I assume that they have some kind of override to keep the receivers open when you’re chewing/eating if you choose to override it.
Yeah, for streaming it’s nice to be able to stop the bass leak, but for non-music streaming, it’s not that important to stop the bass because normal voices don’t go that low anyway. For music streaming, the tiny receiver’s bass performance is not all that in the first place. It’s still better to wear a good set of headphones over your open domes HAs if you really want a really good bass response when listening to music anyway.
The real value I see is in very noisy place where you can close up the vent to keep the noise from coming in. I wonder if just stuffing a couple of soft ear plugs into your ear (assuming there’s some room left on the outside of your ear canal to keep it in place) will be just effective and much less expensive, especially if you don’t get exposed to very noisy environments that often in the first place.
For folks with custom molds with a vent, it’s also easy enough to have a couple of plastic plug to plug up their vent hole to close up the vent.
The big question about the ActiveVent receiver is whether the Phonak Paradise has the smart in there to hold a dual prescription, one for open vent and the other is close vent.
The other big question is how much of a battery drain it’ll be to wear these ActiveVent receivers if they keep switching in and out all day. Will there still be plenty of juice left on the rechargeable at the end of the day for it not to become an issue or not?
Also, occlusion is a big deal for many people. I’m not sure if being totally occluded while streaming is really worth the trade-off in the first place. I assume that there has to be some override available so the user can make the ultimate decision for each instance instead of being at the mercy of the HAs.