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User Review of Whisper Hearing Aids

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I haven’t talked to him directly, and no one’s going to tell me about business plans. I’m not non-disclosed. All I’ve signed is a piece of paper acknowledging receipt of a pair of Whisper earpieces and a Whisper Brain.

X475aws: I think Dr Schum made a passing reference to Canada in the last taped interview that Bill linked to this discussion. That’s what prompted me to ask …

In reply to @happymach

@happymach said:

Let’s just stop this. Now. We’ll share as we see fit.

@happymach said:

It is interesting to note that the “lead audio architect” at Whisper comes directly from Oticon, where he worked on noise suppression in the OPN and More series of hearing devices:
…

It seems to me that this discussion is becoming more and more disconnected from real experiences with the Whisper. The title of this forum is “User Review of Whisper Hearing Aids,” after all!

I thought we were going to stop discussing non-performance-related items?

Edited

OK, here’s another subjective evaluation.

Was eating lunch outside across the table from a friend. I think there was a wall behind me. The environment was moderately noisy – there was someone at the table next to us who was talking on their phone, and there was not-loud jackhammering taking place somewhere in my distant foreground.

What I noticed was that I could pretty much always hear him clearly and could (generally) comfortably lean back in my chair and still hear him. @Volusiano may remember my once expressing the desire to hear sibilants better, and at the time he suggested that I turn on Speech Rescue on my Oticon OPN 1s (which I did try, without significant improvement).

Well, what seemed remarkable was that even though my friend was speaking rather softly, I heard all of the final sibilants of his words really well, without his voice or the sound in general seeming unduly amplified. Again, this is exactly as I’ve wished all along.

One realization which I’m arriving at is that the commonly-accepted notion that hearing should be evaluated first and foremost in terms of one’s ability to hear discrete tones along a frequency curve has very little to do with a person’s ability to hear voices effectively. In other words, amplifying / restoring the high frequencies is clearly not enough (nor is noise suppression). As @Volusiano notes, the holy grail may be speech and noise separation, but what seems remarkable about the Whispers is that this appears to be occurring without apparent noise suppression.

But the streaming (even for phone calls) seems subpar.

Also, sometimes I see that the Brain is disconnected from my iPhone (and I’m not sure why, because it isn’t far away), but I wonder whether this means that the Brain is disconnected from the earpieces.

Has anyone else noticed this?

@billgem said:

Because the Whisper AI separates speech from noise by recognizing how human speech is a different sound pattern than any other noise, it becomes better at recognizing that difference as the listening environment of every Whisper user is added to its dataset. T

OK. ^^^^ THAT. Very intriguing!!! Also, if you are hearing conversations several feet away with such clarity … well, do you even NEED to stream?!

Thanks for the detailed review here.

@1Bluejay said:

do you even NEED to stream?!

lol. No-one needs to stream I guess. Everyone else is doing it so it’s nice not to be left out (actually, I do get the point :smile:).

Have any of the testers used the Whisper to watch television or talk on the phone without streaming? How does it compare to the Quatro and the world-leading Oticon More? How does it compare to understanding real-life voices using the Whisper? Just wondering how well voices coming out of a speaker are recognised as voices. Talking on the phone in a noisy environment would be a good test I guess.

In reply to @happymach

The connection between phone (some phones at least, like your iPhone ? and my iPhone 13 Pro) and Brain is buggy, and the subpar phone streaming may be part of the same problem. The BT piece, and streaming in general, probably needs to be rewritten. Whisper is hopefully doing this now. My told me that Whisper considers my case “interesting”, partly because I have a newer phone, and can describe problems in detail (the other reason is my asymmetrical hearing loss).

I haven’t seen or heard anything to make me think the earpieces aren’t staying connected to the Brain. You can check by pressing the up or down volume button on the Brain. If it’s connected to the earpieces then the earpieces will speak the new volume setting.

Whisper’s incomplete state is annoying, sure. But they’ve shown that they have a solution to the speech-in-noise problem that’s far superior to anything else out there. If they don’t succeed, when is the next time anyone is going to spend the money to bring a comparable product to market? So I think it’s important that people who are able to support Whisper do so (if it works for them). Whisper’s sales department is headed by a longtime sales VP from one of the big companies, so if their product succeeds then they’ll know how to get it to the in the US, and to Canada and other countries.

In reply to @d_Wooluf

I watch TV using the Music program on my aids, with captions. Maybe I’m being lazy with the captions. At my visit yesterday my Whispers were adjusted to help with my complaints about music, and now TV with Whisper is similar to TV with Quattros.

Watching TV with the Dynamic program on Whisper (the one that works like magic in noisy places), I don’t hear anything special going on.

In reply to @x475aws

I have an iPhone 13 Pro as well.

Yes, my corroborated what you say about the connection between the Brain and earpieces; thanks for pointing out an easy way of verifying that.

I’ve been sitting in a noisy café with someone talking at a table located at 135 degrees from me, on a balcony of sorts (so nothing but a railing behind him), about 12 feet away, listening while I turn the Brain on and off. The effect is subtle but noticeable: there’s more noise suppression and better voice delineation.

To answer a question about the portability of the brain, I don’t find it to be a problem. I usually put it in a pocket in my backpack. Having two different devices, with two different types of batteries whose level of charge I need to worry about is an inconvenience, but like @x475aws, I find the speech-in-noise improvement to outweigh it by far.

RE: hearing speech in noise. I hope this isn’t too far afield…I have the Cochlear Osia implant (bone assisted hearing aid). I have strictly conductive hearing loss; that is, cholesteatoma surgery in my youth damaged my hammer anvil and stirrup, etc. My cochlear nerve is fine. The BAHA bypasses the whole middle ear and conducts sound directly to the cochlear nerve via the mastoid bone.

Wow…the hearing levels in my worse, right ear went through the roof with the Osia–much better than with my old Phonak Naida–near normal. My middle and upper decibel range went from severe to near normal. And the Osia is brilliant with speech–I can hear conversations from a half block away. My speech in noise scores also went way up.

My point is, since we’re looking at new technology, I would include baha’s for sure for those with conductive loss. BAHA’s seem to be little discussed here, altho I haven’t gone looking.

Interesting, but the title of the forum is “User Review of Whisper Hearing Aids.” Why not start your own?

I started a Whisper trial yesterday. I’ll be comparing them to the Oticon More I’ve been wearing since the beginning of this year. I started a new thread called “My Whisper trial vs. Oticon More” in case anyone is interested.

My Whisper system got upgraded to 1.4 yesterday, and I got custom molds. They’re flexible silicone skeleton molds, made by a 3rd party mold manufacturer. That’s a software change and a coupling change at the same time, so it’s hard to immediately separate out the differences. Bluetooth between my iPhone and the Whisper Brain does appear more stable, with the same functionality as before. The iOS Whisper app is also a new version, 1.2 from two weeks ago.

My trial ends on December 31st, and I do expect to sign up. The I’m working with (one of several who fits Whisper at the practice) told me that only one of her Whisper returns has been because of the sound. The other returns were because of Bluetooth. Hopefully the phone functionality is now more reliable, but there’s still no media streaming yet. I would say that my main complaint now is the inability of the fitter to adjust music program gain independently. Hopefully that’ll be in an upcoming release.

One change I’m noticing in 1.4 is that it sounds quieter inside my car, with Dynamic program at volume level 5, the default. My car is a Toyota Avalon and it should be quiet inside, but Whisper was picking up a lot of noise before. Seems like they’ve improved steady-state noise suppression.

Brain battery life looks better.

So yeah, they are improving the software as promised.

Edited

Congratulations, Jay!

I’m now 3 months into my period of wearing Whisper hearing aids. I have to say that the longer I wear them, the better I like them. I had my most recent visit to my audiologist just yesterday. He raised the gain in the high frequencies a bit and it really has made a positive difference in improving word recognition. Next visit is scheduled for March.

A few weeks ago, my brain went dead and had to be replaced, which meant replacing the whole set - both ear pieces as well as the brain. “It’s complicated,” I was told. My Audi had another set in stock, so there was no delay, no cost, and no questions asked.

I experimented with a different set of domes - Oticon’s open base domes. But word recognition was simply not as good with them as compared with modified Phonak power domes, which my Audi had fitted me with from the beginning. My objection to the power domes was the usual complaint that my own voice doesn’t sound normal. But with time I’m adapting.

All the best for the new year!

Bill, good to see you here. All the best to you too.

Forgot to mention that I seem to have gotten in at the end of the Brain Trust program. I received the discount because it was in effect when my trial period started, back on November 1st.

I have flexible clear silicone earmolds on my Whispers now. It’s been almost two weeks, and I’m getting used to the sound of my voice. The molds always go in the same way, and they stay put, and there’s no feedback.

My brain went dead after 2 months of use. The whole set - ear pieces as well as Brain - had to be replaced. Now the replacement has been holding a charge for only about 5 hours.

Is anyone else having a similar problem?

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