Oticon introduces Oticon More

I remember reading some months back that Oticon had a model coming out that was designed more for reverse slope

All this stuff triggers my curiosity about how a Deep Neural Network works. So I found a series (4 chapters) of YouTube videos that does an excellent job of explaning the subject that I’d like to share here. It starts to get pretty “geeky” very quickly by the second through fourth videos, but at least the first video alone gives you a vague idea of what it’s about, so at least the first video is worth watching, IF you’re a technical person and enjoy learning more about this kind of things.

Someone brought this up on Facebook, and it’s a valid question that I don’t think has been addressed so far (sorry if I missed it)… Does ‘ready for LE audio’ mean that it will be able to be used to make hands free calls using the hearing aid microphones?

This is tremendous news. A totally new approach. Well done Oticon.

Hopefully we should get some anecdotal reports through soon.

When is this product expected to become available?

I am quoting from an irish audiologist/blogger who has a site called hearing aid know. He said the Oticon More will be released in the UK and Ireland on 13th January. He imagines it will be released in the U.S at a similar time. I think I saw an australian audiologist say it will be available in australia also in mid January.

I just watched Oticon’s You Tube Video Volusiano attached. Interesting that Oticon chose a full size behind the ear aid (display) when discussing the Oticon More. That tells me with a BTE model battery size will be bigger then a 312. Also if there is a size 13 battery or bigger you might see disposable batteries, though for now all I’m reading is rechargeable. Now wondering if the BTE model might be “standard” size with other sizes to follow down the road?

Maybe the reason for the larger BTE aid is due to the size of the Polaris Chip. In any case I’ll be watching for a SP aid or even an UP, even though the Exceed has been out a year plus.

My apologies.

Just saw this on Linkedin, this explains a lot.

@Neville said:

Oh my god that first video is infuriating

Aiming to be new Steve Jobs approach or?

I just can laugh on comparing regular brain vs brain where cochlea is damaged.
I mean, if we skip the cochlea, I’d agree with him.

But as long as we depend on the damaged cochlea, I still think that too much sounds for overwhelmed brain could be counterproductive, for many people.

Granted, it could work for some people (mild to moderate, no distortion in pure tone audiogram would be my initial requirement), but definitely not for all. I hate when they put us all into the same box ‘hearing impaired’.

What they do is make people hopeful and chasing tech and paying big money to still be disappointed instead of giving realistic approach to each, and to explain clearly who could benefit, and who might not and why.

No hearing aid can improve sound quality encoding process that happens in your cochlea. And I hate when they imply otherwise.

You can train your brain to get the better comprehension to a degree, but you cannot train it to imagine shitty sound isn’t shitty anymore, if your cochlea turns normal sound into shitty/distorted one. You can accept such sound as your new normal, but there’s no way it will stop being distorted if your cochlea is the distortion source. For example.

@Blacky said:

Aiming to be new Steve Jobs approach or?

Funny - that’s the first thing that entered my mind when I watched the Oticon Youtube presentation. Surprised I didn’t see some attractive young women running with a sledge hammer to throw at what ever. Is it me or are HA manufactures now pulling out all the stops (superlatives) to announce their new hearing aids? Certainly the brain is the end point of all incoming sound, but if someone lacks significant nerve (hair) cells or has a damaged cochlea - I doubt aid to brain sound communication is going to be improved by the Oticon More.

But I’ll hold my fire, until aid comes out and we see/read user results.

@Blacky said:

Aiming to be new Steve Jobs approach or?

Because it’s just all emptiness and half-lies. When you decode it, they’ve pretty much said nothing at all. And because they’ve said nothing, the excited talk about how groundbreaking it all is starts to taste very sour to me. A sort of insincerity.

Again, I like Oticon’s products. Its their marketting that drives me bonkers.

Also, it’s not like other manufacturers haven’t been using AI for generations now. I’m not convinced that Oticon’s “deep neural network” is anything special. If they want me to think it’s more than more marketting-babble, they need to show me how that’s the case.

I was very disappointed when they had the Sr. VP of R&D come out and all he could present was the picture of the 360 mic, without giving any sensible high level details about why their DNN technology is so great.

I have some sense of what the DNN does now through the educational videos, but I still don’t have a very clear and sensible idea of how Oticon makes use of it and apply it to the More. But I’m not jumping into conclusion and dismissing their DNN approach yet. I think if they release more implementation details rather than just the high level fluffiness, they’d be able to do a better job convincing people.

Anyway, all the references and additional info they provide for the More on “oticon.global/.,” links default back into the generic oticon.com2 website which has no info at all about the More. Not a good first impression for what is supposed to be a ground-breaking release.

i think this is widex approach that classify environment and then determine compression scheme slow mix vs speedy but widex is not working for all
so i will holdd my opinion.
widex slightly differ that mostly slow acting compression unless environment detected but still widex capture more noise if try to increase noise reduction it will cut speech altogether!
while oticon has more processing power channel wise effect may be higher than widex