Oticon Intent 1, Phonak I90 Sphere, or Starkey Omega AI 24, which should I choose?

@Volusiano said:

In my case, I didn’t do anything (opposite to what you have done) to increase the Enable Mic parameter to increase its volume, so why am I hearing a short burst of louder road noise?

Are you sure the volume is increasing before streaming kicks in or is all the noise reduction suddenly dropping off and the unfiltered environment now sounds more noisy?
Jordan

My opinion is that it’s more like the noise reduction is dropping off and the unfiltered environment now sounds more noisy. Then when the nav voice starts, the noise reduction kicks in and the nav voice is the only think you hear without any environmental sound heard anymore. I don’t think it’s the volume for the environmental sounds increasing, because I never change it to more or less than 0 dB inside Target anyway.

It’s like when I go in the car and start the engine, I might hear the engine noise for a second before the NoiseBlock kicks in and the engine noise is subdued. So when the streaming starts, and as you transition from Speech in Car to streaming, the transitioning out of Speech in Car must have released the NoiseBlock, then the transitioning into streaming re-engages NoiseBlock again, but NoiseBlock doesn’t kick in fast enough and so you hear the momentary road noise in the streaming program before NoiseBlock kicks in again. At least that’s my guess of what’s going on, because I leave the Enable Mic option to 0 dB untouched, so it can’t be from the Enable Mic option going in and out.

The bigger question, if my guess above is correct, is why this doesn’t happen inside of AutoSense when it transitions between its 6 internal programs, but it happens when the aids transition between AutoSense regular (for non streaming) and AutoSense OS (for streaming). Maybe that’s just how they design it, that within AutoSense, it doesn’t disengage then re-engage the parameters’ settings. And that’s why MyPhonak just shows Automatic when AutoSense is operating. But it treats AutoSense and AutoSense OS (for streaming) as 2 distinct separate modes, so the transitioning between them disengages and re-engages all the internal parameters.

Just came across this post and I’ve got to say it’s wild to see Volusiano nerding out on Phonak instead of Oticon.

@Neville said:

ust came across this post and I’ve got to say it’s wild to see Volusiano nerding out on Phonak instead of Oticon.

I find it abhorrent, and we should start immediate impeachment proceedings against that traitor!!

And don’t even mention that scoundrel Chuck @cvkemp getting Spheres in December, oh the Horror !!!

@Neville said:

I’ll maybe take side bets on whether you’ll hold out. The Zeal looks neat, but it’s not for your hearing profile.

Yeah, that’s interesting that the next thing to follow the Intent is just the new form factor of the Zeal, instead of something more advanced in terms of the AI technology, considering that Starkey came up with the Omega AI only 1 year after the Edge AI, and the Phonak Sphere at least gets upgraded to the Sphere Ultra with some incremental improvements a year later as well.

My prediction is that because @flashb1024 also is a recipient of VA HAs, when comes time for a refresh of new hearing aids by the VA, if there’s nothing better or newer from Oticon than the Intent and the Zeal is not a good fit for his hearing profile, he’ll see the logic of not wanting to refresh with yet another pair of Intent again, so he’s going to be open to try something else. If not the Phonak, then maybe a Starkey or Widex or Resound. But it doesn’t mean that he won’t relegate the new brand’s aids for backup and continue to wear the Intent.

Thanks for sharing this, @AustinNelson ! We definitely need more anecdotal experience from users of the Omega AI. It was on my short list as you can see in my title, but my only concern was that I couldn’t find any user feedback on the Omega AI because it’s so brand spacking new, so I didn’t know what to think of it. Meanwhile the Phonak Sphere has had plenty of users’ feedback on this forum, so it was easier to help me form an opinion of it.

If I were in a position to be able to trial all 3 aids, I would have done so. But I was in a time-sensitive situation and also bound by an insurance process limitation to just pick one without being able to trial them all, so I had to choose with my gut feel and not with a trial process.

@Neville said:

I’ll maybe take side bets on whether you’ll hold out. The Zeal looks neat, but it’s not for your hearing profile.

Yeah, I’m not overZEALous about those, but I don’t plan on jumping ship yet.

Now that Oticon enabled Auracast, I’m good to go!

@Volusiano my prediction is Oticon will come up with a new platform to supplant the Intent in the next year or so, and since I’m only 1 year into my journey, I won’t be eligible for new HAs until 2027.

I’d love to try Widex, but the VA doesn’t contract with them anymore, which is weird since they do carry Signia.

I doubt I’ll go the Phonak route, though

Right, Chuck the entire VA fits more Phonak than any other, with Oticon coming in not quite nipping at it’s heels.

Starkey, Signia,and Resound aren’t as popular.

I know when I go to the Long Beach clinic, all you see in the fitting rooms are Phonaks being staged, and if you ask a question about Oticon, you get blank stares, and the “I’ll have to call them” answer!

My audiologist has spend hours on the phone with Oticon and even brought Oticon specialist in from the New Jersey depot to help get my aids fitted back when I was using the OPNS1 and More1 aids. Since the More1 aids he has been able to copy my program to the Real1 and INTENT1 aids and he had a check list on what to change to bring my fittings up to the new version. I have even said I was sorry gor being such a pain, but he said it was great to have someone pushing for the proper fitting and it helped him learn more.

@e1405 said:

I wonder what direction they’ll take with the new release (open or spheric ).

Don’t you think with MSI, and DNN Easy & Difficult set to Max, you’re getting similar to the Spheric effect?

The idea about Widex for music was my thought, also!

I asked him why he didn’t put me into Phonak from our first appointment, and he said he had read my whole record and I wasn’t ready for a drastic change, and he wanted the challenge as he had not fitted Oticon aids before. I was wearing my 3rd set of Oticon aids at that time, Altra Pros ITE. They were helpful but I stayed away from crowds and noisy environments. The OPN1 ITE honestly wasn’t as good as the Altra Pros, put it was a starting point with Bluetooth connectivity. I only wore them about 9 months when I was called to the clinic and was presented with the OPNS1 aids and met the Oticon specialists. The OPNS1 was a definite improvement and it was where I was presented with the speech understanding therapy. It was about 18 months of therapy and adjustments and the introduction to the More1 aids. With the More1 aids, the therapy, the help of Oticon specialist and my audiologist we pretty much found my needed fitting. The Real1 aids were an improvement but not nearly as good as the INTENT1 aids. I go back and wear my Real1 aids and it is like going back to the early days of my hearing loss almost 20 years ago. Yes I do wonder what the Phonak Spheres are going to bring to the party, but I know ny audiologist has a 7 year running start on my hearing loss requirements.

@e1405 said:

@Volusiano, have you had the chance to compare the Reals and the Spheres back to back in challenging listening situations?

The only “busy” environments I’ve been able to find so far is a Starbucks coffee place with loud music going on, but not full packed with people, unfortunately. The other place is a large doctor office’s waiting room with quite full of people. The Sphere performs OK in both places. I didn’t try with the Real because I know that they will perform well, too. These 2 places so far are not exactly challenging enough to make one “shine” over the other though.

I must say, however, that at the doctor’s waiting room, in the Spheric mode, the voices seem to indiscriminately “jump” out at you from various locations in between the aggressively subdued noise that sounds a little warbling at times. Even though I didn’t bring the Real with me at that time (I didn’t expect the waiting room to be full of people like that), I know that if I had the Real there, the place would have sounded livier without too much subdued noise (due to the open paradigm), but if I pay attention to what was being said when and where, I probably would have been able to make out what they say clearly.

What I mean is that it seems like the Sphere treats a noisy place by subduing most sounds aggressively first (into warbling noise), and this includes all the concurrent speeches going on. Then maybe when it detects the most noticeable (loudest) speech amongst all the speeches going on, then it would bring out this speech onto your radar screen so that you can hear it best. But let’s say if there were 5 people talking simultaneously around you, it wouldn’t let you hear all 5 at the same time. It seems to me like it would only bring out the loudest of the 5 to your attention. I think this usually works out well and correctly most of the times anyway, because the person closes to you will most likely then to sound the loudest, and therefore the right speech you’d want the Sphere to bring out to your anyway.

If I had worn the Real in the above scenario with 5 people talking around me at the same time, the Real will probably clean up all 5 speeches simultaneously and let me hear all 5; again, due to the open paradigm. Then I’d have to decide on which speech to focus on and which speech to ignore. But if I try harder, I can probably also ignore the louder main speaker in front of me, and eavesdrop on the softer speaker at the next table behind me if I want, albeit with a lot more effort.

But with the Sphere, I can probably only hear the loudest speaker and that’s it. I’m not presented with multiple parallel speeches to choose from. And for most of the times, this should really work out fine, because it’s not often that you want to be aware of what 5 people are saying at the same time anyway. You’d most likely want to hear just 1 out of the 5, and usually it’s the loudest voice you hear. But let’s say that if the voice you want to hear in front of you is softer, and the voice behind you that you don’t want to hear is louder, I’m not sure if the Sphere will always pick the loudest voice regardless. I think there’s also going to be directionality factored into the equation, and the soft voice in front of you might be given more priority than the louder voice from behind you.

One thing I know for sure is that in a very noisy place, it’s probably tougher mentally to be wearing an Oticon brand aid, while it’d be less tasking mentally to be wearing a Sphere in Spheric mode. Oticonians might already be used to all that mental task of sorting and focusing and tuning out that it comes natural and easy enough for them, with the help of the aids cleaning up the speeches for them. But the Sphere would help make less of this work because the user only has to deal with 1 voice at a time for the most part, the voice that the Sphere picks out for them.

I think the personal preference on which of these 2 brands may also come with the level of hearing loss as well. If you have a heavier and flatter hearing loss, especially around the lows and mids, your audible range is so much more compressed compared to a normal ski slop person with better hearing in the lows and mids, who would has a wider audible range. The wider audible range will allow the ski slope person to be able to pick up nuanced differences between voices and sounds more easily than one with a much smaller/compressed audible range, where the nuances can be much harder to pick up because they’re squished up so tight. And therefore this ability to pick up the nuances better will be more helpful with the sorting and filtering between the different voices’ characteristics that’d be critical to differentiating between the voices.

What I’m trying to say is that the Oticon with open paradigm might work out well for normal ski slope people, while the Phonak Sphere might work out better than the Oticon open paradigm aids for flatter hearing loss people. Of course this is just a generalization that doesn’t apply to all cases. I personally have a skip slope loss, and that’s why I like the Oticon aids, but I can also appreciate the Phonak Sphere that can give me a more subdue noisy scene to focus on only a single speech at a time.

All this stuff is not something I make up. It’s something I picked up from an AudiologyOnline talk that I watched, which was presented by Don Schum (ex Oticon exec who went to Whisper) that centers around how the presence of the nuances between different voices might actually help with voice recognition and focus. I think he made this presentation way back in support of the open paradigm.

Volssiano, thank you for your in depth replies. I am impressed and a little surprised that you sense rather dramatic noise reduction with Phonak in the Sphere mode using (I think you use a single vent dome or close equivalent) a fairly open dome. I found some noise reduction, but not dramatic. I attributed it to my domes instead or a mold.

Another interesting issue that I hope you will comment on. When I was trialing the Sphere prior Ultra I thought I had everything pretty well adjusted. Twice I noticed that no matter the program (auto sense or manual, normal program, SIN or Sphere) I tried, the aids did not seem to pick up voice and in fact seemed to mute the voice of my wife sitting next to me in the car or at a restaurant. This was several months ago but was one of the reasons I stayed with the Intent. It was not that I could sense any malfunction such as filters cutting off and on or any unusual noise in the background. It just seems as if voices did not stand out from normal background noise. If I remember, I put up with it for the night and were fine the next day. Has anyone else experienced this. Thank you

Hi @Diver50 , you’re correct that I use a single vent dome. That’s probably why I can discern a noise reduction more than somebody wearing an open dome. For sure the effect of the Spheric mode will be washed away a bit by an open dome. Whatever the HAs can block out for you, they all come flooding into the open dome vents anyway.

I haven’t experienced my wife’s voice muted or faded out when I’m in the car, or actually anywhere with her. But I have multiple times found that my voice gets suppressed a bit out of nowhere. Well, I’m not sure if it’s out of nowhere. It’s probably when the Sphere tries to suppress a loud background noise (like a fan), and my own voice becomes the victim of this suppression because it probably thinks that my own voice is part of this background noise. I noticed this in the car one time, and as soon as I turned off the car ventilation fan, I could hear my own voice amplifed back to normal again. Then I turned back on the ventilation fan, and I could hear my own voice suppressed again.

But I must say that I’ve never heard my wife’s voice suppressed at all. There’d be situations where it was obvious that my own voice was suppressed, but my wife’s voice still sounded normal.