You’ve seen ‘Daredevil’ - That sort of reflected sound scene is impossible even with several directional mics, as all the reflected waveforms combine into background mush.
However take the triangulated geometry of several source mics around the room and apply 3rd, 4th, 5th order calculations to the signal and you can ‘pull out’ a meaningful signal from a given source. So more like the device that ‘Batman’ gets built, but confined to your immediate vicinity, with vocal bias, or where your hearing aids are pointed. As there’s little point in hearing a mouse fart 60 feet away if you’re not looking for a mouse in your vicinity.
You can see it’s going to be a mix of several sources, a chunk of geometry, AI to refine and tweak the output; so when you say ‘Hey Dave!’ And start a conversation, several ‘resources’ get combined to amplify Dave’s voice in the vicinity of Dave’s head.
I just got Philips 9040 from Costco, $1600 and I am SO pleased. I am now able to hear in loud restaurants and understand others in the car while driving.
There has been discussion of the differences between Oticon and Philips, per your descriptions. When looking to replace my KS10 I was particularly interested in a more open sound landscape than what they provide, so I was attracted to the Oticons. Members on this board suggested that there are similarities in the Philips. I decided to try the Philips (I appreciate how Costco operates with HA, having purchased several previous generations from them). I wound up with the 9040 and have been very pleased at how it grabs voices out of noise.
But I also want the openness to all sounds, all the time. I get this with the Philips, even in noise. My test has been to have my wife talk to me in a noisy restaurant while I focus on the background rather than her voice. Then she stops and I continue to focus on the background. And we alternate this way, focusing all the time on the background. I cannot detect any attenuation of background noise when she is talking; I seem to hear everything around me at pretty much normal volume, whether she is talking or not.
I was so pleased with the Philips that I never tried Oticon hearing aids, hence I have no point of comparison. The technology approaches between the two brands may be different and interesting, but I’m focused on real world results for me. What I know is that these hearing aids are giving me a major improvement over the KS10, both in the way that they grab voices in noise and in providing a more open sound landscape in all listening situations. For my hearing loss and priorities, they are a huge improvement over the KS10.
More generally, I don’t tend to look for the absolute best in a hearing aids these days. I look for price-performance. I see what’s happening in the world of technology. I lived my entire working life in high tech and saw enormous change. But nothing like today. Technology is currently exploding at a rate that absolutely makes my head spin - and I’m speaking as a former insider…! Densities with the upcoming 3 nm groundrules are headed toward 100 billion devices per chip (!!), more than double the current best, near as I can tell. (Are you listening, wherever you are, Gordon Moore?) And AI technology is exploding. Now, I don’t know how all of this stuff finds its way into hearing aids - but eventually it will. And I do know that the difference between the KS10 and the 9040 is significant, far more significant than any previous generational upgrades I ever had in hearing aids. So my approach to all of this change is to minimize my current spending.
I have the good fortune to be a pretty easy fit in hearing aids - REM settings come pretty close for me. I don’t feel that I need the services of an 8-year doctor of audiology to get it right - many need such services, I am lucky not to. And the costs of hearing aids from the best providers remains incredibly high: Yesterday a golf buddy told me that the Mayo Clinic quoted his wife technology pricing tiers that started at $6K+. Rather than spend $6K+ today for the absolute best technology in a hearing aid, that may be old in 2 years, I prefer to spend one quarter of that today and save the extra $$ so that I can more affordably upgrade to new technology tomorrow. This strategy will hopefully offset my gradually deteriorating hearing. So long as Costco can reasonably fit my loss I will focus on price-performance and ride the technology curve, versus paying up for what may or many not be the absolute best. YMMV.
Just went to a movie (Indiana Jones). I still had trouble understanding all the words with the 9040s HAs. I tried various settings (Music/TV, Noise reduction, General), turned the volume up etc. I would say it was better than previous HAs, but still a struggle.
I would equate hearing at the movie to some of the scenes using the SoundStudio (in the HA program software). Speech with lots of noise in the background (also low speech volume with foreign accents).
Movie speech is processed for so many environmental things that if they get filtered out by your hearing aids so that you can understand speech better, you’ll probably lose a lot of the intended effects they want to add to the mood of the movie in the first place.
Unintelligible movie dialogue is not the measure of a hearing aid. And for any Christopher Nolan flick… no chance, just wait for the streaming version and turn on the subtitles lol.
You’ll need to add a dedicated program in their selection menu to use it. Below are the 4 Tcoil related programs: classroom and telephone with MT or just T for Mic & Tcoil turned on together, or just Tcoil alone with no Mic.
If a movie theater has Tcoil, you will be able to hear the content from the Tcoil loop similar to streaming, meaning that you’ll be able to filter out the effect of the theater room’s echo, if any (if you choose the T option only instead of the combined MT for Mic + Tcoil). But then you’ll only hear the sound content in mono only (not even in stereo). Any special surround sound effect benefit that is usually a valued hallmark of the real movie theater will be lost to you.
Interesting timing re. my comment about Nolan’s flicks. Seems as though there could be yet another of his audio disasters on the way. Note the first comment (wasn’t me, but could have been):
I’ve had my Philips 9040 for 2 months and for $1600 I am very pleased. I only miss a very few words and in a loud restaurant setting, I am able to hear well at my table.
Hey OP! I work at costco as a hearing aid fitter and ive also worked at beltone, for many years. I have a lot of experience with Jabra/beltone/resound. Like others have said, these are all the same. Also, like others have said, the 9040 and Real are similar yet different. I have never programmed or used an oticon Real so i cant really comment on which one i would recommend. I can however speak to the 9040 vs Jabra EP 10.
I love my Jabras very much but i have to admit that i like the sound of the philips a little more. They just seem to sound a little more natural to me and not so artificial. The reason i chose jabra is because of the amount of noise filtering they can do. The app is probably the most robust out of all the hearing aids and it offers a bunch of control over your aids. It has a 3 band equalizer, a really nice and very effective noise filter and in my opinion, the best in class directional program (front focus) or in beltone’s universe (ultra focus 2). GN spent a lot of time on improving the speech to noise and id say they hit it out of the park with the omnia/achieve/ep 10. The oticon/philips app are pretty similar, as far as ive seen in the demo mode for the oticon app. They dont have an equalizer! Well they do but its only for streaming. I cant begin to say how annoying this has been for me lol. If they had half the app that the jabras do, id probably recommend the philips for everyone. For now, i recommend the jabra for folks who want to adjust their aids themselves and philips if they do not. All you can do in the philips app os change the volume, change programs and use the “streaming only” equalizer. Thats it!! And the oticon app is not really any better, from what ive seen in the demo mode.
As for the tinnitus. I have never had a patient tell me that these tinnitus programs help. They are not what a lot of people think. Its simpy a sound generator, thats it! Theres no special, elaborate, tinnitus feature that gets rid of or improves tinnitus. All it does is creates a constant sound that you can choose, like rushing water, wave noises or pink/white noise that “masks” or overpowers the tinnitus sound. You are basically swapping one noise for another. Maybe this does help some folks but it does nothing for me or any of my patients. However, just wearing hearing aids, tinnitus program or not, seems to significantly reduce the tinnitus sound for folks, including me. Try it out!
Conclusion… if philips oticon ever decide to improve or update their app, they would definitely give GN a run for their money. I would fit a lot more of them. And the tinnitus rant… the tinnitus program, sound generator… this is all based on MY experiences with the aids i have fit. I dont know everything and i have not fit everything, there may be some tinnitus program out there that does more than generate another constant sound. If there is, id love to hear about it! Hope this helps! If you would like to see a review of the Jabra that breaks down the great features, check out my Jabra review on the Hearing Club youtube channel. Have a good one!!
Yes, the amount of control available in the Philips app is Stone Age, no question.
For me it makes almost no difference, fortunately. Coming from the KS10s, which have a fine app that provides all sorts of adjustability, I was very disappointed with the 9040 app. But it worked out fine: I had the initial 9040 fitting, which was done to REM. This got really close. I had one follow-up, and that got them just right (with the exception of sudden loud noises, which is low priority, I’ll get it taken care of when something more important comes up). And I haven’t needed the app, really, except for the streaming equalizer.
I find that these hearing aids seem to do the right thing in all listening environments I’ve come across, so far. I just leave them in the General program and they take care of the rest. They even sound great on music, such that I seldom find the need to manually select the Music program.
So far, so good - great overall sound quality and automatic/transparent adapting to changing listening environments. My only complaint is sound quality on streaming. Without the streaming equalizer I don’t think I could listen to streaming; sound is simply terrible w/o the equalizer.
They all sound terrible streaming lol. The equalizer is a must have, yes. I usually turn up the lows and mids for streaming. But thats ok, they arent made to stream ya know. Omg, you should hear the streaming quality of the Jabra Enhance Plus OTC lol. They sound amazing streaming.
