Do any hearing aids work in a restaurant with background noise

^^^ I’m sitting under it NOW. It’s been a long weekend of ASSAULT on my ears with family reunion and everyone talking over everyone else. Even if I DID have a Roger device, he’d have up and QUIT yesterday.

I’m finding that when I switch to the Loud Noise program it quiets almost everything else and makes all voices audible. My perception is that voices sound louder. Not sure if that’s literally true. But it is very effective.

Biggest breakthrough will be deep neural network in noise reduction as reported by signia if works perfectly and not Marvell stereo voce stream is available from audio v. More over autosens most folks do not like it .

I have the Oticon Opn 1’s, and the Connect Clip. While the advantages of the Oticon Opn platform are that it gives you a more “open” hearing experience that is supposed to 360 degrees (like natural hearing), and the aids are supposed to switch settings automatically depending on your environment, I use a “speech in noise” program for a boost when I’m in a loud restaurant and I need help hearing discussions. I also have a “comfort” program in case the noise goes in the opposite direction and gets overwhelming loud. In addition, I have the “transient noise setting” set at maximum, as that helps reduce the sounds of clanking dishes, etc in the background. I like the ConnectClip because I can change programs very easily by pushing buttons on it. You will hear audible tones indicating the switch when you change the programs manually. When you wear the ConnectClip, you can also set it to audibly “announce” which program you are in–and that announcement goes directly to your ears, so you don’t have to look at your phone to see which program you switched to unless you want to. I find it’s easier to reach down and discreetly change programs with the Clip, rather than to to fiddle with the buttons on the hearing aids or constantly look at my phone. Just my two cents, for whatever it’s worth. But the “speech in noise” program really helps

What nobody is really looking yet is utilising the mics and the geometry of TWO Apple Watch-like devices. It is a dynamic system, but the mic array separation would be nearly two feet. It wouldn’t get dominated by the user’s own voice, there’s accelerometers in there to establish orientation, but the commas/battery/packaging stuff is already done.

The right-left head diffraction is going to be mimicked fairly closely and the directionality pattern can be zeroed on 12 when the watch is horizontal or spun to the 3 position/omni when the arm is across the body.

Each watch is on the correct side for the aid it’s feeding too, which ought to help with the Body Area Network stuff. AND more importantly you can wear two watches with no one thinking you’re trying to stick some form of Alien technology up their nose. Even better still - the type of dinner sit downs where people struggle the most - people will have their hands above the table so third and fourth order directional patterns will be possible.

I’ll take $10 per pair sold - thanks GN!

I’m not sure if you’re serious or you’re just spoofing the idea of plopping a big fat tripod down on the dinner table.

But actually it’s an interesting 22-nd century idea that if everyone wore a SINGLE smartwatch or other wearable microphone and the sound of a gathering were pooled, it might be like a giant far-field array and then you’d need some way of deciding which set of microphones in the group, which conversation you wanted to follow.

This discussion hasn’t looked at the other side of the coin. Why are there noisy restaurants in the first place? I’ve heard that restaurants like the hustle-and-bustle sounds because it makes their places seem busy and thriving. Bare floors are easier to clean, too. Same with hard wood furniture minimally upholstered. Less cost not to have a sound absorbing ceiling and so on. But things come and go in fashion. Maybe it would be nice if there were some sort of cultural revolution that led to people fleeing really noisy restaurants in preference to quieter places that actually have sound-absorbing material all around - guess it’s not in the economics, though.

In the good ol’ days, though, I’ve been to fancy restaurants with a rug on the floor, nicely upholstered furniture, table linen, sound absorbing ceiling, drapes here and there around the room, etc., that were reasonably quiet places - must have cost a fortune to clean everything!

Second big problem for remote mic no body like to wear it or while speaking will concentrate on Roger/direct/remote mic. I tried streamline mic. I given to relative with thick voice but they wearer like left bented arrow and voice diminish that I hardly understood. Outsider people uh they tell you are not able to hear you should wear hearing aid why we should wear mic? This is practical problem

@MDB said:

I think the solution being satisfied is to temper one’s expectations rather than expecting the next “greatest thing” to solve your problems.

So very true to most things in ones life, not just hearing aids.

@jim_lewis said:

This discussion hasn’t looked at the other side of the coin. Why are there noisy restaurants in the first place?

Obviously, from the stuff I’ve posted in this forum, I like to “let my mind go!” But I was thinking with the noisy restaurant problem that a hearing aid user lobby (HAUL!) is needed (a branch of the AARP?). <<< just kidding a bit here, only 10% serious-but not very >>> Restaurants would be evaluated for their “Hearing Aid User Friendliness(HAUF)” and those that pass would get a sticker that they could post on the outside near the “we accept these credit card” stickers or whatever. You could extend the concept to other businesses and have a giant hearing aid user lobby that rules the world!

I don’t think it would need to be limited to hearing aid users. I think many people would enjoy a quiet place of respite.

With the correct Roger receiver, multiple Roger transmitters CAN be piped in to your ears at once. This would be expensive. I got the type 3 europlug receiver and a Roger Pen for about 300 off eBay. I plugged the receiver into my multimic. I had a safety training class with about 60 people in it. I held the Roger Pen in my fingers like I would a pen. I discreetly followed the lecturer from my chair by rotating the pen. It worked VERY well.

^^^ Just curious: when using the Roger Pen, are you able to also hear the person right next to you? Or do you have to point the pen at them to hear them?

An analogy is streaming to the TV. When I stream to the TV with my Audeo B-Direct aids, I can not hear anyone else in the room unless/until I take my aids out of streaming mode. That means I have to cycle through all the programs in order: default, Pgm 2 (noisy places), Pgm 3 (aids OFF), Pgrm 4 (streaming). Unlike my old Oticons, Phonaks only go ONE way through the program cycle: 1-2-3-4 using the program button on either LEFT or RIGHT aid.

By contrast, with the Oticons, the LEFT aid cycled: default-4-3-2, and the RIGHT aid cycled: default-2-3-4, making it real quick to change programs.

I’ve never used a Roger Pen, so I don’t know if that needs a program dedicated to it?

@1Bluejay said:

Just curious: when using the Roger Pen, are you able to also hear the person right next to you? Or do you have to point the pen at them to hear them?

To use ReSound as an example and just playing around with podcast streaming from the phone, which ought to be a good stand-in for streaming from a mic, when I am streaming, if I hit the settings in the phone ReSound Smart 3D app, I have two extreme choices “Streaming Focus” and “Hear All” - no matter which option I choose, there is a slider below the two buttons for choosing between these two options and the slider controls the volume of “Hear All” - Smart 3D is supposed to be ReSound’s answer to the Opn1 allowing you to hear all around you. For Streaming Focus, the hear-all volume is set to zero (but you could still hear whatever stuff leaks through your domes to your uncorrected bad hearing). In Hear All, the hear-all slider is to 100%, so you’re going to hear the streamed audio at whatever it’s volume is set to (for the podcast, it could be controlled by the phone volume) and you’ll also hear “everything” around you at the volume of your “omnidirectional” HA mics. With either option chosen, Streaming Focus or Hear All, you can increase or decrease the hear-all slider as much as you want, I guess effectively converting one extreme to the other by using the volume slider for hear-all. Hope I said it clearly enough to understand. If I weren’t lazy, I’d do a screen capture of the phone app and paste it here.

P.S. I presume the same relative volume control of Hear All can be applied when it’s a phone call instead of a mic or a podcast that you’re streaming to your HA’s.

Yes, the person near you is fine.