I am currently in the trial period with Oticon Intent 1. My audi identified that my was considerably different than First Fit. When set close to REM target (using ), I have a rough, scratchy sounding speech sound. The audi kept adjusting until the speech was comfortable. She told me it the new setting was “way different” that target. With the new setting, I have trouble hearing female voice when the speaker is not facing me (but only a foot or two in front of me and speaking to me. Also there are voices (usually female or children) that I just don’t hear. I’m thinking of returning the Oticons (I have three weeks left on my trial) and giving the Starkley Omega a trial. I tend to like a sharper, more crisp sound more toward ReSound timbre than Phonak. Does anyone have any thoughts or opinions?
I tried the Starkey Omega and Phonak Sphere i90s. Both were very good, especially with speech in noise.
I bought the Phonak Sphere i90s from Genesis-Hearing -Healthcare for $2327 with the standard warranty and remote fitting, etc. The Starkey Omegas were around $3100 from another authorized dealer.
The Phonak Spherical Speech in Noise was excellent and a more convenient than the Starkey version. Voice clarity is excellent overall. I think one of them will work well for you.
Before you give up on the Intent, ask your audi to try v5. is very crisp,or sharp sounding, and Oticon is known for its natual full sound.
Oticon is the only company which allows you to have different programs with different fitting formulas, so you could have them add a program with DSL, and another with Oticon’s VAC+.
Switch between them for a few days, and see if you find the sweet spot before you go to another brand.
it seems trivial as most current models can be programmed to the different fitting prescriptions?
But not side by side on different programs, don’t know why they do it, but the rest should as well, as mentioned you can then switch programs and tell which formula you prefer in any given environment.
Most other hearing aids cannot accomodate multiple automatic programs. I think Bernafon is the only other option but they no longer allow multiple fitting formulas in the same device. It is likely due to the complexity of their models and the amount of working memory on their chips.
Oticon’s automatic program has fewer independently customisable gain parameters for different listening situations than Phonak’s which is storing gain settings for up to 7 different listening automatic program destinations + 2 streaming. Oticon’s automatic program has fixed maximum settings for parameters like neural noise reduction and microphone mode etc across the entire automatic programme, whereas Phonak allows you to independently adjust these features to a larger degree across each destination in the automatic programme. Duplicating Phonak’s automatic programme using a different fitting formula on the same aid would require a lot of additional memory and given most users stick with one formula it probably isn’t worth the processing power and battery life hit to give users the ability to switch between the two in any reasonable length of time.
Widex have a similar automatic program to Phonak and do allow you to have two them in the form of a universal and a puresound program in the Allure/ product, but they hadn’t implemented NAL or fitting formulae into Compass Cloud the last time I checked so you’re stuck with their proprietary rationale. In moment the puresound signal processing was independent of the main chipset and bypassed most of the signal processing features (e.g. sound classification) to minimise processing delay so it wasn’t really equivalent to their Universal programme.
SoCal