Oticon OPN S 1 miniRITE Custom Mold or Not

I am testing the Oticon OPN S miniRITE R and there is some warble in what people are saying. It’s not consistent and may be based on how loud what they are saying at that second is.

It has been suggested that I get a custom ear mold to cut down on this.

What are the advantages to using a custom ear mold?

If I get a custom ear mold, why not go the whole 9 yards and get an In The Ear hearing aid instead of using the RITE? Certainly would help with the current battle between hearing aid, eyeglasses and facemask straps fighting for that valuable earlobe real estate.

Back to that warble. My old hearing aid, an Oticon OPN 1, didn’t feature that issue, or have as much feedback as this one. Any suggestions?

I have the OPNS1 MiniRite-r aids with custom ear molds, and I do not have any warble at all. My hearing loss isn’t as bad as yours and I have the 100db recievers.
I find the ear molds very comfortable and with the 100db recievers my recievers are molded into my ear molds which makes the recievers less likely to have issues with moisture.

To sum it up: seal, retention, acoustics, comfort, and aesthetics are advantages of custom earmolds over universal ear domes.
I stole that from here.
I also have the OPN S miniRite, and previously the OPN. Custom earmolds with both.

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I sure hope that’s true, I get customs day after tomorrow.

You won’t regret it, but give your ears a couple of days to get used to them.

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Because of acoustics or comfort?

Mostly comfort, there is may be a feeling of pressure to begin with, as there is a true seal of the ear canal.
Acoustically, you should notice an immediate improvement in overall sound.
Make sure your audi does REM with the new molds.

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My biggest concern is occlusion. I couldn’t use double domes because I couldn’t take the booming sound when I walked.

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The occlusion is something you can get used to within a week or two.

I just went from closed domes to molds with no vent so the ear is pressurized. I got over the occlusion after a couple of days and the pressurized feeling after about 4 weeks.

Keeping in mind that everyone is different, it’s not difficult to adjust.

My hearing isn’t too bad though so that might be why.

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Could I ask the approximate price for the custom earmolds, if that’s permitted on the forum?

I paid $250 for mine.

@member98 I get mine thru the VA so I don’t know the price.

I’ve had the mini molds since getting my Mini’s and have been very happy.

What I’ve seen from folks here on HT is anywhere between $200 to $300 US. Mine are included in the price of the HA.

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I would rather get custom mold with an OPN S RITE instead of getting the OPN ITE. Because of the form factor of the ITE, Oticon has to make some compromise on the functionality of the ITE, so it’s not 100% equivalent functionally compared to the miniRITE.

Also, $200 for custom molds is not bad. I think I was charged $330 for mine.

Not really true if you go with the half or full shell aids. The half and full shell aids have what seems to be the same firmware as the OPN Rite aids, my ITE aids are about three quarter shells, and have both mics, and all of the controls, volume and program. The only thing you cannot get in the ITE aids except the full shell is the t-coils.

Thanks for the clarification, @cvkemp. I looked it up and indeed the marketing brochure says that both the full and half shell ITEs are full featured like the miniRITE. Only the other smaller form factors are not full featured.

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@cvkemp knows his stuff on those OPN aids.

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thiank you, I guess it is still my IT training that I have to research.

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Just for the record the custom molds are not causing any occlusion. Just the change in the way my voice sounds is the biggest difference as far as I can tell so far. I think audi said vent size was 1.1 or 1.4 but we are sending them back to be drilled bigger because of echo/reverberations.