With the greatest of respect here: you have a pretty severe ‘Flat’ loss and fully occluded moulds. This means your unaided Articulation Index would be 0%; ie you basically hear negligible speech without amplification. Also I suspect that you would have limited tensor tympani and stapaedic reflexes. Plus you won’t experience occlusion.
This puts you in a position where amplification (particularly when the speech is ‘pulled out’ by AI) results in huge gains in understanding across the board. Which is superb, I’m really made up to see the technology has reached a level that a pretty debilitating loss of this extent can be ‘fixed’.
Even your own voice is going to sound great through the Spheres.
However if I was to put a near field mic under the nose of the person and give you a set of normal (closed) headphones with a volume control, I’d bet that we could produce a similar result with a little compression.
Sloping losses and open fits present greater difficulty as the mix of speech and noise varies by situation, presentation of one’s own voice vs other speakers in background noise represents massive intensity changes. Across a sloping audiogram we can see a 1000x change in sound pressure intensity. So the difficulty is multiplied as you start having to trade off clarity while stopping occlusion. That’s before you consider the other aspects of cochlear degradation.
Put simply; it’s pretty ‘easy’ to play a tune on a piano with two 32 Oz hammers, it’s a little harder to do it with one 5lb hammer and your little finger and achieve the same sort of sound quality.
That said: the Spheres are definitely a leap forward in providing a solution for severe losses by improving speech in real noise environments.
Your loss in the right ear is a conventionally sloping loss with a big cookie-bite.
So. An entirely different proposition for fitting, occlusion and expectation. That’s before we consider the effect of listening through different modes on each side in addition to the loss of stereo due to different processing latencies.
At the very least I’d expect you to have a normal-ish response to low loud sounds.
I would find it incredibly useful for those reporting no significant benefits from the Sphere I90 how many received custom domes along with the HA’s? From all the reviews and reports it appears that without custom domes, which are important to block out sounds not being reduced by the AI chip, the results are not the best! For me, the combination of the I90 HA, along with custom domes, has been nothing short of amazing and even life altering! Please identify yourself if you’ve received the I90’s along with custom domes and still find no appreciable hearing gain. Thx!
I currently have vented domes i.e. domes with little holes around them. As you can see, I’m not very tecchie! Before I had these, they were changed to closed domes which didn’t help. Yes, I also have the Sphere I90.
My opinion, for what it’s worth, would be to have impressions made and order custom inserts. It’s not a huge expense (mine were $200 for both), but it’s worth the risk if you’re not experiencing the phenomenal results that most Spheric I90 patients have reported.
I’ll try the deep-placed (at least partially on the bony part of ear canal) cShell with P receiver and pressure vent.
Power domes are troublesome for me when putting them on - I constantly have to gently correct them after they are inserted in the ear to get better sound quality and no feedback. In that respect, the cShell is more stable and reliable.
I have no problem with the occlusion effect; if the acoustic coupling is placed deep enough, my own voice sounds normal, and chewing nuts becomes quite manageable.
As DIYer, I assume that because of less REOG/R with pressure vent cShell, my adjustment should be in less low frequency gain and more mid- and high frequency gain compared to power domes?
I wonder whether there will ever be an option to slightly extend the delay in sound processors and/or in HAs.
Vented domes are quite open-ish. Spheres are definitely worth to try more closed acoustic coupling, especially deep placed earmolds/cShells to avoid occlusion effect with smaller vents.
That’s a good suggestion and $200 sounds very reasonable. I’m in the UK so not sure what that would be. Incidentally, I noticed about an hour ago when I was talking to someone, that the sound dropped from my aids, sounding as if they needed re-charging. Another thing to add to the list for my audiologist.
It’s much patience, time, and consistent over 10h/day using of hearing aid, especially if you have been fitted with 100% prescription gain. It’s take even a few months and requires properly occluded acoustic coupling.
It may be facilitate by being fitted with 80% target gains, then, after 2-4 weeks 90% target, etc.
I’ve been a lurker and have learned from reading other’s posts. I’ve worn HAs for about 30 years, always purchased from Costco. The last ones were Phonak Brio 5s and now they tell me that nothing they handle will do any better for my hearing. So it became time to research and everything I read pointed me to the Phonak Audeo Sphere. So I orderd a pair and at the same time ordered Noahlink Wireless 2 and found Target online since there is no local audiologist to tune the aids for me. My word recognition is 48 right and 24 left and is my biggest problem. The spheres have really made conversations easier in the first few days but I have lots to learn about the Target software for the fine tuning I want to do. I had requested the power receivers but I received the "M"s instead. I’m not sure how much difference that would make but I’ve found additional power helps with clarity. I realize molds would help more but at the present time I’m using power domes. I’ll have find someone locally that will take care of molds for me later. I appreciate all the information and tips from others. Thank you all!
Hi there, that’s a very challenging audiogram, you most definitely need to go Power receiver with custom molds, as your doing DIY with the power domes you’ll be able to program for at least some usable gain, soundrecover is gonna be helpful for you as well, as your very experienced with HAs you’ll be able to punch ahead with the gain required, yeah don’t be shy! How’s the feedback thresholds on your set up I wonder.
Thanks for the response. I don’t remember the feedback threshold (at 84 my memory isn’t great) but I’ll check next time I’m in Target. Appreciate your thoughts on the Power receiver also. I’m hoping a switch is possible but with mail order, one never knows until asked.
You should be able to use Audiogram direct (or whatever Phonak call it) to better judge the low-frequency performance of the aid. As long as you’ve correctly established which tips/venting is/are used. And run the feedback manager too. The modification to will likely show worse thresholds in the LF for you if you have big canals or more venting. Accept the new levels with the canal compensation (even if it doesn’t look like your ‘normal’ audiogram) then let Target do its thing with NAL and you’ll optimise the fitting.
It’s not REM, but at least there’s a degree of modification based on the IG of your fitting.