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Oticon launches Opn hearing aids and Velox platform

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Doubledown, you sound like a broken record. You have the same solutions – garnered from manufacturer’s self- serving literature – for every person and every situation.

Your hearing loss is quite different from most. You really can’t say what will work best for others with the overbearing certainty you postings suggest.

Please give us a break.

Beamforming is not the future of the industry. Let me reiterate… Beamforming has been around for many years. Oticon Epoq hearing devices have beamforming narrow directionality (Beamforming requires communication between an array of microphones in hearing devices. Phonak and Siemens only obtained this ability about 3 years ago. Prior to that, ONLY Oticon had this capability). They are over 10 years old now. Why haven’t you heard about this, you ask? Because it was NEVER THAT BIG OF A DEAL. Oticon has never made a big deal about features. They have always emphasized the end results. Research has ALWAYS SHOWN that narrow directionality has some major limitations. It is dependent on situational predictability, and increases mental strain. Oticon has always (In the last 15-20 years) made reduced mental effort a priority as well as improving the way the brain is presented environmental sounds so that it can do a better job of it.

@doubledown said:

A common mistake new users make is to opt for a natural sound. how do you get a natural sound out of a microphone array? how about with frequency lowering? nothing natural about the sounds coming out of these tech which arguably helps us the most in hearing others in the real world.

Binaural beamforming is the future of the industry. We already have 2 companies implementing it. Oticon, I am sure already have an implementation in their labs along with other technologies we don’t know about. They are just waiting on the most financially optimal time to release it. Until then they will do what all companies have done since the beginning of time, play down other companies’ features and play up their own.

It appears that this aid only streams with mfi, apple’s proprietary protocol. It appears they are implementing standard ble so any bluetooth device can control the aids but only iphones can stream to them.

That’s unfortunate. I prefer using Android. Is this streaming option limited to only Apple and not Android?

Also I heard from my audiologist that the OPN form does not include power molds. For those requiring extra power such as myself, we may have to wait a bit longer to have streamer less and more power efficient aids.

In reply to @JustinHIS

@JustinHIS said:

Oticon Epoq hearing devices have beamforming narrow directionality (Beamforming requires binaural communication between an array of microphones in hearing devices. Phonak and Siemens only obtained this ability about 3 years ago. Prior to that, ONLY Oticon had this capability).

Epoq had signal processing which improved spatial awareness, but it wasn’t binaural beamforming or narrow directionality. This type of beamforming requires transmitting the full audio signal between two hearing aids, and Oticon has never done this with any of their products. Phonak was the first major manufacturer to launch devices with full audio exchange about 8 years ago, and binaural beamforming about 5 years ago.

I see everybody has forgotten about the Siemens Triano and their subsequent implementation of e2e?

Triano achieved 2nd and 3rd order directionality with its mic array. While the e2e did the comms properly.

Relatively few people seemed to like it BTW.

Edited

The problem with direct streaming, for now, is that it limits you to one device, the smartphone (and it’s not hands free since you have to talk into the smartphone). I have Resound hearing aids, the Kirkland 5 (Resound Verso) and the Resound bluetooth device, Phone Clip+. In addition to my smartphone I have my office deskphone and desktop computer connected, as well as my home laptop and tablet, and TV with the TV transmitter. I love getting the sound from all those devices through my hearing aids. I can understand voices much better this way and music sounds great.

I wear the Phone Clip+ on a lanyard, under my shirt. I have used it clipped to my shirt pocket but usually just use the lanyard.

One issue with getting other devices connected directly to the hearing aids is that the manufacturers doing direct connect are using a proprietary version of Bluetooth Low Energy (also called and Bluetooth Smart). Although this will change, there is not an audio standard for BLE, hence the proprietary approach (BLE was basically designed for signaling and relatively low data transfers, like for medical devices). When there is a BLE audio standard and more devices like tablets have BLE there will be more and more direct connect hearing aids, but it looks to me like that is still a few years off from full entry into the market.

In reply to @Don

I guess android users will have to be patient. I would use audio streaming 90% of the time for music. Periodically, I would use direct streaming for phone conversations. Do you know what will be the maximum distance to use the phone clip? Will you be able put it in your pants pocket?

I was hoping this aid would be good in both noisy environments and with , both of which I could make use of.

In reply to @doubledown

Thanks for your interest, Doubledown. I’ve added my to signature. I’m a music minister, by the way. Work in environment with vocal singing, orchestral instruments, piano and organ. I’ve been pleased with Agil Pro. I tried Alta2 Pro Ti and liked them; but, as I said, I’m waiting to try out Opticon Opn. I am flexible to switch brands, if they work better for me.

I contacted Oticon via email asking about Opn direct audio streaming without intermediary device with Android devices. I asked: “Will the Oticon Opn have the feature of direct streaming audio (without extra device) from android phone to hearing aids or will it only direct stream from iphone?”

Here is the reply:

"Thank you for your inquiry and interest in our upcoming products. At last week’s industry meeting, Oticon, Inc. announced the new Opn hearing instrument. One of its features is 2.4 GHz direct streaming. Limited information on Opn is available at this time. But to our knowledge it will be able to pair to, and receive input from, Android-based phones.

Detailed information on Opn won’t be available until it’s released for sale. The anticipated release (next month) has been delayed. We don’t have a new release date, unfortunately. We will certainly notify hearing care providers when Opn becomes available. Once they receive information on the product, they would follow up with their patients.

Best Regards,

Technical Support Audiology"

Of course, ‘input from android’ can still mean simply volume and program control. We’ll see.

I was talking to my Audi today and she said they do have frequency compensation. She called Oticon and they said the release date is the end of June in Canada…

In reply to @RForbes

@RForbes said:

Thanks for your interest, Doubledown. I’ve added my audiogram to signature. I’m a music minister, by the way. Work in environment with vocal singing, orchestral instruments, piano and organ. I’ve been pleased with Agil Pro. I tried Alta2 Pro Ti and liked them; but, as I said, I’m waiting to try out Opticon Opn. I am flexible to switch brands, if they work better for me.

what’s your word recognition score?

Hi doubledown,

do you have a document where they really say that the sivantos primax has more than 16 bit? I´m interested in that, but didn´t find it. There is a german site for acoustic pros where they say that the sivantos primax for now is mostly a re-labelling.

In reply to @Musician_72

@Musician_72 said:

Hi doubledown,

do you have a document where they really say that the sivantos primax has more than 16 bit? I´m interested in that, but didn´t find it. There is a german site for acoustic pros where they say that the sivantos primax for now is mostly a re-labelling.

the fact that the line has cros support tells me, hardware wise something changed.

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