Posted by David at 04:09 PM on Apr 19, 2007 in BLUETOOTH DEVICES, HEARING AIDS, INDUSTRY NEWS, NEW PRODUCTS, TECHNOLOGY
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Okay everyone! I am now a hearing loss rookie and, of course the Epoq sounds great. I have my first "try it on appointment" next week. I'm seeing a lot of, "this is great for my cell phone" but, what about the "hearing" part? My hearing loss appears to be high frequency.
If you want a Bluetooth in your hearing aid and don’t want to spend money on new hearing aids. Try artone Bluetooth loopset from www.artonecs.com. It works with all Bluetooth available equipment and all hearing aids equipped with t-coil option. It does not effect your hearing aid battery and does not have a separate remote control like the streamer… just a necklace looking accessory. the big advantage is that you can use it with any hearing aid that has normal induction receiver – t-coil. So you can change the hearing aid and still use the Bluetooth loopset instead of spending money on a one braded product.
-And the cost is much much more affordable
I have been wearing the epoq BTE for 2.5 months and am very happy with the performance. I am able to localize sound and hear conversation in noisy situations. This is a first for me having worn 2 other sets of aids these are by far the best. The streamer has its limitations but using the cell phone is my preferred phone now. The battery lasts for about 5 hrs so when using my laptop I use the supplied cable to connect to a USB port to charge. I was having problems with the aids when sweating so I now I use a product from eargear to cover the aids and so far they work great.
I've been wearing Epoq for 2 days now; hardly a full workout I know. But I'll give a couple of early impressions.
First, the sound quality is *much* better than my prior aids, AmericaHears BTE Freedom. I'm understanding conversations I would have given up on in the past. The angels sing and the heavens part! So I'm *very* happy with this.
The Streamer is nice, and it is working well with my cellphone. I just couldn't use a cellphone before, so this is another breakthrough for me; I dig it quite a lot!
But I wish the Streamer were smarter. I'd like to 'pair' it with regular (non-cellular) cordless phones via the 2.5mm plug built into the Streamer for music listening. But my tests so far seem to indicate that this doesn't work; the Streamer's microphone isn't in the loop at this point. Bummer. I"m still able to use my CLA-7 neckloop and the tcoil setting on the Epoqs, so this is not a total loss; but I had hoped to only need one gadget (the Streamer) to get through the day.
All in all: I love the Epoq system. But I hope they redesign the Streamer to add a bit more functionality in the future.
i recently experienced the oticon epoq system and had mixed feelings about it. i have a moderate to several hearing loss(about 70%) bilaterally. i have used a variety of aids over the years from companies like starkey, sonic innovations, oticon, siemens, etc. before the epoq i was wearing a pair of oticon basic digital aids. nothing fancy.
i wore the epoq for several weeks with the aids having three settings.. standard sound, noise, % t-coil.
i paired the streamer with an iphone and had fairly good success with it.. it easiley made outgoing calls but, didn't alway pick up the incoming calls. bsttery life on the streamer was fair i guess with charging required daily.
my first visit back to my audiologist saw some changed to the epoq. the buttom now has standard sound, t-coil, and mute. i use mute so i don't have to open the battery door at night and risk losing the battery which happened to me several times.
my audiologist had trouble getting the aids to sync up volume left and right and to go to the preferred level. i also had the beeps and turn on sounds turned down to low so only i could it them not anyone around me.
on the streamer i asked my audiologist to find out how to reduce the length of the loop as it is rather long and annoying at the factory lenght.
if you have any questions about my experiences so far please don't hesitate to email me.
joe
The echo you heard in the Delta is because of the feedback system. It can sometimes interpret whistling sounds as feedback and tries to cancel it. Epoq deals with this problem by working binaurally. If the sound can be heard in both hearing aids it cannot be feedback and the hearing aids will not try to cancel it.
Inquiry: If anybody knows enough about Oticon Epoqs, Bluetooth compatability, or Motorola Q phone issues to offer a suggestion, please let me know ???!!!???
Explanation: I recently took 'the plunge' and decided at 37 years of age that I was missing way too much both in conversations, business, and little things that normal hearing acuity brings.
Not having ever used simpler and older technonology hearing aids and have no basis/experience in which to gauge, I first tried the Oticon Delta and found them to be comfortable and improved my hearing immensely. But, I held out for a couple of weeks and opted for the Oticon Epoq's because I stay on the road constantly and my ONLY work phone is a wireless Cell Phone... not a land-line/stationary phone you would find in an office. So, having the benefit of using my Blue-Toothed enabled cell phone without having to worry or fuss over an additional ear piece was a HUGE benefit to me.
I actually like/prefer the sound quality of the Epoq better than the Delta and notice less feedback if you put a wide brim hat on or cup your hands around the ear (not much of a scientific test but seems to be a huge improvement). Also, with the Deltas certain loud noises (generally higher pitched--like the buzz of my Toyotas seat-belt warning) would cause the Delta's to produce some kind of echo or ring... not sure if this was just a programming issue or if the two devices' chips are different enough or the binaural circuitry eliminates this echo or ring I previously encountered.
Only real problem so far (and hoping someone might have an answer)... my work phone is a Motorola Q and I canNOT keep it paired with my Epoqs/Streamer! But, I have similar issues with this phone with two other bluetooth Jabra and Plantronics headsets... but they do not disconnect as frequently. The good note here is every other bluetooth device I have tried with the Epoqs (mainly my wife's Blackberry) have worked FLAWLESSLY and have NOT lost connection. One other minor note is that the normal Car Stereo speakers or even standard headsets sound MUCH better than listening to music only through BlueTooth and the Epoqs directly in the ear... not sure if this is a BlueTooth thing or just the limitations of smaller speakers in an ultra-small hearing aid.
The info from Oticon is full of superlatives ... but it seems that the Epoq does NOT use the inter-aid radio link to create a "synthetic aperture array" high precision directional microphone. In other words this is NOT a "paradigm shift" product.
The data link may be faster than that used in the Siemens products ... but it is still seems to be sending ONLY control data such as compression ratios between the aids .. and NO live speech data to make the two aids work as a single seamless audio processor.
The Oticon Streamer does automatic program switching in the hearing instruments so the only complexity is related to setting up the Bluetooth like in all other Bluetooth headsets.
You can also listen to audio wirelessly at 10 KHz audio bandwidth.
A Bluetooth hearing instrument would be cool but it will always be bigger and more power-consuming than a non-Bluetooth hearing instrument.
Martin
Oticon’s latest new technology is whiz bang, integrating a Bluetooth receiver inside its new
First, you need another device – a “Streamer” – to use the Bluetooth receiver. The Streamer synchs with your Bluetooth-enabled phone and transmits to the integrated circuitry in the hearing aids. That means another device to carry around and keep track of, in addition to the set-up and operational complexity which can be a hurdle for some users. The extra Streamer device may be necessary because it solves at least one problem: Bluetooth is a power hog and would lay waste to normal hearing-aid batteries without an external power source. But it is still a step away from mobile phone nirvana.
