Since Spheric Speech in Loud Noise is the main attraction of Phonak Audeo Sphere Infinio hearing aids, I thought it might be helpful and entertaining to have a thread on what it takes to trigger DNN DeepSonic chip speech procressing and how it works versus setting up Spheric Speech processing as a manual program.
Several users trialing Spheres have complained that DNN processing won’t come on for them (or maybe they think it has but doesn’t work any better than standard HA techniques for improving speech in noise). For example, there is this thread: Returning Phonak Infinio Sphere I90s.
I’ve only had my Spheres a few days. I’ve been too lazy to go out to a noisy bar or restaurant, and I have not yet found or created a home environment where my Spheric noise reduction comes on automatically even when I set the noise threshold in Target AutoSense settings to only MODERATE for an automatic turn-on. I was surprised to find, though, that if you create either a manual linked or unlinked copy of Spheric Speech in Loud Noise outside of AutoSense, there is NO THRESHOLD. When you launch that program, Spheric noise reduction gets turned on and works quite well: Returning Phonak Infinio Sphere I90s - #24 by jim_lewis.
So, I invite anyone to post their tips and tricks for testing and configuring Spheric speech noise reduction in this thread. Maybe @Michael_Phonak could give us Phonak’s recipe for testing Spheric noise reduction at home. In the following post, I provide what seems to be an excellent recipe by ChatGPT for home testing (it errs in stating you can test the automatic turn-on via a manual program copy).
Here is ChatGPT’s suggested home recipe for testing the threshold for automatically turning on Spheric Speech in Loud Noise as a switch out of whatever AutoSense program you’re running in (Note: your HCP has to have setup Spheric Speech as an allowed automatic switch in AutoSense for your Spheres and you have to be within any allowed daily time limit for Spheric processing use, if your HCP has set that option, too). ChatGPT’s advice errs in that there is NO THRESHOLD for turning on Spheric Speech via a manual program. As soon as you switch to an independent manual copy of the program outside of AutoSense, Spheric Noise Reduction will be turned on no matter what the noise level of your environment.
One easy way I found to set up my noisy environments program, was to take my laptop and Noahlink wireless to my local mall, sitting down in the outdoor cafe bar and making adjustments on the fly, the same for our local community bar which has quite different acoustics.
Party or dinner at a friend place with lots of people
Coffee shop
You basically want lots of noise and lots of people chatting. Watch out for places with music as the Music program will often override the Sphere program.
@jim_lewis thanks for the trust but as stated in other threads I would never ever comment on topics that should be under the control of the hearing care specialists. Whether, when and how to use DNN mode depends on many factors.
Clear is, you can be in control if you want, by having DNN as a manual program.