Thinking of buying Roger Focus and Roger Pen

I have a lot of roger stuff, 2 pens, select, & clip-on mic. All are terrific. Pen is most versatile, select is amazing but expensive, clip-on mic is perfect for 1 to 1 and can be cheap on ebay. All can be networked together.

@Psych1 said:

select is amazing but expensive,

Would u say in a restaurant context select beats pen in omni position?

Pen is good but select made for restaurants & groups and much better. 6X the microphones.

Yes Select is a lot better for restaurant. Pen picks up too much noise.

So if you have marvels then u will need roger x either 2 or 3. I am not sure how but u need to find someone with tool to fit it in receiver. Maybe someone here can help with that. Then bingo. Just sync and off u go.

Ebay… Well im testing that out. Both shippers have just sent it. So ill see

For me, getting the roger stuff working was both expensive and way more than “bingo” but ultimately worth it. It is pretty complex - search for other roger threads that go into all the detail.

My Ebay experience has been mixed, some really good deals and great sellers, some scammers but Ebay helped with that so no loss.

Edit: Actually, with the Focus & EasyPen, “Bingo” may be correct, not as easy with the Marvels or the 1.1 pen.

@hold4triple said:

Phonak’s website pictures of the Roger Select placed on a table - the table is completely bare. That tells me anything placed in between the Roger Select and the connecting user might interfere with the Roger…

Tells me that Phonak didn’t pay their artist to draw anything extraneous.

Ads for cars often show long empty roads with no other cars. Does that tell us these cars do not work in a city?

Roger is just another BlueTooth. My BT mouse reaches my laptop even with the metal napkin holder in the way. If I go in another room, I might get 30 feet totally clear and 27 feet behind the napkin holder.

Synch not a problem, easy & stays. But the 1.1 pen is way more advanced than EasyPen and tricky to learn and use.

Two of my friends actually tested the Roger Pen and Select last year and boh returned the devices. The operating issue was mainly in noisy area but also in groups where the Roger Pen would only work one on one. Say you’re in a group and facing someone with the Roger Pen whose talking but then someone else in a group starts talking from a different different direction. The Roger Pen won’t pick up that second person’s conversation. The operating platform is really made for “one on one” which is not a bad thing, but you can’t really expect a directional hearing device to pull in speech conversation in a 360 setting or even a 180 setting. Regarding the Select, Phonak will tell you the device works better if nothing is blocking its line of sight. Case in point is the picture illustration on Phonak’s website where the select is sitting in the middle of a long table with nothing on the table at all. In that setting I’m sure the device works better verses having various eating and drinking utensils surrounding the immediate area of the Phonak Select.

Full disclosure: I work as a product manager for Phonak, specifically Roger at Work products.

I’m new to this forum, so hi everyone!

When it comes to products like this it is really important to really try them out for yourself. Everyone’s hearing situation is different, and what works wonders for one person might be unbearable for someone else. Ask for a trial period if possible. If you get the products reimbursed a trial period is often mandatory, though this differs between markets and countries.

Regarding things on the table: While it’s always best to have a clear path between the sound source and the microphone if possible, that does not mean that the product will not give you any benefit just because there is e.g. a glass or salt shaker in front of it.

The principle behind remote microphones, such as Roger, is quite simple; it’s all about improving the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), i.e. the difference in level between the sound you want to hear (speech) the sound you don’t want to hear (noise). The closer you can place a microphone to the sound source (most often the mouth of the person talking) the better the SNR, as the speech will be progressively louder relative to the surrounding noise. As a rule of thumb, each halving of the distance to the sound source increases the SNR by 6dB. So if you are sitting 6ft (1.8m) away from someone and place a mic at 3ft (0.9m) the speech that reaches the remote mic will 6dB louder than the speech that reaches you directly. Directional microphone technology and noise reduction will improve the SNR further, but a large chunk of the work can be done by simply reducing the distance. As long as the object obstructing the audio path doesn’t attenuate the speech more than what you gain from the reduced distance plus any algorithms, you will still benefit from the remote mic.

If you find it’s enough of a problem you could try simply moving the microphone to a better spot or e.g. placing it on top of an upside down drinking glass to raise it up a bit in order to get a clear path.

Hi Zebras, it’s IP57.

Wow. I’m so glad for this answer. Welcome to the forum

I’m struggling with the loudness of the focus especially when Roger pen picks up noise. I have tried logging volume on minimum setting. Nothing works. . Any way to turn it down. I have searched everywhere for this info. Thanks so so so much for your help

You can turn it down to it only amplifying 2 dB only. No more.

With thr volume control yes? But then when the pen seems to need to up the volume cause too much noise it ups the volume causing the accumulation of decibel entering ear freely plus what focus is giving to be super loud!!! Maybe its a roger pen programming. I dont want it to accomodate my bringong volume up.