Has anyone upgraded from Oticon Opn to Oticon More?

@Val: If you’re already wearing properly-adjusted hearing instruments that work well for you, why would you ever expect to have a “wow” experience?

Also, I think that some kinds of profound hearing loss preclude a “wow” experience because they’re out of the hearing aids’ effective range to help.

I’ve never worn Opn or OpnS, but I’ve read all the excellent reviews. I think it’s hard to improve much on that.

If you’ve read the white papers, the main differentiating factor with More is that it uses a Deep Neural Network rather than engineers’ mathematical algorithms to detect noise vs speech and process the two in the fastest, most effective way possible.

I think it’s like venturi carburators versus fuel injection. The car runs pretty much the same - no “wow” factor - but the way the fuel is delivered to the cylinders is radically different.

Was fuel injection just marketing hype, then? Luddites would say yes, however there’s more to it than that, IMO.

I think I’ve narrowed down the errant sound. Volusiano mentioned riding in a van and not hearing his daughter. I was at the Audi’s office and the minute that the air conditioning went off, the sound disappeared. This has been repeated in several situations, all involving air conditioners. If I pull out my hearing aid slightly from the canal, the sound becomes less dominate. Maybe this is a dome thing or setting, but my Audi has never heard of this before. I am testing the More and today is decision day.

I’ve trialled the Oticon More and posted my first ever hearing aid review on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUeJlXAahnA22.

Please be kind… I am new

It’s natural for you to find that you can hear all the noise in the Oticon More at the (perceptibly high) volume that they’re at because of the open paradigm promoted by Oticon. But although you classify them as noise, they’re still just different sounds all around you.

If your brain is not used to hearing this much sound then you’re going to find it uncomfortable like you’ve experienced. But it should not be so loud as to damage your hearing further. If that’s truly so, then your HCP has not adjusted the hearing aids at the proper level for you. Most likely, that’s just your perception that it’s too loud because you’re new to it. That’s why they have 3 phase automatic adaptation to ease you in first at a lower volume then gradually move to the second then final third (default) volume level over time.

The important thing is that if you can understand speech well (you mention in your video that speech feels like it’s in high definition, I take it to mean the clarity of speech is good enough so that you understand it well), then it has done its intended job, which is to give you the speech clarity you need but still not “snuff” out the other sounds around you.

The point is that it counts on your brain hearing to learn to filter out the other sounds (which you call noise). If you think about it, normal hearing people hear “noise” sounds just as loud as speech. They don’t have hearing aids to filter out what they don’t want to hear, so they need to train their brain hearing to tune out what they don’t want to hear and focus on what they want to hear. That’s the premise of the open paradigm and brain hearing in the Oticon More. It doesn’t want to block out sounds so you can hear better. It wants to let you hear all the sounds and let you decide which sounds you want to tune out and which sounds you want to focus on by you using your own brain hearing to do this. But if there’s speech going on, it’ll help make speech more clear for you by suppressing the other sounds very momentarily (almost unnoticeable to you) only while speech is happening so you can understand speech better.

Not everybody who’s hard of hearing likes this open paradigm. Many prefers to have the noise from behind and on the sides blocked out for them so they can focus on the front where speech is usually is. The Oticon More has a similar feature that can be activated in the ON app called the MoreSound Booster that you can try out to get that similar experience that other hearing aid brands provide.

Very interesting information!
Thank you, Val.

@Val said:

On the other hand, it seems to me that I hear traffic noises more, and I don’t like it at all. It’s tiring. At the end of the day, I have the feeling that my head is going to explode. And I don’t like hearing noises around when I’m in a conversation either.

You can have your audi go aggressive on the Neural Noise Suppression (set both to max values), set the Virtual Outer Ear to Focused, set the Sound Enhancer to Comfort, and the Difficult Environment to start from Simple, like in the screenshot below. This should help make things sound less tiring for you. If this isn’t enough, turn on the MoreSound Booster in the ON app to block out the sounds from behind and the sides to focus on sounds in the front only. If you still don’t like it after making these adjustments, then I think the Paradise will probably suit you better.

I have been wearing the More 1’s for a couple of months now and previously had the OPN S1’s. One of the first things i noticed was increased background noise. What you would consider road noise…. Leaf blowers, lawn mowers, road noise from a nearby street, the fan from the A/C, trees in the wind are all more noticeable. At the beginning it was very distracting but now I’m used to it and its not bad. I did have the Audi increase the noise suppression, etc which helped in noisy situations.

You might just be experiencing the “More”…lol

Is it possible that the noise in the car was the A/C fan in the car?

Hang in there…. You’ll get used to the changes.

I remember when I switched from one of the older Costco (KS5???) hearing aids to the OPN 1s, the noise sources of all kinds (road noise when driving, fan noise anywhere, street cars passing by) bothered me a lot. It took me a month or two before I got used to them. Now I hardly think about them.

Thank you @Volusiano, I have an appointment on Tuesday with the hearing care professional who will give me the Phonak Paradise. I’ll see how it is compared to the Oticon. Usually I only have 40% understanding in noise with a hearing aid.
I have the right to try for a month, so after the Phonak I will try Starkey Livio AI Edge. I know the Starkey isn’t that good for bass dropouts, but it has the CROS compatible system (my left ear can’t hear anything) and previous brands have a CROS based on an older platform.

What about reliability issues with the More? My audiologist has had to send my Opn’s back to the manufacturer four times within the first year for technical problems, and it looks like I may have to send them back again (but thankfully, they’re still under warranty). I’m beginning to wonder if I should just try a different manufacturer, rather than an upgrade.
My other problem with Oticon is that when I get the hearing aids back, not all the problems have been fixed. For example, my phone (an Android) model no longer recognizes the right hearing aid, and that was supposed to have been fixed after the last return.

I posted this on the Oticon Facebook page but figured I’d post it here as well in case it benefits someone else.
I’m in the process of upgrading from the Oticon OPN 1 minirite to the More 1 minirite. My Audi convinced me to do a demo for 3 weeks and asked that I give her feedback because she knows I am a musician. Not professional in any sense but have been playing guitar for years.
My first impressions. My car has a pretty nice sound system with surround sound. Always though for what I was paying for it could be better. It got way better when I got in the car and turned it on at the Audi’s office. It nearly bought me to tears. Music has been very important to me, especially the last few years being I’ve been retired.
I love that feedback is nearly gone. I can lie on a pillow and watch TV without worrying about turning my head.
Speech recognition compared to the OPN is also improved. Even with noise in the environment, I’ve been able to pick up conversations and voices much easier.
Last night I even watched TV without the streamer. I have a Sonos sound system and always thought the sound could be better for what it costs. Last night it got better. Wow! Of course the TV streamer default is way too loud. I’ll have my Audi adjust it like she did with the OPN1.
My acoustic Martin guitar sounded like I put new strings on it and the strings are 3 months old. I’m impressed.
Only issue, and it’s not big is the right HA has a very light hash or hiss in the background. Sounds like crickets off in the distance. If I cup my hand over that ear it goes away. It’s more pronounced in the General Program than the Music program. Makes me wonder if it has something to do with feedback elimination.
Only have 2 programs now and feel I don’t need more. On the OPN I found “speech in noise” to be ineffective and I never used “Comfort”.
As far as being rechargeable, so far we are good. I put them in at 7AM this morning and it’s 4:30PM EDT and they are still at 70%. In a pinch I plan on using my OPN 1s as a back up or can do a fast charge.
Overall, I am very happy with the upgrade. Hope this helps someone. Of course we are all unique in our hearing impairments. Your mileage may vary.

I’ve been wearing the More1 for a few months now, having upgraded from OPN2. I posted a bit in another topic, but I’ve been back to the Audi, so I have a bit more — and more experience.

First, I love these. I would say they are a “wow” upgrade, but in a subtle way. The wow is that the sound is more natural. It’s much more the way I remember having normal hearing, and that includes the way music sounds — much better with these than the OPN2. They are much more “mentally comfortable” for some reason, I guess the naturalness. I feel like I don’t even have them in, and unlike the OPN2 I never feel like taking a break from having them in. For me with these things it’s just like I have normal hearing, which I think is the holy grail. However I’m aware that it’s not just hearing, but cognition, and for some people what they need from a HA is a lot more help to boost their ability to sort things out.

I don’t know everything that Oticon is doing here, of course, but I think the hardware has just gotten fast enough that it can put together a digital version of the sound stage that is much more realistic in real time, the way a modern computer can save a high quality jpg instantly. And the natural soundstage is analogous to that re-created jpg, which is made up of compressed tiles and not the original pixels the camera sensor created. So in that analogy, these are creating a very convincing, perfect jpg image in real time very transparently. No artifacts.

So I went back to my Audi and scrutinized the settings. I had her keep my main program 1 the way it was. She had initially set all the noise suppression to zero after knowing me — knowing that I do usually have the cognitive capacity to sort out noisy situations. It was also set in directionality to Full Omni instead of the Neural AI or whatever. So as I said, I love this program, and it’s working for me, so I kept it. My hearing loss is solidly “moderate” ski slope dipping down toward “severe” at one frequency, and I do better than expected (for my loss) at the test with a voice against background conversation.

I already had a “Voice in Noise” program, so that is what I tweaked. Afraid that I might be missing out on valuable features, I enabled some of the more sophisticated More1 features for that program. Noise suppression is maxed, and it’s set to Neural AI.

My intent was to try the “full More1” Voice in Noise program quite often and compare it. I admit I usually forget to try it, because I’m so happy with the main program. But when I do enable the more enhanced features, I find the sound is rather harsher and less pleasant. I think part of my individual “wow factor” in the way she first set them up is how natural the sound is. The processing in the other program is of course done well, but it is still more processing, and I can hear a kind of harshness. I don’t notice any diminution of natural background sounds, like the trickling of the fish tanks, bird sound etc with it. But somehow human voices are a bit harsher — I think boosted in a way that is a little bit over the top compared to the less ramped up settings. I find when I set it to that program I almost step back from the conversation, recoil, as voices just seem harsher and louder suddenly.

The voice in noise program is a bit better for conversation in a car, but if I’m driving alone I’ll keep the normal program and listen to music, which sounds so good now.

My life is still rather simple and influenced by the pandemic. I don’t go to restaurants etc. I am the grocery shopper for our family, and the grocery store is fine with either program (my grocery store does not play canned music loudly from speakers above every aisle, thank gopod ). I did go to a big family reunion with about 30 people in a big house with bright acoustics, and also time on their porch — also with bright acoustics. The full Omni setting vs the Voice in Noise program (again, not sure what the settings were at that point) in that context was not satisfactory. I could hear 30 voices very clearly all at the same time, and I struggled to pick out the person I was talking to. In that context I also tried the “Voice in Noise” program as she had initially set it up, but that was even worse, as it sounded very harsh.

In my experience, even at minimal processing (noise suppression down to zero, full Omni sound stage), the More1 does tend to pick out voices out of background. So there certainly is sophisticated hearing aid processing happening even without ramping the settings up. If I try using my AirPods Pro just in transparency mode with my audiogram input in there, I can tell what a drastic difference a real sophisticated HA platform provides vs a simple amplified microphone. (I try using the AirPods Pro as a simple hearing aid in a situation I’m sometimes in where I’d be rather likely to ruin my real HAs with water. The AirPods Pro might be better than nothing as a hearing aid, but barely (The AirPods Pro with my audiogram are fantastic for music and podcasts though))

I’ll be going to a wedding soon, so I’ll have a chance to compare the Neural AI and full noise suppression vs full Omni and no noise suppression, in that context.

Bottom line, I love these More1 aids.

Thanks for this excellent update. I can echo everything you’ve said, with the exception of Speech in Noise, which I haven’t enabled. I chose to install the DSL v5.0 fitting rationale as opposed to the Speech in Noise, and that works for me.

“Life-changing” is not a hyperbolic description of what Oticon More1s have done for me.

It’s nice to hear that you’re happier with the More 1 compared to the OPN 2 you had.

If you find out after trying out the Speech in Noise program more often that you still prefer your default program with no Neural Noise Suppression enabled and with the Directionality Settings in Fixed Omni most of the times, even in complex noisy environments, over the Speech in Noise program with max Neural Noise Suppression and Neural AI for Directionality Settings, you may want to consider the More 2 or More 3 instead to save money because the biggest differentiation between them is the amount of Neural Noise Suppression available. So if you don’t want the Neural Noise Suppression, when why pay premium for the More 1 when the More 2 or 3 will do?

But if you like to hear live or loud(er) music and want to get the best experience out of it, though, downgrade only to the More 2 and not the More 3 because the More 3 doesn’t have the Clear Dynamics feature like the More 1 and 2, which gives you a wide input dynamic range of 113 dB SPL for the best live/loud music listening experience.

But if saving money is not a big deal for you then of course the More 1 gives you the most features, even if you don’t need the premium features, at least they’re there when you change your mind and want them.