Oticon Speech in Noise Program - Is it just directional?

That is great! But that tells me that there is still room for improvement in the fitting if your aids.
My audiologist said that too me about 3 years ago when we were working to the best possible fitting for my needs.

@e1405 said:

AutoSense started to get on my nerves. I prefer Oticon’s P1, which delivers a more consistent sound without noticeable variation.

This is what I found. AutoSense drove me mad!

@cvkemp said:

That is great! But that tells me that there is still room for improvement in the fitting if your aids.

You’re right on that. The hospital did perform REM, so not too sure what else they can do. I shall ask them in an email.

I am not sure how to explain this, my audiologist uses the REM to verify that my aids preform as designed. My aids are pushing to the limit. My hearing loss dictates by Gene2 that the 85db receivers should work with properly fitted ear molds. I wear 105db receivers with semi skeleton ear molds that have very small vents. My aids are set to 100% plus of my audiogram. I don’t have feedback, wind noise, or issues understand speech. I can even go to concerts but i have to lower the volume of my aids to -2. I love to wear over the ear headphones over my aids again by lower the volume to -2. I go to lectures, meetings and church and hear it all very well with only my default program. Over the last couple of years I have had all extra programs removed from my aids. I can even watch TV with my wife, and having her set the volume to her requirements. She is in her upper 70s and I believe she has super human hearing. I keep pushing myself to understand speech by reading along while listening to audiobooks. I can now even sound out words now to spell them, something I wasn’t able to do for decades.
My audiologist is a professor of audiology at the state medical College and I have monitored most of the classes he teaches. I have learned alot and can explain to audiologist my needs. The VA clinic i go to now has 3 audiologist besides my audiologist. All of the new audiologist are his previous students. I feel comfortable have any of them work with me. But my audiologist always double check their adjustments.

I think you’re right that it’s a little bit semantics with the exception that as we increase the use of machine learning to decide how sound is managed rather than engineers deciding how sound is managed, knowing exactly what it happening at any specific moment is going to become more difficult because it won’t be based on parameters that humans set it will be based on parameters that “AI” set. Phonak presents theirs as “programs”, but the programs are smoothed and blended together so how much different is that than other hearing aids hiding the ways in which their automatic features are set to adjust? The issue with doing it Sonova’s way is that it gives the clinicians more power to adjust things, but this also gives them more power to make things weird (and pumpy).

@PeterH said:

I wonder if I’m trying to make my Phonaks behave like Oticons?

After a few days of tweaking the Lumitys during my trial, I started to wonder the same thing . However, I didn’t notice any improvement in speech comprehension in quiet, moderate, or noisy environments compared to my Mores. Both are excellent hearing aids, each with its own approach.

I get my “ tuner” to boost mids and highs. On your App try saving a program where you’ve hit the CLARITY button. See if that helps.

@PeterH said:

I’ve noticed with Autosense that it prefers “Calm situation” in most situations, which sounded dull. I also noticed that when “Speech in noise” cuts in, the person I’m trying to listen to also gets quieter. The other thing I’v

This is exactly why I don’t get on with AutoSense. 99% of the time it was still in calm situation, even when the speed of change went to number 2 or 4.

I think you can opt to “Turn on Remember Volume settings” in Genie 2. Maybe she’s always had it at 100 so when her aids turn on, it resumes itself at 100? You can see that option in the screenshot below at the bottom of it.

Another guess is that because her loss is so severe, it takes the max volume to get to her “default” level and there’s no margin left to increase the volume anymore. After all, she wears the OPN S while you have the “power” version Xceed UP, so your power aids have some margin left but hers non-power aids is simply just maxed out?

@Volusiano said:

Another guess is that because her loss is so severe, it takes the max volume to get to her “default” level and there’s no margin left to increase the volume anymore.

That makes more sense.

Thank you.

Re the original question - yes it is but not in the conventional way you might be imagining.

Going back over a few generations now, Oticon has done this to a greater or lesser extent. Looking from above your head (Polar Plot) the aids have been able to resolve what looks like a dartboard in terms of different directions - spantial ‘wedges’ if you like. Within these wedges the aids have been able to raise or lower the identified speech (more recently by AI) over non-speech signals.
A couple of generations back they also started doing the same in each channel within each ‘wedge’ - so rather than modifying your overall response, they modified the ‘wedge’ response depending on the speech/noise mix in the directional pattern.
This is the underlying tech behind all the ‘Brain Hearing’ claims and the idea that as much of the speech gets preserved as possible, while discounting as much noise as possible - allowing the brain to listen with the least amount of effort.
All the Speech in Noise program does is to wind this effect up to maximum - which can sound a bit harsh and processed for some people, which is why it doesn’t get done as default.
It’s not a ‘traditional’ fixed forward directional as you might find in older aids as the actual shape of the polar plot and sub-channel performance alters depending on the presentation of the sound-field rather than always driving louder sounds from the front.
I believe that the Intent 1+2 have further modified this by introducting a ‘steering’ element to the process using the in-built accelerometers to ‘cue’ the bias for speech in the direction you’re looking.

When you get a chance, give us an opinion of how the reals compare to the opns.
And now you finally get to experience mymusic!

@flashb1024 said:

nd now you finally get to experience mymusic!

And a few more characters to let me post this

I’ve retired for quite a few years now compared to when I got the OPN 1, so I don’t get to go out to noisy restaurants as much as I used to anymore, nor am I in a rush to do it just to compare the Real vs the OPN. But I do observe that the Real output seems to be stronger, but possibly just because the receivers and aids are brand new. I got a lot of short squeaking going on with the Real at the default volume, but nothing a few fine tuning adjustment to shave off the peaks from the resonant frequencies didn’t fix.

The Sudden Sound Stabilizer is quite effective. I set it to Very High and hardly get any startling sounds like the clanging of dishes. I backed it off to High (default is medium) and it’s more realistic yet still comfortable to me. I haven’t had a chance to try the Wind handling feature yet but I’m sure it’ll work well because there has been no negative feedback about its effectiveness on this forum that I know of.

I tried out MyMusic and I can understand why some folks don’t like it. They seem to boost the mid lows and the mids up by quite a bit to give you an overall impression of the music being more “alive”. I can see that it might work with popular and rock music where accurate music reproduction is not a priority, but it gives you a “kick” or “pick me up” kind of feeling with the extra warmth and punchiness. The bass and the bass drum sounds particularly enjoyable. But for other genres that require authenticity and accurate reproduction, or for people playing solo instruments, the added coloration ends up being way too much and can make the instrument lose its tonal accuracy.

I also tried the DSL Pediatric for one of my programs (as inspired by @e1405 's positive review of it, and it feels louder and more overwhelming and warmer and fuller to me compared to the VAC+ formula. It makes the VAC+ formula sound a bit thinner to me. If I take the volume down a few notches with the DSL Pediatric, I can see why @e1405 likes it. I think a combination of this formula and the neural noise suppression by the DNN can be a strong competitor to the Oticon built-in speech in noise, which gives the VAC+ a small boost in gain and more aggressive noise suppression, but still lacking that “fullness” that the DSL Pediatric has. The DSL Adult and NAL-NL2 are sharper compared to the VAC+, but the DSL Pediatric is definitely “fuller”. Of course none of this has to do with the Real and I could have gotten the same experience with the OPN, but back then we didn’t have @e1405 blazing the trail on DSL Pediatric to know better and gotten more curious about it. I guess the word Pediatric automatically kept us away from wanting to try it in the first place.

When I get around to going to a very busy environments, I will report back on the DNN’s performance compared to the OPN’s non-DNN approach. I’ve been at Costco and grocery stores, which are not terribly noisy but alive with folks talking, and so far the Real performs well, and I can hear people around me well, and I don’t seem to get that more echo’y feeling like I’m in a hall that I get with the OPN. The surrounding sounds seem a little more “tight” with the Real than the OPN.

@Volusiano said:

I also tried the DSL Pediatric for one of my programs

I put it to another test yesterday, and it passed with flying colors! It was a very loud birthday party that eventually turned into a karaoke session with some very enthusiastic/drunk singers lol. Once again, I had no trouble understanding people or any discomfort with the level of amplification of my Intents. The DSL Pediatric is a keeper, I can’t see myself using the other ones anymore. Oh, and it’s always P1 for me! I’ve even deleted the SIN program from my Intents and replaced it with the Lecture program.