I actually sat with the Oticon Regional Sales manager for Australia today and asked this exact question: “is the Phillips just a rebranded Oticon?”. He assured me it wasn’t. He said that is was a good device but Demant reserve their premium technology for their Oticon brand. He said that “Phillips utilise more traditional technology”… whatever that means. He said he couldn’t give too much detail.
I’d bet you a Aus$ that was an outright lie.
His money is made by maintaining the idea of that difference. I’m not railing against a particular manufacturer like Oticon here: we use them a lot. Be under no illusion that the internal physical hardware is the same across all the models.
The differential in ‘Power’ or ‘Ability’ of the hearing aids is down to the Software: I’m running out of car analogies to use: you can ‘chip/tune’ your car and get different performance characteristics from the same physical vehicle. That’s what the software does.
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I agree it’s likely the same hardware as it’s much more cost effective to scale up production on an existing device than it is to design an entirely different aid, but my question to him wasn’t whether ot not Phillips used the same hardware as Oticon - I was trying to ascertain whether someone could pay less than half the price and get a device with identical outcomes/performance. In the end, that’s all that matters, regardless of whether it’s due to hardware or software differences.
I don’t think Bernafon claims “channel free” anymore. In the link it claims 64 channel and I can’t find anything from Bernafon touting “channel free” anymore. They still tout their music ability though.
Bernafon Alpha Hearing Aids | Free Home Visit Hearing Tests.
Funny attitude to take when talking to an audiologist who (presumably?) fits his company’s aids.
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Yeah, it irked me. He represents Oticon, and presumably not Phillips. Nevertheless, he clearly knew what the differences were and the lack of transparency certainly is disappointing, to say the least.
I totally agree with this 100%. In the end, it’s the performance that matters, whether the performance difference is done by hardware or software. So the focus should be on what’s different.
The original statement in post #24 by @terra said "The actual hardware is identical…The software may make a difference, but I suspect it’ll be minor at best. This is an implication that if the hardware is the same (cross brand, between Philips and Oticon), then that’s more important than the software being different. But we all know that even within the same brand/model/platform, the software differentiation between the 3 tier levels with different price points makes enough of a difference in performance already. So the debate on whether the hardware is the same across the different brands like Philips and Oticon is really moot in the first place.
Having said that, I still don’t agree with the car engine analogy being the same with different tuning packages. That analogy does work o compare the differences in the Tier 1, 2, 3 levels of the same brand/model/platform. But it falls apart on cross brand cars because the different car manufacturers even under the same umbrella don’t necessarily really use the same engine for their various makes. Like GM probably use different engines between their Chevrolet brand vs their Cadillac brand. Or to make it even more obvious, Mazda used to have the rotary engine in some of their car makes a while back, but they also use cylindrical engines.
I agree that the lack of transparency is disappointing from our point of view. But from his point of view, I think it’s simply his standard professional obligation that prevents him to disclose more than what he said already. That’s probably why we don’t see HA mfgs’ representatives participating on this forum either.
They actually don’t.
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OK, the Mazda rotary and cylindrical engine analogy still holds true. The point still should come across just the same no matter if the analogy is not good enough in some cases.
Even if Chevrolet and Cadillac uses the same engine, you don’t ask people why buy the Cadillac when you can have the same performance of a Chevrolet?
At the end of the day, what evidence do you have that they have different hardware? There is evidence that the hardware is shared is shown by the fcc / SBO docs.
In fact, what evidence is there that there’s a major algorithm difference between the different brands? I’m working on tracking down the firmware binaries to attempt to compare, but so far disassembling Genie, Oasis, etc – they’re all the same with the same communication protocols.
None of these companies share much real technical data. Even their so-called professional materials is largely marketing dressed up in pseudoscientific buzzwords. The little bit of technical data that does make it through (frequency responses, channel, processor / memory information) tends to match between the sister companies. I think it’s highly telling that whenever one of the companies gain some new features (i.e. neural net stuff with the previous generation, the wind noise suppression with the current generation), every single one of the brands ends up with the same feature set. Highly suggestive that the “real” development is done over at SBO, and the different brands just put on some window dressing.
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Admittedly the technical data is sparse, but I’ve only seen Oticon advertise their noise reduction technique of considering what comes from behind the hearing aids as “noise” and removing that from what comes from the front. The others (Sonic, Phillips, Bernafon) market a more directional approach to noise reduction.
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I am curious, do any hearing aid providers sell both Oticon and Philips HAs?
If they do, it would be interesting to hear from a pro that has fitted both.
If this is not a allowed, it adds to the impression that Demant doesn’t want a direct comparison.
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At the end of the day, I was never trying to “prove” that they have different hardware, so I never needed to show any evidence for it in the first place. And I never try to prove it either way because I my opinion, having the same hardware alone doesn’t really prove that they’re identical in performance, so it’s a moot point to make. But I do have a personal opinion (which doesn’t need proof, just needing my own personal common sense deduction) that they use different “core” hardware.
Like you said, none of these companies share much real technical data, so nobody has any “evidence” that their digital processing algorithm is different or the same between brands, either. Any tidbit information there is is only revealed through their whitepapers. And the Philips and Oticon whitepapers describe the development of their AI implementation differently, and that’s all we have to share and deduce from.
There are many technologies used by the Demant brand that obviously seem to be shared, like frequency lowering, feedback prevention, sudden sound and wind handling, etc. Nobody is arguing that these are not shared because it’s pretty obvious that they’re shared, like you said, because their descriptions, although despite using different names to call them, are quite obviously the same. Another way to confirm this is through their programming software. I can go into the Oticon Genie 2 software and the Philips HearSuite software and look at these peripheral technologies and verify that their use the exact same settings quite easily as well.
The only argument I make is that just because they share these peripheral technologies doesn’t automatically imply that their core technology (the AI engine) is the same. At least from the only descriptions they have in the whitepapers about their core AI technologies, they don’t look obviously the same. Another telltale sign is that inside of the Oticon Genie 2 and the Philips HearSuite software, the programming options for their core engines (The Oticon RealSound Intelligence and the Philips SoundMap Noise Control) don’t look anything remotely the same.
The fact that even if they share the same hardware or not doesn’t change the fact that THEIR descriptions of the AI core technology in their whitepapers don’t sound the same. One discusses using hundreds of thousands of noisy speech samples to train their AI. The other discusses using 2 million sound scenes to train their AI.
It seems like there have been a few people that have tried the Oticon and the 9040s, it would be interesting to hear their thoughts. It’s possible Otticon/Phillips used the same or similar data sets for training. It appears a lot of effort has been put into Bluetooth and streaming, although some don’t play well with Android. I think their hardware is a few years old, so I expect they will come out with a new processor and adding new features in 8-12 months.
I’m heading to CC and will likely try the 9040s.
@jay_man2 did share his experience in posts 39 and 49 on this thread.
Search for the Philips 9030 threads, specifically the 2 threads from @abarsanti. He had the OPN then tried the 9030 then tried the More.
There may be more but I just can’t remember at the moment. They may not see to reply to this thread, though. You’ll probably just have to search for it in the older threads.
The only thing the Oticon National Manager could tell me is that Phillips uses more “traditional technology”. I got the sense he was implying that they don’t utilise the DNN, but of course this is pure speculation. The differences in the programming software interface that youbare referring to perhaps gives credence to that assumption.
Interesting time at Costco. They thought the Philips 9040 was just as good as the Oticon, but he said he was partial to CC and never actually tried the Oticon. They had good luck with the Philips and thought they would be better sounding than the KS10. Two of the audologist there wear KS10. He was at a show and they were showing 6 different hearing aids with AI technology. He said they wouldn’t tell them the brands, but none of them did very well at recognizing and adapting to various situations.
He thought the reason CC dropped the KS10 was because the head of CC hearing did not get along with the head of Phonak. They had a batch of KS10s with charging problems, but it was quickly fixed.
He didn’t believe there would be a KS11, because CC is trying to decide their strategy going forward on hearing aids. He said with over the counter aids it is really changing market, just like CC put presure on the market to sell low cost aids.
I didn’t get to test the 9040s because they didn’t have a pair that was charged (I could have come back at another time). I took his suggesting and ordered a pair (non-recharageable) which should be here in 2 weeks. In the meantime he made several adjustments and changed the power on the KS10 receivers to match my speech recognization. I asked about the batteries in the KS10 and he said they charge $200/aid out of warranty for replacement.
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Thanks for sharing the details of your visit here, @kharri . I’ve heard of reliability issues with the Lithium-ion rechargeable system on the Oticon from some forum posters before, so I think that the choice for the disposable battery version is a safer, more reliable (lasting all day and lasting for 3+ years), and possibly cheaper choice in the long run as well, as you don’t have to deal with $200/aid battery replacement once you’re out of warranty. I know I used the KS10 pricing you mentioned here, but I suspect that the replacement cost for the Philips rechargeable battery per aid is probably not too far from it anyway.
Did you happen to ask them what that cost would be for the Philips? Also, is the disposable battery version of the Philips 9040 any cheaper than the Lithium-ion rechargeable version? And does the rechargeable version come with a choice of either a plugged in desk charger or a travel battery-powered smart charger like the Oticon brand or not?
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@Volusiano He didn’t mention the cost of replacing a Philips rechargeable battery, I’m guessing about the same price as the KS10 since they send it to a repair facility. Sometime I’ll take the KS10 apart and see what it takes to replace the battery. Of course I would need to find one. He said CC now has to pay $75/receiver for the KS10, whereas before they got them as part of the contract.
On the Philips the disposable battery and rechargeable are the same price.
The Philips rechargeable comes with charger and you can buy the portable charger.
Philips Hearing Aids | Costco
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