Oticon launches Opn hearing aids and Velox platform

I had my 12/13 app’t jumped up to TODAY (hallelujia!), so I was able to ask my aud-guy some additional questions and try on a size (M) power dome. I was also asking about the feedback management program, and my aud-guy said he wouldn’t run it on me unless I was experiencing feedback when my hand was brought close to my ear. Feedback would indicate some leakage (probably due to poor fit of the dome/mold). He said that feedback management tends to cut out the high end frequencies, so that speech comprehension could be compromised (I’m guessing the sounds like “s”, “f”).

The main purpose of my visit today was to swap out the size (L) Widex power domes with the size (M) Widex power domes. There is a definite improvement in comfort with a slightly smaller dome. Again, I have to stick to Widex or some maker of the dark silicone domes. I may have an allergic reaction to the clear ones.

Sound quality has diminished a bit with the smaller domes, tho. Feh. Speech and noise sound harsher and tinnier again - but not as bad as with the tulip-style domes. I will try swapping in the two sizes to see what I end up with, but quite frankly, I’m happy with the sound of these Opns - especially with the (L) domes.

Ironically (or maybe not, given all the literature out there on these aids) I am down to just a “noisy environment” program (directional). I may even remove that one. For the phone, music and normal listening, Program 1 default gets the job done.

I can’t emphasize FIT enough with these aids! They seem to have the “wow” factor, but if a perfect seal is not achieved with a dome or mold, I don’t think these aids would work for me. I am still in “laboratory phase” trying to find the perfect combination of domes. I may have to wear a (M) in my right ear and a (L) in the left (as my right ear canal is just a sliver narrower).

I also changed the batts in these aids and VOILA! TV streamer worked like an ace. So I think the odd fritzing I had going on the other night was due to the batteries going down. They hadn’t beeped a warning yet, but I was on Day 5 for the size 312s.

Again - SO VERY GRATEFUL to all the knowledgeable folks here, who have not only given me questions to ask my aud-guy, but also answers, that help me get the most out of these Opns.

HOLY COW! I had no idea the investment in this technology was so much. They definitely threw the manpower and money behind this project to bring it to market … no doubt with a pitchfork probe from ReSound (as they were first to market with the iPhone platform product, I believe?). I would sure love to know WHO tested the product during development leading up to their final launch. Did they get users/patients from a file of audiologists? Did they put a notice up here at Hearingaidforum to ask for volunteers? We are RIPE for the picking!

In my mind, the jury is still out on Oticon’s OpenSound Navigator. I, for one, do not want to give up my directional Program 2 (for noisy env’ts) just yet. My limited experience to-date with NO directional program has been chaos and cacophony from all sides assailing my ears (and brain) in a noisy place. That was really exhausting. But the directional mode still seems to dampen down ALL volume uniformly around me, no matter what direction it’s coming from, no matter speech or ambient sound.

@Volusiano said:

I reviewed Part 3 of the OPN presentation on audiology.com today and want to share some interesting notes on with forum members here

1. They’ve used about 300-400 people on the OPN project, with more than 250 people working in parallel on it at the peak of their project. They spent about roughly 750 man-years on the project.

2. They invested roughly about $100M to bring it to market. They filed about 50 patents for this particular launch.

3. The first idea of Velox and the OpenSound Navigator was around 2010. The actual development has been in the last 3 to 4 years.

4. In the beginning before they had the chip/Velox platform built, they developed the OpenSound Navigator on a test system on laptops, and their testers actually carried laptops in backpacks with them walking around to test out the system.

@1Bluejay said:

My limited experience to-date with NO directional program has been chaos and cacophony from all sides assailing my ears (and brain) in a noisy place. That was really exhausting.

At least your directional program seems to make some difference for you compare to your default program. My directional program didn’t seem to even sound any different at all.

My experience is the same as you, the OPN experience without the traditional noise reduction is overwhelming and exhausting for me, too, with the cacophony from all around me seemingly assaulting my ears and stressing me out. But if I focus, I can understand the speech in the noise, however. As long as it’s not somebody talking behind me in the backseat of a car, which I now understand why, because sound coming from your rear plane is treated as noise in the moment to moment interval. But it’s not a pleasant walk in the park experience like they make it out to be with 20% less effort and 30% better understanding and 20% better memory retention or whatever. It requires concentration and effort to follow conversation. However, I think this is just part of adopting the new open paradigm and learning to retrain your brain to handle the extra load of audio sensory and learning to manage and cope with it. Hopefully overtime it’ll get easier and easier until it seems more natural to you.

There is a mode on the OPN called “Automatic Adaptation Manager”. My understanding is that you can program it to begin in a particular program and gradually switch over to an intermediary program and to a final target program as time goes on (you decide after how many listening hours). I think they probably put this in Genie2 to help people transition over to the new open paradigm more slowly so they’ll have time to adapt. Of course you can achieve the same thing by coming back to have your audi manually switch to the later programs for you. This feature basically does it automatically after a predetermined amount of listening hours to save you a couple of trips to the audi’s office, that’s all.

@Volusiano said:

b. Frequency shifting: If phase cancellation is not enough, they’ll do a frequency shift of 10 Hz above 1.6 KHz, and it’s always on. They think that the 10Hz shift is just enough to de-correlate the feedback spike from the output signal, but not enough where it’s perceivable by the patient, so they shouldn’t be hearing and complaining of fluttering and artifacts because of the frequency shift. They say that other mfgs may do this shift too aggressively which can cause audible distortion that patients can notice.

Well, let’s test that theory. Here’s a recording that consists of two pure tones: the first is C7, or 2093 Hz; the second is 10 Hz higher, at 2103 Hz.

http://www.filedropper.com/10hzbeatsc72

Can you hear the 10 Hz beat that’s created by the two tones?

@The_Latinist said:

Well, let’s test that theory. Here’s a recording that consists of two pure tones: the first is C7, or 2093 Hz; the second is 10 Hz higher, at 2103 Hz.

http://www.filedropper.com/10hzbeatsc7

Can you hear the 10 Hz beat that’s created by the two tones?

OK, I hear a single fluttering sound. Is that because you combined the 2 tones together? But if there had been a single pure tone at 2093 Hz, wouldn’t you hear a pure tone at 2103 Hz from the receiver of the HA only? What am I missing here?

@Volusiano said:

OK, I hear a single fluttering sound. Is that because you combined the 2 tones together? But if there had been a single pure tone at 2093 Hz, wouldn’t you hear a pure tone at 2103 Hz from the receiver of the HA only? What am I missing here?

What you are missing is that, like most people with mild-moderate losses, I have open domes. I hear both the pure tone at 2093 and the frequency-shifted tone at 2103. Sure, the unshifted tone is softer, but it still creates an interference pattern with the shifted tone. So instead of dropping right to 0 dB in between beats it drops to, say, 13dB (or whatever the gain setting at that frequency is). That’s still below my hearing threshold, and results in the same beat pattern.

After lunch I’ll work up an example of what I hear by frequency shifting, say, a flute and compensating for the difference in gain. If you listen to it aloud with your aids on it should approximate what I hear if I listen to a flute with the feedback control on.

@The_Latinist said:

What you are missing is that, like most people with mild-moderate losses, I have open domes. I hear both the pure tone at 2093 and the frequency-shifted tone at 2103. Sure, the unshifted tone is softer, but it still creates an interference pattern with the shifted tone. So instead of dropping right to 0 dB in between beats it drops to, say, 13dB (or whatever the gain setting at that frequency is). That’s still below my hearing threshold, and results in the same beat pattern.

After lunch I’ll work up an example of what I hear by frequency shifting, say, a flute and compensating for the difference in gain. If you listen to it aloud with your aids on it should approximate what I hear if I listen to a flute with the feedback control on.

Ah, OK, I get it now. You don’t need to demonstrate more with the flute, but of course if you still want to, feel free.

By the way, maybe if after running the Feedback Analyzer test, it gives a visual result of where in the frequency spectrum feedback occurs where the analyzer does the notching to eliminate it, you can have the audi do a manual notch instead to effectively control the feedback manually like this. At least then it won’t kick in the frequency shifting. Remember that Oticon strongly recommend their audis not to run and engage the feedback analyzer test if not necessary anyway, to avoid headroom limitation. So your opting out of having feedback on the OPN would not be a big tradeoff anyway.

@Um_bongo said:

That advice applies to the previous generation of hearing aids. The advice in the training was to run the feedback manager in the first instance in all cases.

That’s not the advice I heard in the OPN presentation. The advice I was referring to is from the presentation I watched from audiologyonline.com for the Genie2 training called “Navigating the Genie Software: Programming Tips and Tricks for the OPN product”, presented by Gabrielle Fillips, Gov’t Svcs Acct Mgr for Oticon.

At the time mark near 37 minutes into the presentation, here’s what she said, verbatim: “At Oticon, we don’t believe that you need to run the feedback test at part of your protocol. However, if you choose to do it, you can absolutely run it on every patient. But our strong recommendation is that you don’t run it if you don’t have to. There’s no reason to limit your headroom if you don’t need to, if the fit is good. If you are getting any feedback or if you’re on the verge of getting feedback, I would say go back to hearing 101, maybe take a look into the patient’s ear, make sure that that speaker wire isn’t pinned up against the ear canal wall. Maybe if they have a 90db precipitous high frequency hearing loss, although you can certainly push the envelope of our fitting, maybe you want to close up that fit just a little bit if you had an open dome, for example.”

This presentation is dated 2016.1. You register with audiologyonline.com, go under “Continuing Education” -> “All Course”, search for Oticon OPN, see all available results, then search for the course title above, register, start course, and play.

@Volusiano said:

Probably still considered a novelty for most of us OPN owners here. I’ve gone so far as gotten as downloading the Android ON app and using it for remote control function, and use the ON app to get signed up for the Oticon and IFTTT accounts. But I haven’t really set anything up for it at this point.

Is there anything you’d like to do with it specifically?

I don’t have a set. I’m considering buying a pair in the future. Just wondered if IFTTT had any real benefit to anyone.

I have had Alta Pro’s for about three years. I must pay fully out of pocket so i have been watching this thread for a bit to see what is on offer. So far, and I grant the Opn is a work in progress, they seem underwhelming. Bear in mind that my present situation is far from untenable and that influences my thinking.

@Um_bongo said:

Great, that might be what was suggested at inception/device launch, the reality from our training and real world implementation is somewhat different. Plus the who system seems to have had a massive firmware upgrade to V2 which might have changed the functionality somewhat.

Hi Um Bongo, Just out of my personal interest (and feel free not to answer if you dont have the time). How are you finding your patients are responding to the OPN so far? Are the fittings running smoothly for you etc? Am guessing you have fitted a few by now?

Thanks

It is fascinating to see so many on this thread ignore the following: many users are very happy with the improvements of OPN, including hearing comprehension in a noisy environment; experienced audi’s have explained that the brain has to learn to listen in what is a normal noise scape (and it seems to be very long time users of ha’s or those who went too long without ha’s who have difficulty adapting back to normal noise); and it takes time and effort for some to adapt - perhaps some cannot.

Fortunately for me and many others - perhaps even a majority of users, the OPN are a major improvement. As with many of us with hearing impairments, it is my spouse who recognizes the improvement even more than I do. And frankly my new improved hearing becomes the new normal and I start thinking it should be better. Hope someday the next break through will make it so. I’ve tried various programs and don’t see much if any difference. I did find that if the HA start rebooting while using the tv adapter, it clears up with new batteries.

Wish you you all the best.

— Updated —

It is fascinating to see so many on this thread ignore the following: many users are very happy with the improvements of OPN, including hearing comprehension in a noisy environment; experienced audi’s have explained that the brain has to learn to listen in what is a normal noise scape (and it seems to be very long time users of ha’s or those who went too long without ha’s who have difficulty adapting back to normal noise); and it takes time and effort for some to adapt - perhaps some cannot.

Fortunately for me and many others - perhaps even a majority of users, the OPN are a major improvement. As with many of us with hearing impairments, it is my spouse who recognizes the improvement even more than I do. And frankly my new improved hearing becomes the new normal and I start thinking it should be better. Hope someday the next break through will make it so. I’ve tried various programs and don’t see much if any difference. I did find that if the HA start rebooting while using the tv adapter, it clears up with new batteries.

Wish you you all the best.

@LawyerFL said:

It is fascinating to see so many on this thread ignore the following: many users are very happy with the improvements of OPN, including hearing comprehension in a noisy environment; experienced audi’s have explained that the brain has to learn to listen in what is a normal noise scape (and it seems to be very long time users of ha’s or those who went too long without ha’s who have difficulty adapting back to normal noise); and it takes time and effort for some to adapt - perhaps some cannot.

Fortunately for me and many others - perhaps even a majority of users, the OPN are a major improvement. As with many of us with hearing impairments, it is my spouse who recognizes the improvement even more than I do. And frankly my new improved hearing becomes the new normal and I start thinking it should be better. Hope someday the next break through will make it so. I’ve tried various programs and don’t see much if any difference. I did find that if the HA start rebooting while using the tv adapter, it clears up with new batteries.

Wish you you all the best.

Thanks for reminding us that despite criticism of OPN’s over hyped marketing (myself being a vocal one), it’s still one of the best HAs out there and most of us (myself included) are still sticking with using it and not returning it.

It’s also good to hear confirmation from you that you’ve tried various programs and don’t see much if any difference. That’s been my experience as well. At least it’s consistent with their position that a single program should work for most people on the OPN for the most part.

@MFAUD said:

Hi Um Bongo, Just out of my personal interest (and feel free not to answer if you dont have the time). How are you finding your patients are responding to the OPN so far? Are the fittings running smoothly for you etc? Am guessing you have fitted a few by now?

Thanks

Fitted several pairs both for demo and full V.2 versions.

Initial reception was fairly lukewarm until I worked out what worked and what didn’t: people are on upgrade cycles here from previous technology, some Lynx 1/Bernafon Brite/Older Oticon/Widex, plus there’s a newer slew of Unitron wearers fitted up to about five years ago. The response is pretty universal - ex-Sonova people can’t stand them and prefer the new Unitron Moxi Now, but a good proportion of the newer users like them (despite being put off by the price). However, the older non-Sonova wearers have 100% take-up, with only 1 baulking on the price.

This means that I don’t get that many coming through, but the ones that do from the older subset are very impressed with the performance - you could argue that anything replacing five year old tech is going to sound better, but there’s more to it than that. The softer processing seems to suit people who are used to less interference and obvious directionality control.