Can you post your audiogram on your profile? It’d help to know what kind of hearing loss you have to give you sensible answers.
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During a visit on 1 Oct 2019, my provider updated the firmware for both my OPN S 1 and older OPN 1 aids (now out of warranty). The ON app running on either a fairly new iPad Pro or old iPhone 6+ shows the OPN S 1 as:
Software: 8.0
Firmware: auroafw7.6.2
When the OPN S 1 aids were originally fitted on 22 August 2019, the Software was 7.0 and the Firmware was aurorafw6.16.1.
The new version information only showed in ON up after the aids were forgotten and then paired again with the phone (running IOS 12.4.2 as it is too old for 13.1.2).
Stuart
Yes, I’m trying to find my result and if I can’t find them, I will ask again for them on Monday. I know I have then somewhere 
Quick question for you Volusiano…is OpenSound Booster turned on the equivalent of OpenSound Navigator set to max?
I tried that tonight at an event on my default program where I also turned up the volume +1 and I was hearing quite “ok”…I would say comparable to the Moxi Fit. (At least this is what my brain was telling me 
)
While I don’t have the OPN S (I only have the original OPN), I believe the OpenSound Booster is equivalent to turning the Directionality Setting in the OpenSound Navigator from the normal “Open Automatic” value to the “Full Directional” value. This favors the sound in the front over the sounds on the side and behind you. It probably also set the Noise Reduction values to max and the Transition Help to High as well. But the biggest difference is the Directionality Setting to “Full Directional”.
Many owners of the OPN S reported that they found very little difference when they chose the OpenSound Booster. Well, while I don’t have the OpenSound Booster because I don’t have the OPNN S, when I switch my OpenSound Navigator Directionality Setting to “Full Directional”, I found very little difference myself. The focus in the front is still there, but the abatement of sounds on the sides and behind me is not very strong, hence little difference.
I would attribute your hearing better in a event tonight more to having maximized on the Noise Reduction value than due to the Full Directional value setting. Hey, but every little bit helps. I would also attribute your hearing better tonight in that complex environment to your brain hearing being more and more adapted to the “open” paradigm and being less overwhelmed and being able to mentally focus on which speech you want to hear better and being able to tune your brain out to what you don’t want to hear. But of course you’d want the Noise Reduction to be set to max values to help give the speech in front more clarity for you. This way, despite still hearing all the sounds, you can single out and focus on the clarified speech in front better.
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I experienced the same when I first got my Oticon’s. After some trips to the audiologist, together we concluded that it was not the volume was too high, it was the gain. As soon as the gain was adjusted things sounded much more “normal.” Not so “twangy.” And I didn’t have to fiddle with the volume all the time; except when my wife is talking, the mute feature is essential.
Thank you! I will discuss this with my audiologist on Monday.
@vincenthuard Your hearing is not bad at all. You shouldn’t run into many challenges that a competent audiologist shouldn’t be able to help with one of the big name brand hearing aids. It should just be a matter of getting acclimatized to the hearing aids of your choice and fine tuning it to get you to your sweet spot.
I’m surprised to hear that you’re kind of having feedback issue, if that’s what you really meant. If you actually mean that your own voice doesn’t not sound natural enough, but instead sounding robotic, I think it’s either you’re not getting used to how your own voice really sounds through amplification yet, or maybe there’s too much occlusion that makes your voice sound funny through the occlusion.
I think Signia has their special Own Voice Processing that may help with this, if this turns out to be a big deal for you. Most people get thrown off with how their voice sounds being amplified in the beginning, but then they get used to it after a while and it doesn’t bother them anymore.
Thank you @Volusiano for the feedback. I agree that my hearing is not “that” bad
“Always” been in group discussions that I had issue with all the noise and stuff.
Regarding the “sounding robotic” thing, this is not only my voice, but often the voice of my wife or little girl. This doesn’t happen a lot, but when it does, it kind of strike me.
Had my meeting this afternoon. We did some adjustments and created 4 programs in total.
When activating the opensound navigator more aggressively, the opensound booster option is no more available.
I will make some tests this week to see which program suits me best. I don’t want to always be playing between programs
I basically use the default program 95% of the times, but I set the noise reduction to the max values And the transition help to the highest value, like in the speech in noise program, without the extra volume gain that the speech in noise program comes with.
The other 5% of the times, I either use the music program, or a program with the DSL Adult rationale so I can hear sharper sounds to help even more with speech if necessary. Except for the music program, all my other programs have maximum noise reduction values. To me, there’s no point in using lower noise reduction values if you’re paying for the max values that come with the OPN 1.
A fitting rationale is a “formula” so to speak to decide how compression ratios of gains are applied throughout the frequency range based on your hearing loss to give you the best hearing amplification. Many HA mfgs use their own proprietary fitting rationale that they think will work best for their brand of HAs. But there are also fitting rationales that had been instituted as industry standards to be used for any brand of hearing aids.
Oticon uses their proprietary fitting rational called VAC+ on the OPN line of hearing aids (and probably the previous lines as well). That is what is in your default program, and all the other built-in programs that you choose from their menu.
But, they do offer and make available other industry standard fitting rationales as well, like the NAL-NL1, NAL-Nl2, DSL v5.0 Adult, DSL v5.0 Pediatric.
I find the VAC+ to sound the most natural compared to the other rationales. But the DSL v5.0 Adult rationale and the NAL-NL1 rationale sound a bit brighter. Although this makes it not as natural sounding to me, this brightness seems to help me understand speech better in more rare situations where I find speech clarity challenging even when using the VAC+ more natural sounding Oticon rationale.
So you can opt to have your audi dedicate the remaining 3 programs that the OPN has available to 3 of these standard rationales, just to compare and see if you’d prefer any of them over the VAC+ in the default program or not. This will allow you to do A/B/C/D comparison between the different rationales. Once you settle on your preference, you can keep the ones you like more and remove the ones you don’t care for afterward.
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Thank you! Great explanation!
I’m calling back the audiologist tomorrow and asking them if I can get the Unitron for 48h to compare… There’s still a “something” I can’t put my finger on… I want/need to see if it’s my mind playing trick to me.
Called back the Audiologist… I’m getting the Unitron back at the end of the day until next Tuesday so I can make a direct comparaison…
I’ve also looked at the Unitron software and (yes this is marketing but…) I kind of understand the difference in the algorithm… Will see
I can confirm…no “feedback”/warbling issue with the Unitron. Only have this with the Oticon.
Making some more comparaison tomorrow.
@Volusiano, received my Noahlink today and connected to my OPN S.
Here’s a screenshot of the feedback analyzer…Would this explain why I’m having issue?
I don’t think your issue is with feedback, is it? If not, looking at the feedback analyzer screen shot is not going to solve your issue. Your hearing loss is fairly mild to moderate at most, so I don’t think you’d have to worry about feedback causing your issue.
The only issue I’ve read that you’ve had so far with the OPN S1 is that the “wow” hype was not there for you as expected, and you also mentioned that you have issue understanding in group discussion in noise, right? Oh yeah, and the robotic sounds once in a while, right?
What did your audiologist recommend to do with your OPN S1 to fix your issues?
After a week with both model, I’m meeting again with my audiologist on Monday (end of return period for the OPN S1).
Here’s how I fixed my issues:
- Made a copy of the General program and ordered it as P2
- Disabled feedback manager on P2
- Had the OpenSound Navigator parameters set to “maximum”
Was in a very crowded event last night and it worked “perfectly”. Since I disabled the feedback manager this is just perfect…no more robotic sounds.
After going back to the Unitron for a few days, speech recognition was good/great, but I don’t feel like the sound is as crisp and rich for everything else.
So I’m probably going to keep the OPN S1 on Monday after discussing with the audiologist. Will see what she thinks of the changes I made (will have to confess to her that I played with the setting using my own NoahLink )
Great to hear that you’ve found a fix for the OPN S1. Can you clarify that you disabled the (traditional) Feedback Shield (that exists also in the original OPN), or you disabled the OpenSound Optimizer which is the new feedback prevention technology that only exists on the OPN S series? Or both maybe? I’m just trying to ascertain which one of the 2 above is causing the issue with the robotic sounds for you.
At your low level of hearing loss, you probably don’t have any kind of feedback issue that would require to turn on the feedback manager anyway (either the Feedback Shield or the OpenSound Optimizer).
Also, turning on max values in the OpenSound Navigator for Noise Reduction and Transition Help probably helped you a lot at the crowded event. With the default program, they don’t set those parameters to maximum values anyway, but I think they should. Did you try to do Default Program to Program 2 comparison back and forth at the crowded event to confirm that Program 2 gave you the edge over the Default Program at that crowded event?