Oticon real 2 minirite

You will not yet find many with experience. I pick up Real 1, a higher technology level, on Wednesday.

If you look up the More 2, most experiences should apply to the Real 2. Be aware that experience can be highly individual.

Here is the technical data sheet showing the level differences.

Hi, picked up a pair of Real ones yesterday. They handle sudden sounds amazingly well. Much better than the more’s. Very pleased so far. Just put my more’s on ebay. 1500 to anyone on this forum.

@david33316 , how are the Reals compared to the Mores for speech in speech noise? I have More 1 and I am considering switching to Real. But I do not have a big problem with sudden noises. It would not be worth it to me to upgrade unless there is a substantial improvement in speech recognition in loud, multi-conversation bar/restaurant settings. Thank you.

I am only upgrading because it is a minimal cost due to Oticon’s price increases.

I went to a very noisy restaurant right after I picked them up and they didn’t seem a lot better. However, I’ve tried just about every aid out there and never found one that works great in very noisy restaurants. I need to ask my aud to do a program with a directional setting for restaurants. I’ll let you know if it helps.

Oticon doesn’t do it in the traditional way. The traditional way recognizes a noisy environment (like the AutoSense feature on Phonak for example) and can automatically adjust the directionality of the mics on the hearing aid to beam form to the front and attenuate sounds very aggressively on the back and the sides.

Oticon does do noise reduction via beam forming, but differently. Oticon uses a technique called MVDR (minimum variance distortion-less response) beam forming. Oticon uses the omnidirectional mic to pick up all 360 degrees surrounding sounds, and the back facing cardioid beam to create a noise estimator (see screenshot 1 below, and figure 2 of the screenshot 2). But if there’s speech on the side and the back, then that speech becomes an exception and is preserved via a Voice Activity Detector and not considered a noise source. Then Oticon uses the MVDR beam forming to “balance” the sound scene to attenuate the noise sources on the sides and the back (as part of the noise estimator), yet preserve the speeches that may be found in the back (like that speech between the 2 car noise sources in Figure 3 below).

So the difference is that with the traditional beam forming, the mic pattern adjustment simply blocks EVERYTHING on the sides and the back and only focuses on the front. With the Oticon beam forming, its type of beam forming only attenuates the noise sources found in the back and the sides, but makes exception for speech detected in the back or the sides.

This balancing is the core technology in the original OPN, got carried over to the OPN S, and also exists in the More and Real as the renamed Spatial Balancer (see screenshot 3 below), which is only employed for Difficult environment before it’s fed into the DNN. In the More and the Real, the DNN becomes the core technology, but the Spatial Balancer remains a very important part of the noise reduction scheme as well.

This special and different beam forming technique using MVDR allows noise attenuation but not as aggressively as the traditional way, so you can still hear the noise in the back and the sides, albeit rebalanced as to not overwhelmed speech, so that the 360 degree open paradigm is preserved. Meanwhile, the beam forming in the traditional approach very aggressively blocks out all sources on the sides and the back, regardless of whether there’s speech on the sides and the back or not. So it’s almost as if you have the blinders on to the front sounds only.

@SpudGunner said:

Perhaps it depends how one defines “microphone patterns

I was trying to give a simply understandable answer. Going into how the software uses beamforming with the 4 microphones is only useful to those interested in the technical details. The practical aspects would be similar to changing to a directional program.

@prodigyplace said:

similar to changing to a directional program

@prodigyplace: The quoted words are “simply understandable” to me, yet they don’t convey the false impression that Oticon does program switching.

I’m probably splitting hairs , but I see a lot of confusion between Oticon and Phonak on this point.

My More1 aids have been fitted so I don’t need any program other than the P0 general one. So yes when you explain to an audiologist that truly listens and understands your hearing loss the aids can be programmed to do it all so you don’t have to even think about them.
Well it least it is working for me.

@cvkemp: For some reason, I benefit from the SiN program most when there’s a physical barrier(think plexiglas divider, in a bank) between me and the speaker, or if I’m at the opticians’ and I have to concentrate on the one fitting me when there are conversations going on to the left and right of me, that I can hear … Speech in Noise really works for me in that kind of scenario.

@david33316 said:

I went to a very noisy restaurant right after I picked them up and they didn’t seem a lot better

@prodigyplace said:

The day I first got my More 1 I was in a crowded meeting with many conversations happening. I was able to carry on a conversation quite well. This was on the default program. The programming is supposed to recognize conversations in a noisy environment and adjust the microphone patterns automatically.

@prodigyplace said:

that if properly adjusted, the aids should not need a special program for noisy environments

@SpudGunner said:

@prodigyplace: You see, the point is not arcane - it reflects a fundamental difference of views. The Oticon “Speech in Noise” program in my More1s has been a game changer for me. It took my reaction to my aids from "meh" to WOW, as reflected in my posts at the time I received it.

I think @david33316 point in the first place was that he found his speech in noise performance to be the same between the More and the Real. But there’s implication in there that he’s still not 100% happy with the speech in noise performance of neither the More nor the Real.

I think @prodigyplace picked up on this implication and wanted to say that speech in noise on the More seems to work quite well for him, and perhaps @david33316 's audi could do a better job of adjustment to improve speech in noise for him.

All is good here except that perhaps the mention of the automatic change in microphone pattern when a noisy environment is detected gave the implication that the More (and Real) should do beam forming (usually an implication of the traditional beam forming where noise is blocked out from behind and from the sides) to help with speech in noise. @SpudGunner picked up on this implication of a traditional beam forming and wanted to clarify that the More/Real doesn’t do traditional beam forming because that would be against the Oticon open paradigm → hence asking me for clarification on the differences between them.

The bottom line is that even though the More’s speech in noise performance works well for many folks, some folks are still not 100% satisfied with it, like the folks who went to Whisper in hope for even better speech in noise performance. And @david33316 's confirmation is simply that the Real’s speech in noise performance is about the same as the More’s speech in noise performance, which is totally to be expected because the only improvement in the Real is sudden sound and wind/handling improvement. But the implication by saying “didn’t seem a lot better” conveys a sense of dissatisfaction there.

So @prodigyplace 's implication that perhaps @david33316 's audio can improve speech in noise performance for him is all fine, except that the mention of the automatic microphone pattern adjustment in noise implies traditional beam forming, which was the cause for the clarification that ensued.

Interesting to hear the interpretations of my post. The oticon’s in general have the best sound quality of any aid I’ve ever used. Listening to music with them is wonderful. However their philosophy up until know of giving the wearer all the info and letting our brains sort it out has been a cop out in my opinion. I purchased Starkey’s because they handled noise much better, but, they don’t sound as natural. I think with the advent of the Real’s Oticon is admitting that they needed to let the aids filter the noise rather that our brains. I find them to be way more comfortable. As for in a restaurant situation all of the aids just provide too much info to use them for an entire meal. The ambient sound contains the same frequencies as the voices that I’m trying to hear and it’s just exhausting. I just turn off the aids and sit closer to the person that I want to hear. Until aids can create a cone of silence around us in a restaurant all aids as far as I’m concerned are just a compromise in restaurants. I’m loving the Real’s in all other situations including my car.