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User Review of Whisper Hearing Aids

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In reply to @Volusiano

If they really wanted to be innovative, they would put the software out in weekly or more often changes. I hear some big companies are considering it, and platforms like android or iOS might even support stuff like that.

My “company” is doing it for software that used to be on a year/couple year cycle. The software components have been decomposed and the different parts can be sent from the devs to staging to ops in hours. Users can submit bugs and we have gotten same day bug fixes out quite often.

That kind of availability of change would allow users to try different levels if stability (alpha, beta, gold) and different approaches to problems if they wanted to support that.

That kind of approach to updates would get my attention. They way they do it now seems pretty ordinary.

WH

Here we go again. For reference, you can see the updates thus far here4. Without going back over all of the threads, I recall that at least some of them made a noticeable improvement to some of our testers’ experiences.

I’m interested in how @Abarsanti goes with his trial but I’m not sure I’ve got the endurance to plough on through the deep analysis and call-and-response until we get there.

I’ve been trialing the Whisper aids for 2 weeks now. I have been in some very complex hearing situations thus far. In and out of airports, bars, restaurants, parties, outdoor swim meets and so on. I wore the Whispers exclusively to allow my brain to acclimate as best as possible while I reserved my judgements.

Firstly I’ll say, I was in touch with Don Schum at Whisper and ultimately their audiology team. The audiologist I was working with was not knowledgeable in the fitting software and she was wrong when she initially stated she couldn’t fine-tune the aids. The Whispers have be fine-tuned by frequency just like any other aids. Once the Whisper team got in touch with the Audi I’m doing the trial with, she was able to access the frequencies and make some adjustments based on my feedback.

I do feel that the Whispers cut out noise more effectively than the Oticon More 1s I have worn for the past year. This is subjective and I did no direct comparisons as I stated earlier. In a noisy bar setting, I heard significantly better than I expected I would. From a sound perspective, once the audiologist made the frequency adjustments based on my feedback, the aids sounded similar to what I’ve been used to with Oticon.

Phone calls are much more “muddy” than the Mores and there really is limited streaming available altogether (just phone calls). This has been a main point of contention for me as I’m on streaming calls all day for work. I do expect there will be some streaming enhancements in a future update, but that’s just speculating on my part.

I called Whisper about pricing after reading some of the recent comments here. They explained if I wanted the $69/month price, I’d need to stop my trial with the Audi and then start up a new one directly with Whisper in which they’d support me remotely. That’s the route I’d take should I decide to stick with Whisper, but I’ve yet to make my decision as I’m weighing the pros/cons of making the leap.

Edited

@Abarsanti: Tony, do you feel that the statement that the aids are a product still at Beta stage is an unfair exaggeration, or can it pass muster as a legitimate criticism from someone from the outside, like me?

Because I’m not saying it to stir the pot … [Well, that’s not entirely true. I am stirring the pot. But I don’t want to do it based on falsehoods.]

@SpudGunner said:

Tony, do you feel that the statement that the aids are a product still at Beta stage is an unfair exaggeration,

I don’t think that’s an unfair statement at all. I got the same impression myself in trialing the aids at times considering connection issues with the brain, my phone and the app. Even how the battery door case is positioned backwards on the right aid, but I think they’ve figured something out with speech in noise despite them being the new kids on the block.

In reply to @Abarsanti

@Abarsanti said:

I do feel that the Whispers cut out noise more effectively than the Oticon More 1s I have worn for the past year. This is subjective and I did no direct comparisons as I stated earlier. In a noisy bar setting, I heard significantly better than I expected I would.

Hi Tony, your observation above is pretty consistent with a lot of folks who have trialed the Whisper, including those who have also had exposure to the More already as well.

What I’m curious about that I’m hoping you can elaborate on is how do you think Whisper cuts out the noise more effectively than the More? Specifically with regard to comparing against the open paradigm on the More, is the Whisper more effective in cutting out the noise because they do more suppression of the surrounding sounds/noise like the traditional approach of beam forming taken by many other mfgs? Or do they give you just the same degree of “openness” like the More, but nevertheless is more effective at speech in noise without the expense of losing out on the openness?

Also, since you’re uniquely positioned as someone who also has had experienced with the Philips HearLink 9030 from Costco, which has an engine that’s also geared specifically toward being aggressive in reducing noise, but without regard to maintaining the openness of the Oticon open paradigm, how would you compare the Philips AI noise engine against the Whisper AI noise engine? Are they similar in cutting out the noise more effectively than the More? Or is the Whisper also better at cutting out the noise compared to the HearLink as well?

If I recall correctly, you were going from the OPN (or perhaps the OPN S) to the Philips Hearlink 9030 and you thought that the Hearlink was much more effective at cutting out the noise compared to the OPN (S), but then you wanted to try out the More and you decided to stick with the More and return the Hearlink, perhaps because the More is effective enough at cutting out the noise but still be able to give you the openness while the HearLink couldn’t give you. Is that correct?

It is interesting that the comparison of the Whisper to the More in terms of speech in noise…is limited to the two aids. How would the Whisper compare to aids other than the More in this regard?

In other words, we’d have to go down the line of all the major manufacturers to test their speech in noise capabilities relative to the Whisper. And even then…we all know how this sort of thing varies among each one of us.

Oy Vey! this is hard! Again, though, nothing I’ve read so far has moved me to jump on the Whisper bandwagon. Just the opposite. They seem to be selling a promise, with little delivery.

In reply to @Volusiano

@Volusiano said:

Or do they give you just the same degree of “openness” like the More, but nevertheless is more effective at speech in noise without the expense of losing out on the openness?

That’s exactly my observation. The Whispers have a similar approach to the Mores, but seem to be more effective at speech in noise without losing the openness.

In reply to @jeffrey

@jeffrey said:

It is interesting that the comparison of the Whisper to the More in terms of speech in noise…is limited to the two aids. How would the Whisper compare to aids other than the More in this regard?

I agree that it’s legitimate to ask your question. Maybe other posters who had other non-Oticon aid brands can chime in. Someone recently said that the Whisper has better speech in noise compared to their Costco KS10 by far. I think although some of the Whisper trialers/adopters used to wear the Oticon More or OPN S, a few others did use other brands as well.

But on the other hand, the Whisper has a leg up on many other brands because it has an engine. So it’s probably also more fair to compare it to other aids’ brands/models that use an AI engine as well, like the Oticon More or the Philips HearLink 9030, or the Widex and whichever else that has gone the AI route.

In reply to @Abarsanti

@Abarsanti said:

seem to be more effective at speech in noise without losing the openness.

@Abarsanti: Could that just be a function of the extra microphones in the BrainBox? Does the advantage still present itself when the brain is absent? ( And how sensitive mist they be to work from inside your pocket? That would certainly add detail to the soundscape.)

Edited

In reply to @SpudGunner

I didn’t know that the Whisper brain has microphones in there as well. Is that confirmed by Whisper? I must have missed that somewhere along the line. If so, then well, there you go! It probably makes a big difference to have a third set of mics in the brain to triangulate sounds and process it better.

I guess the big question for Tony is, setting the side the fact that it feels like a beta product, if Whisper gets caught up on the streaming weakness and provides and rechargeables for the ear pieces and what-else-have-you, do you (@Abarsanti ) feel that it’s worth carrying with you the brain to these complex environments to benefit from the extra edge that Whisper provides for speech in noise?

In reply to @Abarsanti

I’d like to see what would happen if you took a More1, put it in your pocket (or filtered it through several layers if material) and then amplified the hell out of it with an external amplifier like the Whisper Brain, and then juxtaposed that onto a regular hearing aid signal …)

In reply to @Volusiano

@Volusiano said:

didn’t know that the Whisper brain has microphones in there as well.

@Volusiano: This is just my deductive reasoning at work, MrV. While just a feeble simulacrum compared to your finely-honed mind, my old brain can still reason … sometimes. Why/how else could the Brain enhance performance while in the vicinity of the unless it was imbued with an array of small, but powerful and exquisitely sensitive microphones into it?

I doubt that Whisper will confirm this “trade secret”.

Edited

In reply to @Abarsanti

@Abarsanti said:

Firstly I’ll say, I was in touch with Don Schum at Whisper and ultimately their audiology team.

This is rather pretty interesting. I assume that you got in touch with them to get the fine-tuning issue clarified. Did you have any further exchanges with them on anything else that may be of interest to us readers?

It’s also confusing to hear that you went to your audi who quoted you $69/month, but then the Whisper team unquoted that and required you to switch your trial support model half way through.

Since we’re also touching on the remote support thing, did you ever ask them about allowing some kind of model, even if unofficially? You’d be a perfect candidate for that, by the way.

In reply to @Abarsanti

@Abarsanti said:

They explained if I wanted the $69/month price, I’d need to stop my trial with the Audi

@Abarsanti: Tony, I went back to post #300, and I got the impression when you started your trial (through the audiologist), that the rate she quoted was $69/mo. Did I misunderstand?

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