They don’t have telecoil so is this just an oversight on the manufacturers part?
The Opn has an Autophone feature which can switch to the acoustic phone program when a handset is held to your ear; it doesn’t require a t-coil. The feature isn’t enabled by default, however.
Oh I see. Didn’t realize the magnet could trigger anything in the aids without telecoil. I don’t think I have that feature turned on since I put the magnet on the aid and no program chirping etc happened. I have a manual phone program; not sure if that does the same thing as the auto phone program.
I have to learn more about this feature. The biggest problem I’ve noticed for me and a regular phone is I also wear glasses. Between the HAs, phone handset and glasses being in the same proximity usually the HAs lose at some point and exits it place behind the ear. I try and use the OPN streamed to the iPhone for most of my calls. It makes talking on the phone for me almost to easy. Saturday I talked to a friend I hadn’t seen for a while for over two hours.
In my most recent fitting yesterday, I asked the audi to turn the AutoPhone mode on for me.
I have a Plantronics Focus headset (ON the ear, not over/around the ear, not in the ear either) that before without autophone, the HAs didn’t pick up its sound very well. Now when I put the headset on my ears, I can hear the HAs chiming into autophone mode, and the HAs pick up its sound better.
My Samsung Note 4 also didn’t work on the HAs before. But now the HAs pick up its sound on phone call just fine, although putting the phone up to my ear doesn’t trigger the autophone chime like the Plantronics headset does.
I really don’t know why Oticon decided not to put in the autophone mode as default. If you don’t need it, it doesn’t really interfere with anything. But when you need it, it really comes in handy. Sometimes I wonder if Oticon ever did any market research at all.
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Does the autophone play the call through both hearing aids like Bluetooth?
No, autophone is not the same as streaming. I believe when autophone is programmed in, the OPN detects the presence of the phone’s speaker’s magnet when you apply the phone’s speaker right up against the HA, which triggers the OPN to go into autophone mode. So you’ll need to physically have the phone or the headset pressed against your ear(s) to pick up the sound.
The manual says that it activates a phone program in the HA. I’m not sure what this phone program does. Obviously there’s no tcoil to pick up the magnetic field from the phone speaker, so I guess they use the microphones to pick up the sound.
Thank you very much. Very interesting topic.
I would like to know more about how Autophone works.
I’ve had a chance to use my favorite Plantronics Focus headset in Autophone mode for a 2 hour business conference call today and I’m very pleased with the result of the Autophone mode. The only minor negative thing is that I had to turn my headset on max volume level to get about a medium volume level on my OPN (at default OPN volume level). But I could simply use the Android ON app on my Samsung Note 4 to turn up the volume of the OPN HA volume level up as well to get from medium to louder sound. Listening to music from my Note 4 on the Plantronics Focus headset is also great.
Before the OPN I had a pair of Rexton CIC that works great with my Plantronics headset. When I switched over to the OPN which is not CIC anymore, I thought it had rendered my Plantronics headset useless (because the HAs are now BTE and not CIC anymore) and I was going to have to wait until the ConnectClip come out in Q1’17 to replace my Plantronics headset. But now with the Autophone mode enabled (again, don’t know why Oticon chooses to keep it disabled as a default for?), I’m able to use the Plantronics headset just like before when I was wearing the Rexton CIC HAs.
I actually don’t need the ConnectClip anymore because I can use my Plantronics headset with the OPN for phone calls on my Note 4 or my laptop soft phone just like before now, via AutoPhone. But the ConnectClip would still be nice because it would allow me to ditch my Plantronics headset altogether, assuming that the ConnectClip’s microphone does a good job of picking up my voice on phone calls. Not all headsets’ mics do a good job of picking up your voice, and/or has noise reduction to help reduce background noise around you when you talk so the person you talk to can hear you better on the other end. I used to have a Sony Bluetooth noise reduction headset but I returned it because its mic does a terrible job of picking up my voice clearly on phone calls.
So folks, if you have an Android phone, tell your audi to enable the Autophone mode for you on your OPN. There’s nothing to lose by enabling it. Even if you have the iPhone, you may still be using a favorite headset for your soft phone on your laptop like I do for business calls. iPhone streaming wouldn’t help in this case anyway. But AutoPhone will likely help let you use your headset just like before (as long as your headset has a magnetic speaker to activiate AutoPhone like mine).
I have a pair of Bose Quietcomfort 15 noise reduction headphone that covers my ears completely (the over the ear type). When I use these headphones, however, they don’t switch my OPN over to AutoPhone mode. But if I flip the headphones around and apply the outside of the ear cup against the OPN I would hear the AutoPhone chyme. This means that there is a magnet on the speaker (almost all speakers have a magnet anyway), it’s just located a little bit too far away to trigger the OPN AutoPhone when worn the right way. But no big deal, because my OPN in the default mode can still pick up the sound from these headphones just fine because they’re enclosed around the ears.
I’m beginning to understand now why Oticon decided to not have a tcoil in the OPN. It’s kinda unnecessary. The AutoPhone works with phones that work with tcoil HAs in the first place. So the only thing you miss out without the tcoil on the OPN would be in tcoil-enabled movie theaters. But then why use tcoil in movie theaters when you can just use the normal HA mode there?
Without the tcoil, Oticon is able to make the OPN as small and compact as possible without sacrificing much functionality.
People who own induction loops setup to watch TV at home may complain about the lack of tcoil. But Oticon’s answer for this is to just buy their TV Adapter 3.0 for streaming TV programs at home. No need to wear that old clunky induction neck loop at all. I have the Oticon TV Adapter 3.0 and streaming on it works out great with my OPN. It also has great range if you want to wander around the house from room to room while listening to TV programs or music on it as well.
I was reading the Oticon Velox whitepaper (searchable via Google) and notice that on page 3, under the section called “Architecture - what happens as sound is processed?”, the first sentence says "The signal enters through 2 microphones on the instrument, through the Telecoil (TC), via the DirectAudioInput (DAI), or through a wireless (WL) connection to the instrument (Figure 3).
So according to this whitepaper, the OPN does have tcoil after all. The information provided by the OP’s audi saying that there’s no tcoil in the OPN is incorrect.
I was wondering why the OPN’s AutoPhone mode, when enabled, would automatically put the OPN into the phone program when you put a headset or telephone up against the HA. It’s obvious now that there is a tcoil which detects the magnet.
Interesting. Can anyone else confirm this? I was quite sure the OPNs didn’t have a telecoil.
I was wondering that maybe the tcoil in the OPN is used strictly for the NFMI functionality. But then that white paper clearly says that the sound signal goes “through the 2 mics, or through the tcoil, or through the wireless connection to the instrument”. This implies that the tcoil is one of the ways to pick up the sound signal.