Wow, it is shockingly low price. 
Yes, but no real service at your place
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FYI Audio Sphere costing
Received an estimate for a pair from my audi approx NZD10000
(USD6300).
Euan
That’s mental!! You’d have to be a bit crazy to pay it, no HAs are worth that!
@JordanK, thank you for your ongoing review. It’s been very helpful.
If I may make a suggestion:Try leaving the Spheres in the spheric mode all day for a day.
Bring your old HAs with you for when the Spheres run out of battery life. See how long the Spheres last while in constant spheric mode. Go about your day being in quiet and loud environments, and see how you like being in spheric mode all day. If battery life were no issue would you prefer to stay in spheric mode all the time in all listening situations?
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I support this. I would just like to point out that it should be clear what power of this program has been established.
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Its crazy how, in some places, people have to pay multiples of other place’s prices for HAs. But then, just look at how prices of medicines in USA are many multiples of the prices charged in other countries.
If one needs HAs just to get by in your daily life, you’ll pay what you have to, in order to just get on. Sadly, there’s nothing fair about it…
I did the math. My wife and I could fly to Paris CDG and stay in a decent but basic room for 2 nights for the same price as buying them here. And that was even factoring in the $1K rebate from the Ontario gov’t. But food, museum tickets and any future fittings or warranty work on the HAs would be on me. 
First of all…you really don’t want to use the Sphere AI program for anything other than noisy environments. The reason is that speech sounds very clear but background sounds are a bit wonky. It’s hard to describe what it sounds like without trying these hearing aids. Works great in noise because you are trying to ignore the noise. In other situations, you want background sounds. That being said, I haven’t tried leaving the Sphere program on continuously until the battery runs out but I would estimate the battery would last 6-7 hours.
Jordan
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Processing, compression or directional artefacts.
I can see that when you chop up the sound-field like that how it’s not optimised to sound natural. Or as one of my clients put it: Hearing via Committee.
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That’s it exactly. Weird thing is that voices sound extremely crisp but backgrounds sounds are weird. What also makes it strange is that the microphones are full wide so you hear front and back at the same time but you get weird oscillation of background sounds from left to right depending on how loud the background sounds are on each side. That being said, you get used to it really quickly because you are so excited to be able to hear the speech that your brain tunes out the wonkiness of the background sounds. It really works well.
Jordan
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This “you really don’t want to use the Sphere AI program for anything other than noisy environments” is a very important point to fully understand.
Phonak appears to have launched the Infinio range as part of its step-wise generational evolution strategy that attempts to improve functionality over previous generations, much as Lumity evolved from Paradise and Paradise evolved from Marvel. Step- wise improvements (hopefully) to further enhance HA capability. It must be assumed therefore that the Infinio range has made some marginal improvements within itself, including in the area of managing speech in noise.
However, on top of those evolutionary changes, Phonak has developed an additional AI-powered engine that hugely advances the manner in which speech in noise is dealt with and they have had to off-load THESE advances onto a seperate chip, to process sounds ON TOP OF the processes used by Infinio. Its like a seperate computer that is re–processing Infinio’s already improved outputs to RADICALLY improve the sounds presented at the eardrum. That seperate computer is the Sphere, that is linked into the Infinio and kicked into action as required. It has been designed for the speech/noise processing alone- to have it online all the time doesnt make sense.
In future generations, the capabilities of Sphere will be integrated into the base unit as further device down-sizing is facilitated by advances in technology, in the same way as microprocessors have been becoming more integrated and more capable ever since their first iterations.
So, Sphere is Speech in Noise processing on steroids located within an albeit fatter Infinio housing. Apart from that steroid-assisted processing, Infinio itself must be a step- change better than Lumity- otherwise, why would anyone buy it. By corollary, if the wearer seldom or never has occasion to NEED advanced speech in noise processing, why would a person add the cost of Sphere to an already powerful device?
Just my two cents, and an attempt on my part to clarify my own thinking as to where Sphere is positioned and where/how it should be used.
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Do you mean both stay in Paris for two nights AND get some Spheres in France? Because if so that sounds like a cheap stay and I need your help vacation planning.
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I can beat this. A local provider quoted me $8300 for the Sphere I90 in the US.
Was that the I90 without Sphere?
Someone’s got a beachfront property in Hawaii…
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It’s the Sphere I90. Same audi quoted me $7900 for the Oticon Intent 1.
Wow. Am about to get my new aids in January/February and these prices are creeping me out. I have the OPN S1 since 4 years and while my hearing didn’t go bad, I feel it’s getting weaker and not the same OPN as before !
IMHO, We are being overpaid & sometimes I feel we are being punished to have hearing loss.
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This is how I see Autosense, and Phonak’s desire to use SoundRecover2 as a tool to control feedback, rather than to give you accurate pitch.
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Yes- price differentials globally are just insane. Along with fairly generous reimbursement here in Switzerland, just hopping a few kms across the border into France gets me HAs almost for free. Given the lousy situation in most other places it is no mystery why so few hearing-impaired people actually get to be equipped with HAs (see below)…
The situation is only partly comparable with medicines, where Pharma often has a (temporary) monopoly and development costs and risks for failure at any stage are huge, but, yes, enormous price differences there, too. The argument that, well, “rich countries subsidize R&D for the rest of the world” sounds decent until you happen to be a poor person in the US…
The observation that the Sphere is being sold at comparable prices as other top models suggests that development costs and monopolies (AI, for now) play minor roles in its price setting.
" The results show that globally 401.4 million people have moderate to severe hearing loss and would benefit from use of hearing aids. Eighty-three percent of them do not use hearing aids"
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