@Volusiano : Thank you for accepting me for who I am, MrV, warts and all!
The promise is important to me. It gives me hope. I haven’t seen anything here which makes me think the promise is empty. What do you think that they were promising to deliver but haven’t?
@d_Wooluf: You didn’t ask for my reply, but I’d like you to consider it, anyway.
I think the company has lived up to everything it has said in print, but , having watched several interviews with Donald Schum and company executives, I find them to have been misleading.
From what our trusted Forum Members who are trying the WhisperBrain have said, I consider that the interviews that I watched seriously misrepresented how far down the road the company actually is in having a marketable product.
That’s where, IMO, the company fails to live up to its promise. YMM(significantly)V.
It’s not at a beta stage any longer in terms of basic hearing performance.
We just need new hardware offering rechargeability and improved streaming.
@happymach: BTW, I very much appreciate your comments and don’t mean to belittle them or Whisper. It’s a great promise, but it doesn’t have enough traction for me to want to get on board … yet.
No one has to do anything. It’s a tradeoff, that’s all.
So Donald Schum was Vice President of Audiology at Oticon for 23 years? The number of important people who jumped ship from Oticon to Whisper is significant.
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The Whisper brain doesn’t have its own microphones! It just offers more sophisticated processing thanks to its more powerful CPUs.
@happymach: if mics are not involved, why does the brain need to be close to the HAs (and therefore the sound source). And why does it need the grille holes if there are no mics?
I don’t understand how it can do that without mics…
It doesn’t have to be that close – I think 25 feet is the maximum distance. BTW, the “grille holes” aren’t actually holes – they’re just an embossed pattern. 
Sorry, they looked like the grille holes on the old Beltones.
[ I just pulled up your audiogram. No wonder the Whispers work for you! Your hearing’s almost perfect ! Sheesh!]
@SpudGunner Fair enough. It’s a judgement call. I think that for a startup they’ve achieved amazing things. From what I’ve read they seem to be missing decent connectivity and that’s basically it. When they include LE Audio and when they are available in my country I’ll be likely to at least trial them.
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Given the size of Oticon and the size of Whisper as companies, comparatively speaking, I don’t really think that it’s significant at all from Oticon’s point of view. God knows how many VPs Oticon actually has. But it’s probably significant from Whisper’s point of view in terms of how many they were able to poach from Oticon. That’s probably a make-or-break situation for Whisper. But for sure not the other way around.
As to why Don Schum and others left Oticon for Whisper, only Don Schum and others would know and I wouldn’t deduce anything from it because it’d be just pure meaningless speculation. It’s more meaningful to look at 1. the sale performance, 2. the execution, and 3. the delivery than to give resource speculation any grain of salt.
It was hard to say anything 10 months ago except to speculate this and that back then. But now, 10 months later, with a lot more time past, we can see that the sale model is getting more confusing than ever with the newly advertised $69/month popping up compared to the original $159/month, and at first available via the HCP, but then perhaps not for that new low price, except only with remote support from Whisper directly. One has to wonder why the sale price has dropped so much instead of staying the same? Is it because they have gained so much more customers that they can now afford to drop the price by that much? Or is it because they haven’t been able to attract enough customers that they are now desperate and have to lower the price dramatically? And why not rely on the HCP network and even expand it as originally planned to attract new customers? Instead, now having to tap on Whisper’s own scarce and valuable resources to provide remote support for that new lower price, perhaps because they can’t afford to pay the HCP a higher cost for in-person support? How is Whisper doing sales-wise, really? This is the key to their survival after all.
In terms of their execution, their superior speech in noise AI continues to be validated as more and newer users (like Tony) sign on for trial and confirm this. But it seems like that’s really all they’ve got so far. And there hasn’t been any major significant new technology updates in the last 10 months as promised to really take advantage of the brain’s original “updateable-on-same-platform” concept. Without this promised delivery, the brain advantage becomes the brick disadvantage like I said earlier.
In terms of delivery, I don’t expect new hardware replacements (like smaller ear pieces or perhaps rechargeable batteries) to come out so soon in less than a year, so that’s OK and the jury is still out on that. But streaming is still restricted to mediocre phone call quality just the same 10 months later, and lack of basic functionality like frequency lowering still persists. So one has to wonder what grade they should get for delivery so far.
All it takes to provoke an exodus from a large corporate environment to that of a rich startup is one Director’s grandson or granddaughter being parachuted into a position that Schum or someone else close to him felt they deserved, or for said grandchild to pull rank at the wrong time, and Bingo! Whisper scores 3 or 4 execs from Oticon.
I meant to stay out of this. But I’m going to jump in, because the thread is at risk of being pulled in a misleading direction through sheer volume of words.
Software upgrades are a Whisper feature, but speech-in-noise performance is Whisper’s mission. Software upgrades are not the reason for the Brain’s inclusion in Whisper. Speech-in-noise performance, facilitated by the Brain’s processing power, is the reason for the Brain’s inclusion in Whisper. As one user here said,
So Whisper is succeeding in their mission, and some of us early adopters are enduring less frustration in daily life as a result. To get this benefit, we have to carry a palm-sized, comfortably shaped device that weighs less than 4 ounces, not a “brick”:
I remember Dr. Schum, in the Whisper webinar I attended last year, saying something to the effect of, All that cool stuff like streaming and rechargeability is nice, and we’re going to do it, but our purpose and priority is to help hearing-impaired people deal with those ‘difficult situations.’
Frankly, I expected that streaming would have been much further along by now. But with my background in programming I realize that changes in that area are going to involve the Brain, and Whisper can’t hire Brain programmers, they have to cultivate them. So I like to think I understand why the improvements we’re waiting for are taking longer than it seems they should.
On the rechargeability question (of the earpieces; the Brain is rechargeable) I’m firmly in the disposable battery camp, so lack of rechargeability doesn’t bother me, and I hope I’m not forced into it at some point. Given that the life of big 675 batteries is 2-3 days for me, it seems that switching to rechargeables is doing to be a challenge capacity-wise. But I don’t really know.
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I would say this is not entirely true, but half and half true based on my understanding of the Whisper marketing.
Yes, Whisper does say that they need the sheer power of the brain as afforded by the ample of electronic real estate to execute their AI algorithms. To this effect, your statement is true. But other HA mfgs have been able to implement their own AI versions on tiny chips that fit in the earpiece, while Whisper needs to implement their AI version in a box. Perhaps that’s how the Whisper AI is able to outperform the other HA mfgs’ AIs. But that’s kind of a cheat, and it would be a failed mission if the Whisper AI can’t even beat the other mfgs’ AIs despite having the luxury of a big brain. So it’s not like Whisper possess the intellectual magic in the AI. Whisper needs the “brute force” approach of a big brain to be able to get that edge. Maybe other HA mfgs decided to forgo that extra “edge” of a brain and settle for a good enough (but not necessarily best) AI because they deem it more important to achieve the miniaturization over having the best AI for speech in noise.
So it’s really all a trade-off. Do you want to have a good enough speech in noise AI in your earpieces, or do you want the best speech in noise AI and don’t mind carrying around the brain? Apparently yes to some, no to others.
So while this need for a brain to get the edge over others and complete the mission is true, it’s not EXCLUSIVELY the reason for it, because I distinctly remember Whisper making just as big a deal about being able to implement new major technology updates quickly only because they have the brain, while others need to wait for their next platform development cycle to be completed. So to now simply dismiss this “advantage” that Whispers so strongly touts and say the brain is ONLY for the superior AI is not correct. It is after all Whisper’s marketing “spin” to justify the brain further (not just for the best AI but also for rapid deployment of new major technology updates), and therefore Whisper should deliver on this spin as well. I can’t remember how many times I hear Whisper users on this forum follow this marketing spin and keep saying that it’s also part of the reason they bought into Whisper (the primary being the superior AI). So if people wants to drink this Kool-Aid that Whisper is offering, at least pony up the Kool-Aid for people to drink.
Here are the updates they’ve released so far. Extrapolating from this, ought to see another one soon. If Whisper isn’t releasing major enough updates, close enough together for you, then I guess you’ve made the right decision for you.
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I don’t see anything resembling your supposed Whisper mission in their official statement about who they are. Perhaps this mission is just wishful thinking on your part?
It makes good reading, though … it would be good for your argument if it were true.
[To exactly what “misleading direction” are you referring?]
Thanks for sharing this. It’s good info to have. I looked it over but as far as I can tell, none of these updates would be considered ground breaking enough for me (that’s why I keep using the term “new major technology update” before) that would have required waiting a few years for a new hardware platform to put on, had it been on a miniature chip platform. I would call these wishy-washy fluffily worded updates “incremental” updates only.
If it had been on a hardware platform like the Polaris on the More, for example, a firmware update to the same Polaris platform can easily support similar incremental type updates just the same, no need to wait for a newly developed platform a few years down the road to implement.
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He’s going by what he was directly told by Dr. Schum at a webinar that he personally attended. He’s presumably had plenty of interactions with the company and its representatives.
The brain is bigger than a hearing aid, presumably more ‘soft’ as opposed to ‘firm’, so more updateable. The promised updates are enabled by the brain, but not the reason for its existence. They’ve put them out ever 6 months or so, and at least some of them have made a difference apparently. So what are you looking for?
You have a serious bee in your bonnet about this product. Don’t know why. Go back and look at some of the marketing we’ve been subjected to by the big 6. Eye-rolling claims, made-up pseudo-scientific terms. Usually for products with minimal differentiation from the model before. Cut these guys some slack. They are moving the whole space forward. We should be collectively cheering them on.
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I actually don’t have any skin in the game with the product at all. My beef is not with the product, believe it or not. My beef is with the misinformation that I see many Whisper users keep repeating many times, that one big advantage with Whisper is the major frequent updates.
I wrote this in post 359 of this thread which I’ll repeat here in case you missed it:
But every time I hear more harping (by users) about Whisper’s touted ability to deliver new major technology updates to their brain as a key differentiation…, I just really think that it’s just a false positive spin…
I wanted to speak up because I think this advantage is an illusion in my opinion, so far. I already said it from day 1 when Whisper threads started to appear back in November 2021 when the subject was brought up by Whisper users. I only said it again here, now, because Whisper users started to bring up this “advantage” subject once again here. So if they can bring it up again, so can I refute it again.