Oticon and high frequencies

Those are the OPN receivers. I think it’s the Intents that are supposed to have the better high frequency response.

I INTENTionally (pun intended) am posting old HA models because IIRC, Dr. Cliff years ago mentioned effective high-frequency amplification, long before the Oticon Intent release.

@MDB said:

@Neville , am I off the wall thinking that a BTE might be better for this loss and a cochlear implant eval could be appropriate?

Cochlear implant eval, absolutely. There’s hardly any aidable hearing over 1kHz. If that left ear were mine I would pursue implantation yesterday. These steeply sloping losses can be harder, though, because the decent low frequency hearing feels like a lot to loose. That’s scary. But in the past 4 years I have seen zero bad outcomes amongst my patients who have been implanted.

BTE, maybe. These edge cases are hard to know until you try. I’ve had some similar patients who have absolutely noticed an improvement with BTEs and others where even if there is a small improvement in speech intelligibility, it’s not worth it to them versus their preferences for form factor. It will depend on just how good the RIC is doing at feedback management and providing a good fit-to-target (and how much mid/high frequency gain can even be tolerated by the individual given the greater chances of distortion in that area). Chances are higher if the individual has an ear canal that supports a good, deep custom tip fit. People with smaller, trickier canals may be better off in a soft BTE mold.

In regards to that Oticon self-calibrating speaker: As ever, Oticon has done a neat little thing and then created consumer marketting that sounds like something much bigger than it actually is. Receivers are manufacturerd to specifications that have a tolerance range of about 2 dB–they are not all exactly the same even though they are very close. So if your hearing aids are fit to target and then you change your receiver, that new receiver might be 1 dB off of where the original one was. All receivers are checked before they leave the factory, and the oticon receivers save their calibration results and pass it to the hearing aid so that the hearing aid can compensate for this little bit of variability. It makes them a bit more precise. It’s neat, for sure, and as a nerdy clinician I appreciate it. That said, there’s probably more variability created just in how RICs are placed into the ear with standard domes, so it’s unlikely users will notice.

BUT, the output/frequency response has been improved on 60 and 100 dB receivers (as seen in the little graph above) which is also nice. However, Sonova’s frequency lowering is better than Demant’s, so I wouldn’t necessarily switch away just to get the slightly better output of the new 100 receiver.

The oticon feedback management is good, but not superior. Frankly, they were behind prior to the Opn S, and releasing the S caught them up. It’s solid now, but in my experience it’s not advanced even though the technology they are using is pleasingly cool. That is, when I actually fit patients I don’t notice any advantage compared to Starkey, Resound, Phonak/Unitron. WSA’s feedback manager is agressive in a way I don’t love. In all cases, fixing feedback with the fit on the ear beats fixing it with the feedback management.

I guess I wasn’t clear. I haven’t seen anything that says Philips receivers don’t have some true self-calibration. It’s just that the only thing I have seen is the part where the receiver says what model it is.

Neville’s recent post in this thread gives a an explanation of the Oticon self-calibration that I had not seen before. It seems like a useful feature, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Philips receivers and aids work the same way.

@MDB said:

Those are the OPN receivers. I think it’s the Intents that are supposed to have the better high frequency response.

I have just made more recent comparison of Oticon Intent vs. Phonak Audeo Infinio Sphere receiver technology:

Starkey Edge AI Experience

There are newest technology comparison (Oticon Intent vs. Phonak Audeo Infinio Sphere) out of curiosity (ceteris paribus rule, 2cc coupler): Acoustic input for Oticon Intents: 60 dB [20250509_172316] [20250509_171854] There is a difference, especially in 3-5.5 kHz range. However, IIRC, all balanced armature technologies originated from Knowles. I wonder what makes the distinction. And of course I wait for xMEMS technology. Sources: