Unitron Moxi 20 - Too many bands?

Hearing Aids
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#1

I went to one chain audiology clinic and was recommended Resound Alera or Oticon Intiga.
However I decided I did not have enough rapport with / confidence in the person I was dealing with so I have gone to another clinic. the audiologist has proposed a high end option ( Phonak Audeo S Smart IX) and a recommended option (Moxi 20) as being appropriate for my loss.

I have read the comments in discussions here about more channels being marketing hype etc. and I can certainly see that the extra processing requirements could affect latency and battery life. On the other hand I assume that some version of Moore’s Law applies and the chips are getting smaller, faster and smarter.

I assume the benefits of the extra bands are as much or more to do with analysing/interpreting the sound environment as they are to do with a adjusting gain across all the individual bands. I have seen some glowing (too glowing?) reviews here but very few comments about Unitron relative to Phonak, Resound etc.

Anyway to cut to the chase, my questions:

  1. Do the extra channels as implemented on the Moxi have material negative effects that anyone has experienced ?
  2. what is the perception of Unitron as a design / engineering / manufacturing company and their support ?

Thanks for any info.

#2

Can’t answer the first question from a user’s POV but the Moxi 20 seems to do what it says on the tin very well, especially matching the signal to the canal resonance and normally head sounds.

Unitron is a division of Sonova who also own Phonak. They have a build quality you’d expect from an international company with a decent reputation.

Try them, see how you get on.

#3

unitrons are typically older model phonaks.

having more bands/channels is more beneficial for those with a cookie bite or unusual losses or for those in the music industries.

lots of people mistakenly think that features associated with channels (compression and gain control) will help them hear better in noise, which they do not.

to illustrate how channels/bands effects your hearing. take any old sound system with equalizer controls. now if you had more “bands” to control how much will that help you in hearing? yes, having more bands makes the sounds more pleasant to hear, but so does having an open aid. but long term aids users realize that these features do not help a lot when it comes to speech discrimination. now image taking your sound system into a very noisy bar or restaurant. it should be apparent that changing the equalizer settings will do very little in helping you hear in noise.

bands or channels tend to be the feature imo that should be used to indicate how sophisticated the underlying circuitry is in the aid. imo it’s a feature being used more to close the sale on aids. it sounds so great in the audi’s office! I am wearing a 10 channel oticon agile aid that I chose over a 20 channel phonak audeo smart aid because I couldn’t hear at all in noise with the phonak.

#4

Unitron hearing aids are never older model Phonak aids (though they do share a parts bin). The current crop use the same circuit as the latest Phonak Spice line.

Personal preference WRT noise management has nothing to do with the number of channels. If you went back and tried the Spice+, you’d find a completely different experience as the noise floor has been altered due to a change in the threshold kneepoint.

In terms of ‘Bang for your Buck’ the subsidiary suppliers often provide very good package value, by providing the same chips (plus extras like remotes and streamers) at much lower pricing. If you have an audiologist who is proficient with the software, you can usually get similar results to the flag-ship models.

#5

As someone who dispenses Phonak and Unitron, I find that they both have a lot to offer. The great thing about Unitron is that they include a lot of accessories at no additional cost (like streamers and remotes) which can really be beneficial to many people. Also, I find for people that like the Phonak hearing aids but have issues with Sound Recover, Unitron is an excellent option since the circuits are very similar but Unitron does not employ Sound Recover.

#6

What issues do people have with SoundRecover, and why do they happen? I just bought a pair of Phonak hearing aids and am very happy with them, especially since my audiologist tweaked them last Friday. Just wondering.

#7

There seem to be quite a few people on the board who have general issues with sound quality. I would say that a few (very few) patients I have find that it results in a “off” sound for speech that they sometimes just can’t get used to. It’s rare for me, but for the people where we can never get the hearing aids to sound “right” we switch to a different manu and the issues usually go away.

In my experience, people do far better with the sound recover especially if they have a lot of distortion/high frequency hearing loss.

#8

True of the majority of fittings here, but it does require a bit more counselling for the patient IMHO and sensible delivery to the right kind of patients. It’s not the ‘fire and forget’ kind of product that some* dispensers seem to prefer.

*Clearly, none of the Audilogists/dispensers on this board…:wink:

#9

That sounds like what I did to my Phonak audiologist after they tried “fire and forget” with the aids.

#10

Doc:

I do not mean to hijack someone else’s thread, but (we discussed) I tried the Phonaks Audeo Smart S. I really wanted them, but could not get them sound right, even after Spice + and new Target. So now I have Unitron Moxi (6 or 8 channels…can’t recall), but now I get fan or maybe tire noise noise while in my car, but it goes away if I make a sound, any sound, like tap the steering wheel. I thought the HA’s would interpret fans as noise and filter it out. My fitter says they are doing what they are supposed to do. Honestly it irritates me. I’m also really want these to work but I’m about to give up altogether. This has been too frustrating.

#11

If you are looking for a hearing aid that will selectively hear some sounds and filter others out completely, good luck with that. No hearing aid is capable of that. Your pro is absolutely correct. Instead of focusing on all those soft noises, try to think about whether you are able to hear speech when in a noisy place, or how well you understand people speaking on the TV. Overall, Are you functioning in day-to-day life better than you were without the hearing aids? If your answers to those questions are “yes” well then the hearing aids are working and this is where you need to shift your focus…The only way to get to the point where you don’t notice those little noises are to continue to wear them and eventually your brain will filter them out. I would bet you that if I was sitting in your car I would hear the same noise as you, it just wouldn’t bother me because I would be able to focus on other things…it gets pushed to the back of my mind as unimportant “fluff”. Since you aren’t used to hearing it, your brain will not do that. It will listen to it because it hasn’t learned how to classify it as “fluff” yet. In time, it will. Now, most devices have the ability to decrease the volume of those softer noises, but can’t eliminate it completely. Furthermore, if you are in a quiet place, the hearing aid by nature will seek out sounds to hear and eventually pick up on those little noises we all ignore. Your pro should be able to make some changes to make them as imperceptible as possible and make the HA less aggressive at seeking them out, but unfortunately, not eliminate them altogether.

Sorry I can’t offer more words of encouragement. Getting used to a hearing aid is really hard for many people, and one reason why sometimes some people just don’t feel like they can wear them.

#12

20 channels sounds a bit much to me. One wonders what ISN’T getting done while the processor works on adjusting all these correctly.

The only real advice I can give you is to trial more than one system. Then pick the one you like best. That 20 channel aid could fly in the face of the research that says that number of frequencies is unnecessary, and you might love it. Or you may try a competitors 8 channel hearing aid and be blown away.

If you are in a quandary, try more than one system. And frankly any good hearing professional keeps a selection of hearing aids in stock that he can let you listen to before you even make a commitment of any kind. I’d go so far as to say ALL good hearing professionals would make listening to real hearing aids part of the test.

Towards the end of last year I met two patients who had both been told by doctors of audiology that they would never be able to successfully wear hearing aids. Neither had even bothered to try after seeing poor discrimination scores. Both were blown away when they listened to real hearing aids and were thrilled, both are now hearing great. But they were deprived good hearing for years, because they listened to some moron who couldn’t be bothered to actually find out in the real world if hearing aids would help, and just decided to give up based on some numbers on a piece of paper.

#13

There is a degree of misunderstanding here.

  • The new Unitron/Phonak chips have very fast & powerful processors so they can handle 20 bands/channels with no problem.

  • Unitron is NOT a cheap Phonak - they use different development teams, but share the same chip platform and also share some software libraries and som plastic parts.

  • The new Unitrons use a high-resolution ‘classifier’ system … a poor man’s Artifical Intelligence … to determine in real-time what settings are best for a user. This approach isn’t used by all aids on the market.

  • The current Unitrons are designed for ‘instant acceptance’ and a ‘comfortable fit’. I dismissed this as marketing hype at first … but Unitron users almost always say ‘that sounds great’ within a few seconds of their first fit. This is NOT a typical response of most first time users.

In fact, digital hearing aids are becoming so complex that simply comparing number of bands etc isn’t really meaningful any more.

1 Like
#14

[duplicate deleted]

#15

Did I miss an echo? :smiley:

#16

Thanks everyone, particularly the professionals - as has been said on many threads here we (particularly the first time buyers) appreciate your input and expertise.

(ZCT - it seems to me a bit analagous to when Graphical User Intefaces came out on computers the chip had to do a lot more - but it soon did - not necessarily in release 1.0 though. So just because it requires more cycles doesn’t seem a real negative - if battery life was cut by 70% that would be different )

One perception I have from these forums is that more people seem to have had issues with Phonak Audeo than Resound Alera/future. In fact I see a lot of positive comments about Resound (maybe because people are pleased with themselves for saving so much at Costco ??). I am inerested because Resound Alera was the brand the first audiologist had recommended.

The original chain of clinics now has a promo on the Alera and the difference in price between a pair of Alera 9s and Moxi 20s is approx US$140. Should I even care?

#17

I don’t see anything wrong with my unitron comment. yes, I am aware that their aids contain features (the comfort clarity control is very fascinating) that phonak aids do not have. but in the end they are taking the last the generation phonaks and putting their own spin on the design.

I do think unitron is a great company that makes great products. however I do think they need to get back to their roots of creating innovative solutions like their wireless crosslink solution that made phonak want to buy them out.

I’ve should have written that one should imagine playing a sound file of a conversation in a noisy bar/restaurant and then trying to filter out the noise using the equalizer settings. It should become clear to all that the equalizer control will do very little to help hear through the noise. and that’s why I think bands/channels do little to help with hearing in noise and ultimately with speech discrimination. As most speech is heard in the presence of noise.

#18

Allow me to interject some information… Unitron has and does their own R&D on their own unique features, and their own software right here in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. There are a number of Unitron innovations that Phonak does not have, or have recently aquired from Unitron. They are sister companies, therefore there is some sharing of intel and parts, however their programming and features differ quite a bit.

As for the discussion about bands and channels… At this stage of digital hearing aid technology, it really isn’t a huge issue. I would suggest consumers look at the full package of features that the aid has to benefit you.

#19

Hearing aids are balancing processing speed with power consumption, more of an issue in hearing aids than computers, because while people will accept charging a laptop after a couple of hours, and no one really pays attention to desktop power consumption, no one is going to accept a hearing aid that needs a new battery every two hours.

So with a hearing aid you have to have fast processing that doesn’t take too much power. You have an amplifier, which by definition is always going to be power hungry because you are taking a signal and making it have more energy.

Moore’s law may not really apply to hearing aid chips since there are more things to worry about than just processing speed.

Given the finite amount of processing time you have, what sample rate do you use? How many channels and bands do you have? How independent are they? How many filters do you have on background noise? How many other features do you need to manage? Remotes, streaming, Bluetooth, feedback management, user inputs, etc.

A manufacturer has to balance all these features on their chip. Some would argue that since no science (that I am aware of) has really demonstrated a benefit of 20 channels of adjustment versus say 12, they are spending unnecessary processing time with this that could be used for something more tangible to the patient.

Ultimately it’s just going to come down to if you like the look, the performance, and the professional who sticks it in your ear and programs it.

#20

In that case the wearer could have a Moxi 12 if they wanted. They would however lose the 4th Autopro destination and a few of the more refined adjustments in the process.

I still don’t hold with the argument about the ‘tail-end’ product. Unitron brought the comfort/clarity balance control to the market (which then became smart-focus) and have a pretty good study showing how it’s given better signal to noise improvements than directionality alone. Phonak subsequently adopted this technology.

Sonova make chips, like VAG make drive-trains, whether that drive-train has Audi, VW or Skoda clothes on is down to your pocket and how brand orientated you are. Skoda actually have some cracking cars out there like the Octavia VRS and the Yeti, which owe no favours to Audi at all, but they do share common engine technology and parts. The same is true of the Unitron brand.