But this is not the same as the “front” directionality setting like with traditional hearing aids. Once well placed sources of noise are identified and “balanced” out by the null directionality, it then goes to a secondary noise reduction stage to remove the remaining diffused noise that are not well placed noise sources. This diffused noise stays diffused with the speech in front, and most traditional directional noise reduction hearing aids can’t clean up, but the OPN can via the processing power of the Velox platform.
Maybe using an analogy with an “I Spy” game on a very busy picture helps make more sense. And let’s say this picture is a bit blurry. Let’s say you can choose two goggles to look at this picture. The traditional goggle blocks out all the stuff in the picture except the I Spy item. It help makes you see this I Spy item right away but the picture is still a bit blurry like the rest of the picture, so you still have to use some effort to guess what this item you see is. The OPN google doesn’t block out anything, so you’d still have to focus and find this I Spy item in the picture, but once you can focus and find it, this I Spy item is clearer to see and not as blurry as the one in the traditional goggle.
So if you buy the OPN for its directionality setting, you’re probably buying the wrong hearing aid. You’d want to buy the OPN for the ability to achieve better clarity on the speech, but counting on YOUR ability to focus on this speech and tune out other things.
But it doesn’t hurt to also have your provider to set up a program for you with the directional setting selected because every little bit helps. BUT WHAT’S MORE IMPORTANT is to make sure that your provider turn up the noise reduction value/setting to MAX value (which is -3dB for simple environment and -9dB for complex environnment on the OPN 1), and the Open Sound Transition value set to High to help maximize the auditory focus. I don’t know why, but these values are not set to high in the default program. In my opinion, they should be defaulted to the highest setting because it doesn’t hurt to have them on high, especially since that’s what you’re paying for and that’s what makes the OPN a premium technology.
But if you select the built-in Speech in Noise program, they are set to High by default. The Speech in Noise built-in program also increases the gain a little bit more than the default program to help you hear better in noise as well.