User Review of Whisper Hearing Aids

Hearing Aids
#126

Same here. 5 is too loud. Even before I tried noisy situations, I noticed more noise detail than before (even with my moderate hearing loss), such as the creaky noises in my stairs, or noises outside.

For speech in noise, these are head and shoulders above everything else I’ve tried. The difference is marked. On a walk on a sandy/gravelly surface in a rather large crowd today, I could hear conversations in front of me and behind me very easily. At lunch at a picnic table with a lot of people around, hearing individual voices was pretty much effortless.

It’s not perfect – and I wonder how this compares to the experience of someone with perfect hearing – but after only one day, this already seems incredible.

To answer @SpudGunner 's question, I try to keep the “Brain” on me, because I want the potential processing power to be available – I guess I’ll have to try turning it off in a noisy situation to see what a difference it makes.

The brain communicates with the earpieces through some sort of proprietary high-speed protocol (because bluetooth is too slow). Streaming from a phone occurs through the brain which uses regular old bluetooth (not sure whether it’s bluetooth 5 or bluetooth LE). The app is pretty rudimentary and mainly allows volume adjustments, a change to a different program (noise or music) and muting. It also shows the battery level for the earpieces and the brain.

On the down side, … I can hear some hiss in a quiet environment, and sometimes there are some weird effects of sharp transient noises (water from a kitchen sink faucet hitting the stainless steel bottom), but (finally!) they appear to do what hearing aids should have been doing all along.

The hearing aids themselves are larger in order to accommodate those larger non-rechargeable batteries.

I’ll keep testing.

#127

Glad to hear that you’re finding Whisper’s performance working out better for you, @happymach. Are you being fitted with open domes or something else for the Whisper system?

Also, some more detailed elaboration would be very helpful beside just saying that it’s better. Maybe something like what I suggested in post 106 in this thread so that we all have some kind of baseline to go from when reading about the comparisons. Thanks.

#128

Yes, I concur about the improvements in handling speech in noise. They’re markedly better.

#129

Open domes. I didn’t just say they were better; I said that I could clearly hear voices around me in noisy environments and did so in a fairly detailed fashion. For the first time, I feel like there’s really effective delineation of voices, and in a totally natural way. This is exactly what I have been looking for: I just hear the voices (although, in one situation, where I was hearing voices behind me while walking on a gravelly surface, the voices did sound a bit unnaturally processed, but what mattered was that I could understand the voices). In other words, the Whispers appear to work along the same lines as the Oticon open system, except (IMHO) much more effectively.

I will try some A/B comparisons with the More 1s (I read above that the brain can’t be turned off when it is already connected to the earpieces?), but that isn’t easy to do in social situations in an unobtrusive way!

This is obviously going to be subjective. The best thing you could do, @Volusiano, would be to sign up for a trial yourself!

#130

Yeah, I fully understand that everyone’s hearing is different and HA brands/models can have different effects on different people, so it’s purely subjective. For example, even with my kind of hearing loss (severe to profound high frequency loss), I do fine with just the OPN 1 in speech in noise situation, let alone the More. So there’s no need for me to try out newer HAs at this point, although I’m interested to learn more so that when my OPN 1s go bad, I’ll be able to make better informed decisions about which brand/model I want to trial.

I do have the time and inclination and interest to test out the Whisper, though, if I choose to. But I don’t think it’s fair for me to sign up for a trial if I have no intention to lease it in the end anyway even if it works out, because the brain and the lease model and no DIY are already deal breakers for me right off the bat. But I better stop here because there’s been a strong push to just focus on performance discussion on this thread now going forward.

#131

Here’s what I said in a post (Anyone tried Widex Moment vs Signia AX ? (or Phonak Paradise)) in another thread:

As for speech in noisy places, my reaction to how I hear store clerks and restaurant cashiers (some with masks and/or behind plastic) with Whisper isn’t just “I’m hearing them better”, but “Wow, I’m hearing them speak. These people have voices of their own, and they enunciate their words, they’re not just mumbling.” Maybe my reaction is over-the-top, but Whisper speech performance is a big improvement over what I’ve gotten used to.

It’s not clear to me how my performing A/B comparison tests would help you understand the Whisper experience better, or convince you that they’ve really accomplished something. Ideally you would try Whisper yourself as @happymach suggested…if they’re available near you, and if the audiologist says you’re in their fitting range.

#132

It’s not about convincing me or anyone that Whisper has really accomplished something. I wouldn’t be convinced by anyone anyway unless I hear it for myself, simply because everyone’s hearing and response to the performance of HA brand/model is all different and unique.

I’m not looking to be convinced. What I’m looking for is

A. How it works with the brain. This is pretty obvious because the brain is the main attraction here. And you guys HAVE been sharing this for the most part, which is great. But, there’s more to it than just this.

B. How it works with just the ear piece and without the brain. This is simply to determine how well the ear piece works as stand-alone., especially in difficult situations. This is to also confirm how important the brain is, because @billgem was saying that the ear pieces are premium stand-alone device by themselves that are effective in most situations. So it begs the question of how “premium” they are. But it’s also to determine how often the brain is really needed. For example, when @happymach said that he just takes the brain with him everywhere, it’s hard to gauge whether he could have done just as well without the brain in those situations or not. Whisper opens the door by saying that the ear pieces are effective as stand-alone, so it’s appropriate to want to find out “how” effective they are as stand-alone, and where you’d draw the line and really need the brain. In moderate situations? Complex situations? Very complex situations?

C. The mention and comparison to your current brand/model of hearing aids is mainly for reference. If the user currently has the OPN or the More and they reveal this, along with how the OPN or More perform against the Whisper, maybe on a scale of 1 to 10, maybe he gives the OPN a 6 and the More an 8 and the Whisper a 10 in that specific (noisy) situation, then there’s some data points people would be interesting know (but not necessarily to be convinced). If the user doesn’t have an Oticon HA (like yourself), then we know that at least the comparison is not a apple to apple in terms of an “open” HA (the Whisper) vs another “open” HA (the Oticon OPN or More), but a traditional beam forming paradigm against an open paradigm HA, then we can judge the comparison in a different way if they’re not apple to apple comparison but apple to orange comparison.

And the A/B/C comparison, if feasible, is most effective because you wouldn’t have to rely on possibly vague memories to compare things. If you have the ear pieces, the brain, and your old HAs, which should be easy because you DO possess all 3 in this case, and you can swap between the 3 of them on the spot, then the comparison will be succinct and obvious and immediate, without having to guess and have ambiguous generalization later on. Most important of all, the environmental factors are going to be exactly the same, at the same time, the same place, with the same crowd, doing the same things, dealing with the same noises, hearing same background music, having same ambience, being in the same location placement where you’re sitting w.r.t. everything/everyone else.

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#133

I don’t really see a problem with starting a trial even if you have no intention of moving forward. I think curiosity is enough.

Well, I imagine if one is at home alone, one wouldn’t need the brain. :wink: I don’t think there’s any way of knowing where one would draw the line in terms of the complexity of the situation; it’s interesting to think about what the brain adds I imagine that the auditory processing becomes increasingly effective as the complexity of the situation increases, but how is one to know when the improvement is significant?

#134

Well, Whisper may not care but I think the HCP who facilitates the trial would care because it’s his time and effort he’d have to put in to get me fitted, no? Or does he get paid nevertheless for the trial even if people don’t sign up for the lease afterward? I wonder who takes that risk? If it’s Whisper only then I may not care too much and I may do it. If the risk is shared by the HCP then I don’t want to impose on the HCP just out of curiosity.

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#135

I believe the HCP gets paid for the trial regardless, and the client does have to pay the HCP for the fitting. HCPs don’t accept risk out of the goodness of their hearts :wink:

#136

I wouldn’t bother doing A/B comparison with/without the brain when you’re at home. I’m only talking about when you’re out and about in challenging places, like in your car driving, at the supermarket, stores, restaurants, noisy outdoor scenes, etc.

I don’t think you need to decide on where to draw the line up front. If I were to do it, when I go out, I’d just take the brain with me but not turn it on. I’d only turn it on when I notice that I’m having some issue hearing something that I want to hear but have trouble hearing. This way, that line to draw would automatically present itself, and after you turn on the brain and you can finally hear what you couldn’t hear clearly before, then it’d be where the brain makes a difference.

If you’re at home, then it depends. Some people like @SpudGunner who has pets at home and wants to be able to hear noises from their pets, then it’d be an interesting exercise to maybe do one day or half a day without the brain, then turn it on for the other half day or next day, to see if it makes any difference to hear the extra stuff you want to hear or not.

But even without a situation like @SpudGunner’s, the other interesting stuff is to see if the brain treats noises around the house like the refrigerator or dishwasher or running water or furnace fan or watching TV any differently than without it or not. But that’s just for curiosity. The more important stuff is when you go outside and have to deal with the external noises.

#138

At this point I want to get the maximum benefit out of Whisper, so I’m using the Brain all the time. Later on, if I use Whisper without the Brain, the differences ought to be obvious to me, since I’ll be acclimated to Whisper’s full functionality.

#140

@happymach, do you own Oticon More, or are you just trialing them along with the Whisper? If you own them then you are in the same situation as I am: having spent thousands of dollars on More HAs and considering replacing them in less than a year. If you actually end up replacing the More with the Whisper that’s a pretty powerful statement.

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#141

Just trialing the Oticon More. Even with the markedly better performance of the Whisper hearing aids in noise, I’d have trouble justifying their cost (even monthly!) relatively soon after paying nearly $5,000 for the More 1s.

#142

I’m in the same camp as @Volusiano. There are a number of interesting innovations in the Whispers offering - they’re not all my cup of tea, but what does that matter - time will tell whether Whispers gives enough users enough of an edge to convince them to sign up.

My main curiosity is driven by my current high level of satisfaction with my More1s. I keep asking myself - how much better than what I have in my ears could Whisper be? This is not to say that my More1s give me perfect hearing (whatever that is ! :joy:). I still have to ask Glenda at the dental clinic to repeat how much owe her, and there are certain voice timbres and accents from behind masks that I find challenging, but there’s nothing that makes me feel that I’m wearing second-best when I put my Mores into my ears.

I guess I’m sort of like a rubbernecker at an accident scene who’s asking all sorts of probing questions just to experience vicariously what the accident victims might have experienced before the ambulances hauled them off. But that doesn’t mean that I want to join them for the rest of the ride!

#143

That’s a weird analogy! Doesn’t make much sense to me.

I think the More 1s are superior in some respects, such as being more natural sounding in some situations, but also in terms of streaming and rechargeability. However, for discerning speech in noise, there’s a world of a difference in favor of the Whispers.

But don’t take our word for it — sign up for a basically free month’s trial! Against doing so, I imagine you’d be afraid of having buyer’s remorse.

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#144

I guess you don’t read. I’m a veteran, and VAC provides me with my hearing aids. Whisper is not even available in Canada, so a trial is out of the question.

I’ll continue to watch from the shoulder, thanks.

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#145

I can see 2 types of interested bystanders reading this thread, beside those who already jumped in to test out the water, like @billgem, @x475aws, @happymach, which I call trial participants (actually Bill has now signed on for the lease IIRC).

The first type of bystander is someone like @ziploc, who already has something else (the More) but is still not happy enough with what they currently have for one reason or another, and are interested in looking for something better.

The second type of bystander is someone like myself, or @SpudGunner, and maybe a few more folks, who are already fairly happy enough with what they currently have and not really looking for something else, but nevertheless still curious enough because who wouldn’t be especially if there’s truly a disrupter coming to the market that can challenge the big 6 and result in a win-win for the consumers.

So it’s not really an analogy to anything per se. I think it’s just an explanation (because there’s been a recurring invitation to “try it out for yourself”) of why somebody who’s not truly ready to buy into or trial the Whisper system can still be interested in watching how it unfolds. Beside mainly due to curiosity. it’s also because if Whisper can truly disrupt the big 6 to keep them on their toes, it’s still going to be a win-win all around for everyone, both those who buy into Whisper, and even those who don’t, because the likes of Oticon and Phonak and such will have to innovate their products even harder now for their customers to choose to continue to remain with them.

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#146

It was weird (and could be taken as insulting) to compare people trying the Whispers to “accident victims.”

The reason why people are saying “try it yourself” is because the “bystanders” have already expressed considerable skepticism!

Anyway, as a participant, I welcome further impressions, observations, and remarks from other participants.

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#147

I wouldn’t think this way if I were you. I assume that you’ve had a full trial and must have been happy “enough” before putting the money down on the More. Obviously it still hasn’t delivered the holy grail that you’re looking for, but you got the best you could find at the time. I think you’re still in a pretty good situation nevertheless.

The Whisper system is showing some initial promises, but it’s not fully mature as can be, what with the lack of streaming for now, and a few other knick-knacks here and there as pointed out by the reviewers. So you still have 2.5 years left to enjoy the More and wait for the Whisper system to mature further, and by the time the 3 year warranty on the More expires, maybe the Whisper will have fully matured, and if successful with enough leasers, come down significantly on the lease price that you can switch to it if you determine that you like it more than the More. Then use the More as your backup or sell it on eBay.

I think everyone’s hearing is different so just don’t presume that if it works for others, it will work for you. Your hearing loss is very different than @happymach’s, for example. If you truly want to know, trial out the Whisper to hear for yourself before feeling bad about anything.