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Oticon OPN S 1 vs Unitron Moxi Fit - What am I missing?

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Edited

Hi,

Found out this summer that I have issues with my hearing.

The audiologist was able to give me a trial with some Maxi Fit for 6 weeks. This was instantly magical! Not tired anymore at night when coming back from the office and I could finally hear during group conversations and in restaurant without just “disconnecting” after 1 hour because I was so exhausted trying to follow conversations.

At the end of the trial they told me the OPN S 1 are much much better and that is kind of what I found also on the internet so we ordered them and had them fit at the beginning of the week.

The “magical” effect I had with the Maxi Fit is not there. I found everything is just amplified and I have to take the volume down a bit which I didn,t have to do with the Maxi Fit.

So my question, are there some software differences I don’t easily find on the internet about those 2 models? Will my audiologist be able to fix this or do I simply return them and them order Maxi Fit?

Thanks!

7 people in this conversation20 min readJump to latest

It’s possible that because the Moxi was your first set of hearing aids, you were enjoying the “honeymoon” effect of being to hear better, so it seems “magical”. Then after you switched over to the OPN S1, your expectation was high, yet your honeymoon period with hearing aids are over, causing the OPN S1 to not meet your expectation anymore.

The fact that you found everything to be overamplified with the OPN S is possibly because you were starting to get used to the traditional hearing aid paradigm where traditional beam forming blocks out surrounding noise for you to focus on speech in front. The OPN’s open paradigm, on the other hand, is very different. It doesn’t try to block out surrounding sound but would rather let you hear everything, although it does do its own thing to enhance speech in noise for you. So that’s why you felt overwhelmed with the OPN S1 and had to turn down the volume a bit.

If I were you, since you already had started trialing the OPN S1, give it the same 6 weeks like what you had with the Moxi, or however long your trial period with it is, and hold off on returning it too soon. That way, you’ll have given it a proper, earnest try. If by then you still can’t get used to the OPN and still prefer the Moxi, you can always go back to the Moxi. But take your time with it and don’t rush into a decision just because you’re not used to the OPN yet. Give it time to get acclimatized to it first.

Edited

The Unitron hearing aids aren’t really beam formers like the Phonaks, even though they are both Sonova. They tend to use wide directionality (Opn also sort of does wide directionality, but in a different way) with a monitor ear, depending on the situation. But at the upper levels Unitron applies a nice adaptive pinna adjustment that seems to have a beneficial effect on sound localization (and in turn speech in noise).

The different strategies that the Opn and Moxi are employing actually seem quite complimentary to me, and it’s too bad the companies couldn’t get together and combine them. But yeah, they are different and if you loved the Moxis you might want to consider going back to them. If you were in the Moxi Discovers, the Opn S isn’t “better”, it’s just different. If you were in the Moxi Tempus, that is the older chip.

If you’re out at a restaurant with the Opns, make sure you aren’t seated with someone directly behind you. Ideally the distance between you and the person behind you should be greater than the distance between you and the people at your table in order to take better advantage of the way the devices are working.

Thanks for the clarification, Neville. I didn’t know that the Moxi use wide directionality. We don’t seem to see a lot of Moxi users on this forum anyway, so it’s easy not to understand how they work and making assumptions.

It’d be interesting to learn of the OP’s preference after he’s tried out both. For now it seems like the Moxi is more liked. I’d still suggest giving the OPN a full try, just because he’s already gone through the process of obtaining them for the trial period. At least if he decides to go back to the Moxi, he will have known that he did his due diligence with both trials.

Thank you very much for the explanation.

When they had me tried the Moxi back in August, it is because this is the only model they can have as a “trial” (no cost). I had to bought the OPN and I have 4 weeks to decide if I want to keep them or not.

I will try to get an appointment this week to have a good discussion with the audiologist.

Going back to see the audiologist today. Will report back.

Had a lunch today at a restaurant and I can say that everything was amplified and very hard to focus compared to the Moxi I tried :frowning:

Let’s see what she tells me!
(I tried to play with the OpenSound Booster option while at the restaurant and didn’t see much difference).

So, just back from the audiologist. We looked at the adjustment on the Unitron software and made adjustment in Genie2. Will give it another week to see if this change something.

Will make sure to go back to the restaurant to see if I see a change.

(We also updated the firmware of my OPN S 1 from 7.0 to 8.0…I don’t know what’s new)

@vincenthuard said:

We also updated the firmware of my OPN S 1 from 7.0 to 8.0…I don’t know what’s new)

Whoa, and I thought that 6.2 is the latest for the OPN S. I didn’t even know they already came out with 7.0, let alone 8.0.

In the last Genie 2019.1 release I think somebody found a what’s new file. But I don’t see anything like that for the 2019.2 release. But, like I said, the firmware updater that came with it only updated my OPN to 6.2.

Thanks!

I looked at Genie2 last night and my understanding is that by default the OpenSound Navigator is set to “low” for auto adjustment. I will ask my audiologist to look at this at my next appointment. It makes sense by looking at this that “all” the sounds are just amplified by default.

Edited

The OpenSound Navigator in the default program have the Noise Reductions and Transition help not set to the highest values. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s the cause of your hearing “all” the sounds being amplified. Even if you change those values, you’re still going to hear all the sounds being amplified. That’s why it’s called the OP(e)N, because it has an “open” paradigm where it chooses to let you hear most of the sounds around you, instead of trying to block out this and that, etc.

What those values in the OpenSound Navigator will help you do is be able to get better clarity on the speech when in noisy situation, despite having to hear all the sounds around you. If you’re the type that likes to be in a coocoon and want to rely on the hearing aids to only amplify speech and not amplify anything else, then the OPN is the wrong choice for you.

But if you stick with the OPN long enough to get used to hearing all the sounds, your brain will hopefully eventually adjust and learn to tolerate them and eventually enjoy hearing everything. You just need to start out with lower volume and eventually increase the volume as you get more used to it.

I just don’t really know if the trial period is a long enough time for you to adjust or not. If not, there’s nothing wrong with going back to the Moxi if you like it better.

Unless you are stuck with them I’d be going back to the Unitron. I fit Unitron amongst other brands and although they don’t seem to get the same ‘hype’ as other brands they make good hearing aids. If they sound better for you, particularly in background noise then I think the choice is a pretty simple one

Thanks for the answer (both of you (MFAUD and Volusiano).

I understand what OpenSound Navigator can do from your description. I’m exactly trying to do what you describe “get better clarity on the speech when in noisy situation”. I understand that by default the value is set to “low”.

Edited

Yes, that’s why in my default program, I change both noise reduction values in Simple and Complex environment to the max value, and the Transition help to High. If you want these settings in a separate program, then the built-in Speech in Noise program has these values set to high as well. But for me, I want these values high all the times, so I prefer to just set them to max values in my default programs.

Interesting…I have a NoahLink Wireless “en route”.

I’m seeing the audiologist Monday and will ask to create a second program with the transition help to High and etc…

Do you know why I’m kind of hearing “feedback” or robot noise when I speak “loud” or acute (sorry if I’m not using the right words as my first language is French). Is there another setting that I should be playing with or ask to play with.

In reply to @Volusiano

During a visit on 1 Oct 2019, my provider updated the firmware for both my OPN S 1 and older OPN 1 aids (now out of warranty). The ON app running on either a fairly new iPad Pro or old iPhone 6+ shows the OPN S 1 as:

Software: 8.0
Firmware: auroafw7.6.2

When the OPN S 1 aids were originally fitted on 22 August 2019, the Software was 7.0 and the Firmware was aurorafw6.16.1.

The new version information only showed in ON up after the aids were forgotten and then paired again with the phone (running IOS 12.4.2 as it is too old for 13.1.2).

Stuart

In reply to @Volusiano

Yes, I’m trying to find my result and if I can’t find them, I will ask again for them on Monday. I know I have then somewhere :slight_smile:

Quick question for you Volusiano…is OpenSound Booster turned on the equivalent of OpenSound Navigator set to max?

I tried that tonight at an event on my default program where I also turned up the volume +1 and I was hearing quite “ok”…I would say comparable to the Moxi Fit. (At least this is what my brain was telling me :wink: )

While I don’t have the OPN S (I only have the original OPN), I believe the OpenSound Booster is equivalent to turning the Directionality Setting in the OpenSound Navigator from the normal “Open Automatic” value to the “Full Directional” value. This favors the sound in the front over the sounds on the side and behind you. It probably also set the Noise Reduction values to max and the Transition Help to High as well. But the biggest difference is the Directionality Setting to “Full Directional”.

Many owners of the OPN S reported that they found very little difference when they chose the OpenSound Booster. Well, while I don’t have the OpenSound Booster because I don’t have the OPNN S, when I switch my OpenSound Navigator Directionality Setting to “Full Directional”, I found very little difference myself. The focus in the front is still there, but the abatement of sounds on the sides and behind me is not very strong, hence little difference.

I would attribute your hearing better in a event tonight more to having maximized on the Noise Reduction value than due to the Full Directional value setting. Hey, but every little bit helps. I would also attribute your hearing better tonight in that complex environment to your brain hearing being more and more adapted to the “open” paradigm and being less overwhelmed and being able to mentally focus on which speech you want to hear better and being able to tune your brain out to what you don’t want to hear. But of course you’d want the Noise Reduction to be set to max values to help give the speech in front more clarity for you. This way, despite still hearing all the sounds, you can single out and focus on the clarified speech in front better.

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