Welcome to the Forum!
If you use the Search bar at the top of the page and enter “Phillips cs Oticon technology”, you’ll get 2 hits. The second one is what you’re looking for, I believe.
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Thanks! This is all pretty overwhelming honestly, and it seems like I have a LOT to learn before making a decision. Like many others, I have zero insurance coverage for hearing aids and I’ve only recently discovered that my wife wasn’t crazy about needing to get my hearing checked, so thanks for sharing your experience with me.
Not a problem. Now that you’ve discovered the Search function, you have instant access to a ton of invaluable info.
[Maybe even dig around for one of the many threads about Costco or even spousal attitudes towards hearing loss. One of us will pitch in to help you, if you get stuck!]
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What @SpudGunner shows is the post (not an article) I wrote about how the first Philips HearLink model is similar to the Sonic Enchant 100 in a thread titled “OPN S1 vs Costco Phillips”. There are 2 clarifications I want to make about this post and this thread:
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I believe that at the time, the Costco HIS was telling the OP to wait until the new HearLink 9030 to come out, and implied that it would be the same as the More. Obviously the HearLink 9030 hadn’t come out yet at the time, so there was no whitepaper on the 9030 at the time yet.
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So I looked up the whitepaper of the first generation HearLink (not the 9030) and saw that it has the same functionalities as the Sonic Enchant 100, and that’s what I pointed out in my post on that thread, that the first generation HearLink (not the 9030) was a copycat of the Sonic Enchant 100.
Since then, the Philips HearLink 9030 has come out, and its whitepaper finally made available, and it seems like a brand new model, very different than the original Philips HearLink. So it does NOT seem to be an extension of the original HearLink based on the 2 whitepapers. Nevertheless, this new HearLink 9030 also does NOT show any similarity to the Oticon More nor the Oticon OPN whitepapers that I can tell either. So my conclusion is that neither the first gen HearLink, nor the second gen HearLink 9030, are copycats of either the Oticon OPN or the Oticon More.
Since then, Sonic also has come out with its new model called the Radiant. I have not tried to look for a whitepaper on the Radiant so see if the new Philips HearLink 9030 is a copycat of the Radiant or not. But since the first gen HearLink was a copycat of the Sonic Enchant, there’s a possibility that the second gen HearLink 9030 may be a copycat of the Sonic Radiant. However, I don’t think anybody has confirmed this yet through whitepapers.
Finally, there’s no “article” per se from William Demant about the difference between Philips and Oticon in how they process sound that I know of. I would be very interested to see such an article, too, if you have a link. I doubt that William Demant would want to write such an article in the first place, since I don’t see what they would gain by comparing the 2 brands officially.
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@mbsalty and @Volusiano: I apologize for sowing confusion … it’s hard to find good help these days!
Thanks for the clarification MrV!
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I apologized for calling it an article, it was a post.
However this post was made in 2019 for the older units and I would assume it is out of date by now. However, it seems to show that things are dome differently between the units.
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has what they call spotlight papers that talk about the radiant tech.
Thanks for the link to the Sonic download center. The Radiant product information guide has some details about its technologies. Not in-depth like in a whitepaper, but enough to kind of guess what they have.
The only obvious thing I notice is that the Radiant has the equivalent of the Oticon OPN S OpenSound Optimizer (which is the same as the More MoreSound Optimizer) which is the feedback prevention technology using STM (Spectro Temporal Modulation). This is the key differentiation between the original OPN and the OPN S models.
I don’t see any mention of AI at all on the Sonic Radiant, so apparently it doesn’t seem to have the Philips HearLink 9030 AI feature or the Oticon More Deep Neural Network feature.
There’s also no evidence of Radiant adapting any of the Oticon OPN or More technology to support the open paradigm.
So while the original Costco Philips HearLink is a close cousin of the Sonic Enchant by sharing many of its core features, it looks like the new Hearlink 9030 has taken a departure from sharing the same technologies with the Sonic Radiant.
While the Radiant seems to have adopted the new feedback prevention technology original found in the OPN S (and now the More), the HearLink 9030 doesn’t seem to have this technology.
It’s funny, I remember when the Sonic Enchant first came out, rumors started that it was just like the Oticon OPN, which I found was far from the truth because I had first hand experience trialing the Enchant 100 myself, as an owner of the OPN 1.
As far as Costco is concerned, I’ve heard rumors that the Costco Bernafon was the same as the Oticon OPN, which was not true (it was more like the Sonic Enchant), then I heard that the Costco Philips was the same as the OPN (again, not true, more like the Sonic Enchant as well), then now I hear some Costco HIS pushing the new Philips HearLink 9030 as being the same as the Oticon More, just because the 9030 also has “AI”, which again is not true because the 9030 AI implementation doesn’t seem to be the same as the More deep neural network AI.
Just because Sonova shared its Phonak Audeo Marvel and Paradise technologies with the Costco KS9 and KS10 respectively doesn’t imply that William Demant did the same and shared its Oticon OPN and More technologies with the Costco Philips HearLink (original) and HearLink 9030 respectively.
Having said that, I think the Philips Hearlink 9030, and the Sonic Radiant, and the Oticon OPN S and More, being all under the same William Demant roof, share many non-core technologies, like frequency lowering, feedback prevention, wide input dynamic range, binaural communication, transient noise management, soft sound management, maybe even down to the same look and feel of the hardware like the casing, charging system, receivers, etc.
More importantly, perhaps they also share the same fitting rationale (the VAC+ Voice Aligned Compression +), although that part is not clearly advertised but is only a conjecture at this point by me.
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Seems VAC+ is for Oticon’s premium products
“Oticon Premium and Advanced devices use a proprietary fitting rationale called Voice Aligned Compression, or VAC+. VAC+ uses a curvilinear input-output function to provide a clear focus on soft to moderate speech information while maintaining perception in louder environments.”
Almost two weeks now. Yesterday, I truly noticed the benefit of the app to make gain adjustments while streaming. Was talking to my mom on the phone and her voice did not come in clear enough for me to understand. I increased the high frequency gain by 6dB and could clearly hear and understand her. This is a great feature for those of who need help on the phone or general streaming.
Here’s a pic of my HearLink 9030 with glitter blue stickers.
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So officially two weeks today. As I have a Reverse Slope Hearing Loss and self-program, I can say that I finally have the programming right. Up until now, the Costco fitter set these based on REM and adjusted them too aggressively. She tried and was competent enough, but I much prefer to tweak them myself. The fitting software is very comparable to the Oticon Genie2 software that I’ve used for the past 4+ years with my OPN. One weird thing with the HearSuite software is I can’t get the software’s instrument updater to recoginize the aids so I’ll have to rely on Costco for firmware updates.
I made adjustments to them yesterday and I can hear much better and clearer now. I will be give a much better comparison to my prior Oticon OPN as well as give an overal opinion on these. I’m very satisfied on the phone with these guys, loving the streaming app
Today at the park, I could hear so wellwhen my kids called me from across the park and a passerbyer asked me a question.
Will continue to update as I encounter different listening scenarios.
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@Abarsanti: That’s a welcome post to read, Abarsanti. I’m a relative newcomer to the level of expertise shared on this Forum, but it is not lost on me that your kind of hearing loss is hard to fit.
I’m genuinely glad for your success with the Costco devices, and it’s reinforcing my comfort level in recommending the Costco route to my budget-challenged friends, notwithstanding the potential variance in fitter skill.
[I’m also more than a bit envious of your DIY capabilities: I know that route is a non-starter for me because of the way my follow-up audiologist visits are prescribed by VAC. They won’t want to be paying for an audiologist to correct our (vets’) self-programming mistakes!]
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So glad the aids are working for you. I pick mine up on Wednesday and hope to be equally happy. They are replacing a pair of Bernafon that have been having issues for the last year even after having them sent in and we’re replaced.
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Continued observations…
Having great success with streaming and phone using the HearLink. The app definitely gives an improvement over the OPN with the ability to adjust the bass/mid/treble. This past week, I heard great, but admittedly the environments I was in were not very challenging with the exception of the doctor appointment and dealing with all the speakers wearing masks. No problems hearing at all. I have these set up with dynamic directionality which allows me to hear sounds from the side and back as well as the front. There are quite a few adjustment options for directionality that were not available for the OPN. Continued satisfaction with the HearLink.
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The new version of the ON app gives you the ability to adjust bass/mid/treble on the OPN S (and probably the More as well now). But that’s only for when you stream contents. It’s not for real live listening situations.
Can you clarify if the 9030 app actually lets you adjust the tones for real live listening situations, or if it’s only for streaming contents like with the ON app?
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The HearLink app only allows you to adjust the sound settings for streaming. While for me personally it’s an advancement since the original OPN didn’t have this feature,I’ll admit that I’m envious of the myPhonak/easy Line app where you can adjust listening situations.
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The Cochlear Nucleus app can adjust both live listening and streaming situations. This information is very helpful during audiologist appointments concerning programming.
Thanks for your helpful Hearlink updates.
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Thanks for starting this thread about the Phillips 9030. I’m new to HA and chose the Phillips 9030 at Costco a month ago. I’ve been a little nervous because I can’t find much info on people choosing them. Everyone seems to pick the k10 over the Phillips and I’m not sure why? My audiologist at Costco says that if I’m having a hard time with background noise, that the k10 would be worst and doesn’t recommend them for me. I’ve had a hard time adjusting with the HA swimming for sound and hearing high pitches way too loudly and back ground noice like the fridge, oven, the vacuum is the worst. I have 4 noisy kids so everything seems so loud all the time. I’ve been back a few times to adjust sound with some improvement. Since the domes just kept falling out and it was irritating my ears I got molds last Saturday. I feel like I’m constantly hearing under water now with the molds and it’s a lot worst. They did a REM (I think that’s what it’s called) test again to adjust sound when I got the molds but I feel like I’m back at ground zero and it will take a lot of visits before getting it right. I don’t feel like the molds stay in well either as they eventually slide out. A little overwhelmed by everything and wondering if I made the right choice going with Costco. The reality is I can’t afford the prices outside of Costco so I feel stuck . I don’t know how much of my experience is just from being a first time HA wearer. It’s really emotional as I didn’t realize how much I was missing before (like I can hear the birds outside and just never knew we had so many birds all the time in my neighborhood) and don’t want to go back to not hearing and just reading lips most of the time but adjusting the the high pitches of my 4 kids being so loud and the household noises is hard and I feel exhausted and have a headache at the end of the day. I also don’t know if I just have a bad audiologist at Costco and got bad mold fitting since it’s my first experience with everything. Anyways, all that to say it gave me hope to find that there are other people that are trying the Phillips and having good experiences.
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If the 9030 didn’t work for you, you can try the KS10, I like its noise reduction and speech enhancement feature.
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You’ve got a challenging type of loss to fit. (Reverse slope) I think the Phillips should serve you well, but you can always try another aid if you want. I’d try to be patient and accept that it will likely take multiple visits to get them adjust right. Try to take notes of the issues you’re having and share them with the hearing aid fitter.
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