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User Review of Whisper Hearing Aids

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I’ve also just started a trial of the Whisper aids. The lease price is down to $69/month now. I have yet to experience enough situations to report back, but I can comment on a few nuances.

The audiologist showed me the fitting software. There is not fine-tuning options. Essentially she plugs in the and then have a fitting program that I liken to an equalizer. She can make sound sharper or less sharp and also adjust for how my own voice sounds and a couple other options. Maybe this will get updated as Whisper matures.

The connection between the brain and the phone has been unstable thus far. Streaming phone calls are not as clear to me as Oticon More or my AirPods Pro. I was able to connect the brain to my work laptop and it does work to transmit and receive Teams/Zoom calls.

I have not yet been in enough complex hearing situations to really comment on this, but will be over the next week and will report back.

Hi Tony, nice to be able to have you share your Whisper experience from the perspective of a long-time user of the OPN 1 and the More 1, not to mention the Philips from Costco, on top of being a of all these to boost.

Are you trying out the Whisper aids mostly out of curiosity? Or do you have some fundamental unhappiness with the More 1 that you’re hoping the Whisper will address?

Hi Volusiano! Mostly the trial is due to curiosity. I’m always hoping the next “big thing” will have a big impact on my hearing situation. The Oticon More have been a fine aid thus far, but I still struggle in certain situations such as speech in noise or dealing with low talkers. Whisper is clearly a novel approach so we’ll see how they work for me. I’m just as curious as anyone else right now about how they’ll work for me in challenging hearing situations. Glad to report back after I give them a fair shot next week in different situations such as restaurants, airports, work meetings and kids swim meets.

In reply to @Abarsanti

I’m curious (and jealous about) the significant drop of the lease price. Perhaps sales/leases haven’t met expectations?

I have to admit that I’ve become disillusioned with the Whisper hearing aids, for the same reasons as I gave previously, namely:

  1. The lack of rechargeability
  2. The inconvenience of needing to carry the “Brain” around – I often leave it behind.
  3. The relative primitive state of the streaming ability compared to other high-end hearing aids.

One trades an arguably better hearing experience for these disadvantages. As I think the audiologist Cliff Olson observes, a 30-day trial period isn’t long enough to make an informed decision about the Whispers.

They did mention way back that they were very interested in . If they had LE Audio- and they sold outside of the US- I’d bite at that price.

Maybe they’re clearing stock ahead of the next hardware iteration?

@happymach said:

I’m curious (and jealous about) the significant drop of the lease price. Perhaps sales/leases haven’t met expectations?

I have to admit that I’ve become disillusioned with the Whisper hearing aids, for the same reasons as I gave previously, namely:

  1. The lack of rechargeability
  2. The inconvenience of needing to carry the “Brain” around – I often leave it behind.
  3. The relative primitive state of the streaming ability compared to other high-end hearing aids.

One trades an arguably better hearing experience for these disadvantages. As I think the audiologist Cliff Olson observes, a 30-day trial period isn’t long enough to make an informed decision about the Whispers.

Yeah, don’t you hate it when something gets cheaper after you pull the trigger? But $69/month pulls the rug out from under the pricing complaints. That’s around $2500 for 3 years, and $5000 for 6 years. A pair of legacy-brand top technology level aids that you might use for 5-6 years costs more than $5000, sometimes a lot more, with support included (in the USA). So Whisper’s new pricing is cheaper than buying top level aids at a schedule that lets you fall two development cycles behind before you get new aids.

The Brain is the same size it’s always been. Here’s a picture next to an iPhone 13 Pro. The Brain weighs a little more than half as much as the phone.

IMG_8012

You don’t have to carry the Brain around, if the resulting sound is good enough for you, and you have no need to stream or to adjust the volume. I can imagine that toting the Brain would be a problem for someone who doesn’t carry a bag, and has few pockets or wants to keep a clean profile. Personally I wear pants with recessed cargo pockets, and I can carry everything I need without using the back pockets or looking like I’m prepared for a safari.

Whisper streaming does need a lot of work, and I keep hoping to see better streaming in the next software release. But every morning I can choose between my Whisper aids and my ReSound Quattros (4-year-old technology, <1-year-old hardware that’s been very lightly used), and I almost always pick the Whispers because they help me hear better. If I have an important Zoom call that morning I might put in the Quattros instead.

@d_Wooluf said:

Maybe they’re clearing stock ahead of the next hardware iteration?

Unless something has changed, a Whisper subscription includes upgrades to new hardware if it comes out.

It’s not just that you must remember to carry the Brain around – it’s also one more item to keep fully charged.

I think that only “Brain Trust” subscribers are entitled to hardware upgrades during the subscription period. This is a consolation prize for the price drop.

In reply to @MDB

Whisper doesn’t use frequency shifting because they don’t rely on frequency data. They believe that their use of artificial intelligence is a superior approach. It’s explained in this white paper, “Beyond Frequencies, Artificial Intelligence, Sound Patterns, and the Whisper Hearing System”:

https://whisper.ai/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Beyond-Frequencies-Whitepaper.pdf8

My take is that they rely on frequency data, but not ONLY frequency data. I’m not saying is the be all, end all, but if one cannot hear sounds at certain frequencies and no modification is made to make them audible, one is not going to hear them. That information will not be available. It is quite possible that the information will be of minimal use or perhaps counterproductive (distortion) if it is made available so I’m not saying that Whisper is wrong. They just don’t seem to address the issue.

Edited

In reply to @billgem

@billgem said:

Whisper doesn’t use frequency shifting because they don’t rely on frequency data. They believe that their use of artificial intelligence is a superior approach. It’s explained in this white paper, “Beyond Frequencies, Artificial Intelligence, Sound Patterns, and the Whisper Hearing System”:

https://whisper.ai/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Beyond-Frequencies-Whitepaper.pdf

With all due respect, I think you totally misunderstood what the Whisper paper is trying to say, Bill. They’re NOT saying they got rid of frequency-based signal processing altogether and replaced it with and sound patterns. Signal processing will forever be the inherent foundation in which hearing aids are built on, from the old trusted analog to the digital HAs forward to the modern AI-based HAs and beyond.

Signal processing to hearing aids is as fundamental as round moving wheels powered by a motor to cars, be it the Internal Combustion Engine or the electric motor in EVs or hydrogen-based vehicles. It is the FOUNDATION that involves reading in sound signals and processing them and amplifying them. Perhaps an analogy of AI in hearing aids is the self-driving AI that Tesla and many other companies are trying to develop. It’s building ON TOP of signal processing, it’s not replacing signal processing. That’s why the title of the Whisper paper is “BEYOND frequencies …”, not “REPLACING frequencies”.

Oticon does AI, Philips does AI, Widex does AI, and yet they do still offer just the same. They’re not mutually exclusive such that if one has AI inside, then frequency lowering is not needed anymore, as implied in your statement. AI is not here to replace signal processing. AI is here to take the hearing aid technology “beyond” signal processing. It’s about the level of abstract. Instead of manipulating sounds at a lower level of abstract and dealing exclusively with the fundamentals of signal processing, it’s now taking it to a higher level of abstract and starts dealing with sound patterns to improve clarity, that’s all. But then afterward, it still has to come back down to earth from cloud 9 and use signal processing to deliver the end result in the form that can be heard by humans.

Let’s say with my quite severe to profound ski slope hearing loss at around 4 KHz and above, no amount of superb ground breaking AI is going to suddenly help make me able to hear those 4 KHz plus sounds at 4 KHz plus. It’s still the signal processing aspect of the frequency lowering technology of those sounds from 4 KHz plus down to the range of 1-2 KHz where I still have barely adequate hearing that will enable me to hear the high end sounds. To this effect, the Speech Rescue frequency lowering aspect from signal processing from Oticon will let me hear that. But no amount of AI from Whisper or Oticon or anybody else, WITHOUT any frequency lowering, is going to let me hear those 4 KHz plus sound.

So if Whisper doesn’t have frequency lowering, then OK let’s just admit that it doesn’t. But to say that AI can and will replace frequency lowering is a total misstatement.

Okay. Sorry that I misunderstood.

Here’s something else I don’t understand. Whisper.ai clearly says in the report of their first upgrade (v1.1) that they improved their compression system. If they’re using compression, doesn’t that mean that they’re doing frequency shifting?

No. Compression (as opposed to frequency compression) means that soft sounds get more gain than loud sounds.

In reply to @billgem

Compression and are two entirely different things, Bill, serving 2 different purposes.

There’s a current thread that touches on compression that you may be interested in reading up on: Self programming? Not sure how much longer I can deal with the "muffleness" of the compression - #15 by codergeek2015. In there, @Um_bongo and @Neville contributed a lot of professional insights into how the various mfgs deal with compression, in different ways. I wouldn’t be surprised if Whisper comes up with their own compression scheme which they think is superior to others. But all the HA mfgs probably think that they have a better compression scheme than their competitors.

Frequency shifting is a part of frequency lowering, but frequency shifting can be used somewhere else in a much smaller effect as well, like in feedback management where a strategy is to shift the frequency of the sounds by 10 Hz only to help reduce feedback. So that’s why I keep using “Frequency Lowering” to refer to the question asked (whether Whisper has any), instead of use the term frequency shifting. Like compression, different HA mfgs come up with their own frequency lowering technologies as well, and they probably also think that theirs is superior to others as well.

But to answer your question, (wide dynamic range compression) is not about frequency shifting. It’s about adjusting the amplification of signals over different frequencies to match the hearing loss of the individual to provide the most comfortable hearing experience without excessive loudness that can also result in feedbacks. So that doesn’t mean that Whisper is doing frequency lowering if they’re doing compression.

One strategy on frequency lowering is frequency compression, as employed by Phonak and some others. But I’m fairly sure that Whisper is probably talking about WDRC and not frequency lowering when they mention compression in their paper.

In reply to @Abarsanti

@Abarsanti said:

I’ve also just started a trial of the Whisper aids. The lease price is down to $69/month now.

I called Whisper with this $69/month information in hopes that I might be able to negotiate my current subscription price down. (Long shot, I know.)

I was told that the $69 price only applies in limited circumstances, i.e. where audiology services are being provided via TeleHealth and then only in a limited number of states - about 10 or so.

Does this match with your trial experience, Abarsanti?

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