Maybe it’s a way to save some battery life by setting denoising as much as necessary to not overkill.
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I was also told there are only two mics on the infinio sphere but four holes.
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Hi @DaveUK
Thank you so much for your detailed response - I really appreciate this extra information and have now ordered some Spheres through Specsavers. I’ve been told it could be up to 2 weeks for them to arrive and am really looking forward to testing them out.
I have one more question if you don’t mind; you mentioned your Specsavers audiologist had to download KS10 (Phonak Paradise) settings onto their system to program your spheres. Will they have to do that for mine given that I’ve never had Phonak HAs before and have only ever used domes or is there anything I can let them know they will need in advance of my fitting appointment?
One thing I’ve learned that might be useful information for your own trial if you don’t already know… the Specsavers audiologist I spoke to when I placed the order told me that the 100-day trial period starts from the date the order is placed, NOT the date they are fitted. Given my 2-week waiting time from order to fitting, this significantly reduces the trial period. However, as Specsavers have a very generous 100-day trial period, it’s still far longer than the 30-day trial period I was offered at the most expensive (over £5,000) supplier and they told me at that place they charge a £50 sterilising fee for returns too!
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Is that a 100day ‘refund period’ not a trial?
Have they already taken your money?
A free trial here, means just that; you walk out the door with a set of demos on for free. Paying for something in full and then entering into the ‘refund period’ within their T+C’s is a bit of a step into legalese………
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Specsavers used to be a 90 day return/refund period, they probably increased it to cover the order time. As @DaveUK mentioned on his 3 visits he has been seen by a different person. Because Specsavers is a franchised business they will have a number of branches under the one franchise. They normally rotate staff to cover the other clinics plus home visits. Also they tend to use independent audiologists.
I have had trial/return periods with Specsavers on more than one occasion, no problem with a refund, but on the second return, politely informed there would not be a third, which I think is more than fair.
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This is a great question. Here in Ontario, Canada, the general consensus that I’ve had from audi’s is that the “trial period” requires us to pay up front for the hearing aids, and enter into an agreement that if we don’t like the hearing aids before the 30 days or what it may be is up, that we return them for a refund.
It certainly doesn’t sound like a free trial in that regard if we’re paying for the audi’s time to do the hearing test, programming, REM, and so on. It’s more like a contingency fee. The fees are contingent to you liking the product, or you get your money back. I feel like I’m diving into semantics and pragmatics, but I agree about the step into legalese.
Hi @Um_bongo
I wish I lived nearer to you! If you are able to do a completely free trial in Wales, how do you ensure customers don’t do a runner with £3K+ worth of hearing aids?
Specsavers in East Anglia, England told me I have to pay the full cost up front and then return them for a refund if I can’t get on with them. Likewise, Audiological Science said the company ‘appreciate being paid in full on fitting’ but when pushed said they would accept half payment up front and the remaining half by the end of the trial period.
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We just fit demo aids and take a full contact details. I’ve not ‘lost’ any demos in 20 years - the odd one is damaged etc.
I appreciate you saying you’d like to come here though.
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@Nenen_UK , the reason they did this for me was because at a follow-up appointment, I mentioned that I had slightly better intelligibility with the Phonak Paradise than with the Spheres. So they offered to look at the settings of the Paradise (which had been tweaked over time to my liking and were not purchased from Specsavers) and make similar changes to the Spheres. This was done and improved the intelligibility for the Spheres. This was very specific to me and not something you would need to discuss with your audiologist. The fact that they were willing to do this showed flexibility on their behalf.
I specifically asked them when the trial period would end, so there could be no costly mistakes on my side should I wish to cancel. There was some confusion over the “100 days”. The date they gave me was not 100 days from either the day of purchase or the day of fitting (it was more like 90 from date of purchase), but they did say it could be extended further if necessary. I need to clarify this on my next follow-up appointment.
Note that their website clearly states that the 100 days is from the day of fitting. See Hearing aid aftercare | Specsavers UK. Although they do make a mistake with the number of asterisks, the meaning is clear.
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You and Zebras are probably right. The following Applied Hearing Solutions YouTube video shows one of Dr. Cliff’s audi associates putting a cleaning brush through one microphone port to the other on a Paradise HA body (probably not recommended!): https://youtu.be/xBt0mY-dGRA?t=141
As to why I think (and find) the Infinio line is better than the Lumitys, the reasons are given in the Welcome to the New Era Audiology Online course by Aly Hoffman that I mention in the following post: https://forum.hearingtracker.com/t/my-phonak-sphere-infinio-i90-vs-lumity-l90-shootout/92545/416?u=jim_lewis
If you register for free and sign up for the course, you’ll be able to access the course transcript and slides. I’ll quote them and tell you where to find the quotes and slides I show here.
First, the Infinio line is better than the Lumity’s because it has the far more powerful New Era chip for basic audio processing (the separate DeepSonic chip does the Spheric noise reduction).
Slide 24
From page 7 of transcript:
Next up, I want to talk connectivity, but we need to introduce our new powerful Phonak era chip. And this is really the foundation of all Infinio hearing aids. And it is the foundation of how we have really taken connectivity and wireless communications to the next level with our hearing aids. So the error chip is powered by 552 million operations per second and 75% more ram for faster processing as compared to lumity. So era is going to improve connectivity even further. Era is also the home to our digital sound processing and improved power management
The New Era chip is considerably more powerful than what’s in the Lumity so just in ordinary listening situations, you’re going to get better, more responsive sound processing.
From page 7 & 8 on connectivity:
Era is also the home to our digital sound processing and improved power management. So we are going to be able to provide additional processing while maintaining or improving battery life. We have a new patented antenna design which is going to take connection stability and efficiency to the next level. And thanks to a six times higher transmission power as compared to lumity, the air chip enables a more stable Bluetooth connection, provides uninterrupted hands free calls and streams to up to two times the distance Page 8 Auracast, BT LE Audio updatable
BT connectivity has more powerful transmission, longer range, more stable, updatable to Auracast and BT LE Audio.
From page 18, New Era chip is responsible for much improved battery life of Infinio line vs Lumitys
With the air chip, your patients are going to have that full day of use. We continue to say that 24 hours with just standard listening alone with your quote unquote average pretty heavy stream time, they’re still going to get about 616 hours a day. I’m very excited to announce that the cross has an improved battery life due to that error chip. So just like your hearing aid, you’d anticipate about 16 hours. The cross will get that as well.
Edit_Update: I’ve recreated below the part lost from my initial post
The ERA chip gives the Infinio line its improved battery runtime. Elsewhere in the transcript, Hoffman says the battery in the Sphere Infinio line is “slightly larger” than in the non-Sphere Infinio IR line, implying the non-Sphere line should also have better runtimes than the Lumitys.
From Page 4 Users Find the APD 3.0 sound of Infinio Significantly Better Than APD 2.0 of Lumitys
And the graph here is showing the targets for APD 3.0 and how they differ from 2.0 for the acoustic signal. We can see that we didn’t need to adjust APD very dramatically, but the changes have made a big impact. So depending on what the acoustics or the coupling of the fitting is, will basically determine whether or not how big the offset is going to be.
Slide 12
Slide 13
Infinio users find increased comfort while maintaining speech clarity, noise is less intrusive, and the overall sound is preferred relative to APD 2.0 (used in the Lumitys). If you combine the black no difference bars with the green for each test, the number of users who find the Infinio sound equal to or better than the APD 2.0 sound is really much larger than the number who prefer 2.0 over 3.0.
Perhaps Lumity users who don’t like the Sphere sound have gotten so accustomed to the APD 2.0 sound that they get put off by the change to APD 3.0 – or maybe because of the sound profile differences, the exact fit that works well for the Lumity doesn’t work as well for Infinios. For example, I liked the default Speech Enhancer setting of the Lumitys. I cranked up the Sphere’s default setting from 14 (moderate) to 16 (stronger moderate) and have no problems with Sphere Speech Enhancement compared to the Lumitys I trialed. I did think the default Infinio setting wasn’t strong enough.
The Infinio line also has AutoSense 6.0 instead of AutoSense 5.0 in the Lumitys. From Hoffman’s New Era course, it’s hard to tell exactly what difference AutoSense 6.0 makes except for factoring Spheric noise reduction into AutoSense automatic programs. However, since AutoSense 6.0 is powered by the much more powerful New Era chip in the Infinio line, it should be smoother and more responsive than AutoSense 5.0 in the Lumity line. When I trialed the Lumitys, I felt AutoSense caused noticeably abrupt, sharp environmental sound changes. The same changes occur in my Sphere. They’re just smoother and less noticeable to me, at least.
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That’s awesome! Just curious when you say you could hear them, did you mean you could understand what they were saying?
and thanks for the updates, it’s really helpful
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This makes more sense to me.
Short answer on speech comprehension is YES. I think one of the oddest things about the Spheric AI noise reduction program is that when it is activated in a very noisy environment, everything sounds kinda weird. Background sounds are weird. Sounds can often oscillate back and forth between your right/left ear. Sounds suddenly get louder and then softer again. That being said, any voices in your immediate vicinity kinda stand out from the weird background sounds and you can not only hear the voices, you can understand them too. It’s hard to describe what it’s like until you actually try it.
Bear in mind that this my own personal experience and some people haven’t reported the same level of benefit. It could be that different setups, fittings and hearing losses benefit more than others.
Jordan
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The Starkey Edge AI
does a similar thing.
Guess it had to do with the noise suppression.
Discovered one drawback of switching from ReSound Omnias to Phonak Spheres. I had set many of my iPhone apps to announce notifications in my Omnias. For example, the text of short Messages (text messages) will be read to me. With the Spheres, no notifications from any app are announced. I just get some sort of tone in my hear with no speech from my iPhone. Bummer! Google Gemini says the iPhone Announce Notifications feature depends on MFi technology. So, maybe if Apple ever switches to BT LE Audio and the Spheres get it, I’ll be able to hear notifications from the apps of my choice spoken to me. For example, I have a Meross garage door opener (a Wi-Fi IoT device). If my garage door remains open longer than a preset limit, I get an announcement read to me that my garage door is still open (or if someone opens it while I’m away from home, etc). Not anymore with the Spheres.
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Actually, it’s not MFI, but Siri that contains the implementation. I had the same issue when I switched from the Oticon Intent on my iPhone (now a Samsung).
Thankfully, an app exists called Voice Notify (website, or download via Google Play Store) that implements the same but via Bluetooth. It’s extremely configurable, and uses the Google Assistant TTS from your phone. On Samsung phones you might need to disable battery optimizations for it, since it will be killed otherwise.
I’ve been very happy with it over the last couple months and with time, you’ll configure it exactly to your likings. When I post my own review of the Phonak Infinio Sphere I90, I’ll make sure to include my Voice Notify configuration, for those who want it.
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It seems Apple already has support for LEA (LE Audio) and has updated MFI to run over LEA in supported devices. This might explain why suddenly some hearing aids support bidirectional streaming in Macs with BT 5.3.
Even if Phonak supports LEA, I don’t think they will get the same detailed notifications on iPhones as your ReSounds. Unless they also adopt MFI.
For some reason, Apple isn’t advertising LEA support, but if you have a Mac with BT 5.3 running Sonoma or Sequoia, you can verify it by going to Settings-Bluetooth. Then click on the Bluetooth icon while holding the Option key.
What if they background sound happens to be music? For example at a party or concert?
How natural do both sounds sound?
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@gsl, here is the answer:
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Sorry @JordanK but in all this wandering around the world, have you never come across a cinema along your way? 
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