Oticon Intent user review

That’s something I’ve never considered, but I guess it makes sense. You would think though with the importance that many of us place on blue tooth connectivity, that hearing aid and mobile phone manufacturers would work harder at improving the signal strength or receiving ability. Although I don’t own a pair I haven’t heard complaints about Apple’s Earpods having the same glitchy connection when outdoors. What do they do that works?

@Stephen_H said:

haven’t heard complaints about Apple’s Earpods having the same glitchy connection when outdoors. What do they do that works?

They don’t have batteries that last all day. So their power constraints aren’t the same.

WH

@Stephen_H said:

What do they do that works?

What @WhiteHat said, and to add to that, they have more room to accommodate a larger BT antenna.

Aren’t earpods actually smaller volume wise than most HAs?
I think the issues stem from the fact that manufacturers don’t put enough importance on streaming.
Also, even if it doesn’t look like from the outside, we’re still dealing with slowly evolving legacy hardware designs when it comes to hearing devices.

@Reginald said:

Aren’t earpods actually smaller volume wise than most HAs?
I think the issues stem

I quoted you up to the word “stem”, because it appears that’s where the antenna lives:

That’s from the ifixit teardown.2

@Volusiano said:

Oticon Genie 2’s ability to guess and set the MoreSound Intelligence DNN values based solely on the audiogram is not very accurate and can be more accurate with the input from the ACT test result.

And DIYers can guess and set an ACT value so that Genie 2 can guess and set the MoreSound Intelligence values. As you may have noticed, if an ACT value is supplied in Personalization, the questionnaire part of Personalization is disabled.

I am trialing the Oticon Intent 1. So far, so good. I will post my first impressions in a couple of days. Something I noted (sorry if I missed this) is that the Companion App now has two EQ options: “sound equalizer” and “streaming equalizer”. Sound EQ applies to ambient sound and has a range of ± 6 dB for Low, Mid, and High., while the streaming EQ ranges from -12 to + 6 dB.

Although late to the game, it is a very welcoming move from Oticon. I tried the sound equalizer while playing my acoustic guitar, and it is effective, to the point where I think it could help improve the overall experience for some of us having problems with music.

Sound EQ

Streaming EQ

Thank you for the good review. Please update as soon as you have experience in a noisy environment. Was the background noise suppressed at all? How was speech? Thank you in advance.

@Diver50 said:

Please update as soon as you have experience in a noisy environment. Was the background noise suppressed at all? How was speech?

I have been trialling the Oticon Intents (and chose them). The speech in noise is noticeably better for me than ReSound Nexias or Phonak Lumitys. Background noise is still present but the voices of people I was speaking with were much clearer. I used them in some challenging environments where I have always had issues in the past and my speech comprehension was much improved.

@OldMusicGuy said:

I have been trialling the Oticon Intents (and chose them). The speech in noise is noticeably better for me than ReSound Nexias or Phonak Lumitys. Background noise is still present but the voices of people I was speaking with were much clearer. I used them in some challenging environments where I have always had issues in the past and my speech comprehension was much improved.

Thanks for sharing this, @OldMusicGuy . Your observation in bold above is probably the difference between using beamforming to suppress the background noise and using the DNN to suppress background noise.

There is no control on how much background noise can be suppressed in beamforming. The suppression by beamforming is just fixed and aggressive by the nature of the beamforming technology itself. But with the DNN, the suppression can be more flexible and selective between sound components. The DNN doesn’t “block out” the background noise like the beamforming does. It just reduces the volume level of the background noise relative to the volume level of the speeches (the term that they use is “rebalancing”). That way, they can still allow in background noise, albeit not at an intrusive level anymore, but at a subdued level that nevertheless still has a presence.

I don’t know this for a fact, but I see a possibility they can probably also play game to elevate the volume of the speech more than what it really is at, just so that they don’t have to subdue the background noise so much as to lose its presence altogether (like with beamforming), in a situation where the contrast level might have to subdue the noise to almost nothing if the speech volume were to be kept fixed as is.

With a DNN implementation, there’s a lot of flexibility in how a sound scene can be rebalanced, yet still retain the openness of the open paradigm.

I must admit that I never heard about the Resound Noise Tracker II technology before. But since you mentioned it here, I googled it and found the following technical paper describing it in the following link (shown here for reference).

My understanding of it is that it’s a solution for single microphone hearing aids that cannot take advantage of directional beamforming that dual microphone hearing aids can. So it does not apply to what I was saying about noise attenuation using directional beam forming, because Noise Tracker II is not using directional beam forming in the first place.

After I read the technical paper, it looks like it uses a technique to extract a noise estimate out of the analyzed sound (that has both speech and noise diffused together), then it subtracts the noise estimate from the original signal using spectral subtraction. Spectral subtraction is a technique that subtract the short-term noise spectrum from the total signal, leaving only the speech portion behind. I can see it as a very nifty solution to remove noise from speech when directional beamforming is not available, like with single microphone hearing aids, such as the Completely In the Canal type HAs. Of course it doesn’t preclude Resound from applying this same technology to dual microphone hearing aids just the same.

This Noise Tracker II reminds me of how Oticon started cleaning diffused noise from the speech in their OPN line of hearing aids. They make a noise estimate of the sounds on the sides and rear and subtract this noise estimate from the speech in front to clean up the diffused noise from the speech.

But again, the Noise Tracker II does not use directional beamforming so it doesn’t apply to what you quoted me saying → “no control on how much background noise can be suppressed by beamforming”. But there is a commonality that I notice between this and what I said about leaving some noise behind, in that the Noise Tracker II doesn’t remove all the background noise from speech. The technical paper says that they intentionally leave a little bit behind as to make the whole sound scene seem more natural.

https://cdn1-originals.webdamdb.com/13512_93554422_1?Key-Pair-Id=APKAI2ASI2IOLRFF2RHA&Policy=eyJTdGF0ZW1lbnQiOlt7IlJlc291cmNlIjoiaHR0cCo6Ly9jZG4xLW9yaWdpbmFscy53ZWJkYW1kYi5jb20vMTM1MTJfOTM1NTQ0MjJfMSIsIkNvbmRpdGlvbiI6eyJEYXRlTGVzc1RoYW4iOnsiQVdTOkVwb2NoVGltZSI6MjE0NzQxNDQwMH19fV19&Signature=YkNKDjJb6kHuCAwaAOlKzIXHM8dIABQRPqcGa4MwyNBN72fQLXDKFMFZ7YwsHNLT~f-~3NKg5D1gqVyf6TFQ1rAx~UXsU8cN5CHH1atP5B-NcC154bqyyCJot-aCIvb2VWgMNjZkQQgm6eMdAKFtXhhWWXXFOKsY~vStAzm1U4jM1jM~WXmbQfGmWFxPil0ImO9FxA6SUlyDXS9WGet~ZP-ijQZ0r6gNCE2spN5Md8~ZnWJ4Uv3EQd8s1UC9GKCY65I755BGyl0pRKA~Deg9ekqI6jPzrQTlEkHqPu27oPAkFfetv4sz7K7JKay-b3ek6DurYOx0xhQ0hZ0j~cximg__

@Volusiano said:

I don’t know this for a fact, but I see a possibility they can probably also play game to elevate the volume of the speech more than what it really is at, just so that they don’t have to subdue the background noise

@user990 said:

That seems pretty close to what Resound does with their Environmental Optimizer II, although it’s used with their Noise Tracker II which reduces background noise.

Hearing aids ReSound - environmental-optimizer

It looks like the Environmental Optimizer II goes one step further and not only adjust volume to the preferred level as set when going from one environment to the next, it also adjust the noise reduction level of its Noise Tracker II technology that is assigned to each environment as well. Both of which is aimed at removing the need to manually change volume or programs.

The aim to remain in the same program and have parameters adjust to the environment changes within that same program, instead of jumping around to different programs (whether manually or automatically) seems to be the trend for newer hearing aid models. The Phonak Lumity with their AutoSense OS 5.0 does it similarly within the same General program now, adjusting parameters within that same program to the environments now, instead of jumping around to different programs.

And yes, Oticon aids have been doing the same thing as well since the OPN, adjusting parameters to environmental changes within the same program automatically.

@Volusiano said:

Of course it doesn’t preclude Resound from applying this same technology to dual microphone hearing aids just the same.

https://pro.resound.com/en-us/research/features-explained/environmental-optimizer

It seems to be an option for the Nexia 7 and perhaps others.

Yes, I don’t see why they should limit it to single mic hearing aids only. There’s nothing to prevent it from being used in dual mic system as well. Is there a parameter available to control the noise level, though?

At any rate, that doesn’t disprove what I said about beamforming uses directionality to block out the noise, and the way it blocks out the noise doesn’t allow the user to finely control how much to block out and how much to leave in.

Noise Tracker II is not using directional beamforming, so whether it can fine tune on the amount of noise it blocks or not is irrelevant to my statement anyway.