I was also one of the first people in Germany to receive the Sphere hearing aids. I am profoundly hard of hearing, bordering on deafness. Without hearing aids, I hear nothing. According to the doctors, I am actually a candidate for a cochlear implant (CI).
I have tested the Sphere devices in restaurants, at family gatherings, and in daily life. These devices have truly enriched my life. The only criticism I have is about the charging case—it should be larger to accommodate the earmolds.
I also want to mention that I have a very good audiologist who has a lot of patience with me. My earmolds are custom-made from titanium and sit deep in my ear canal, which ensures that very little speech is lost.
You have written some great reports in this forum, and I want to thank you for that. I hope I haven’t made too many mistakes in my text—my English is terrible.
You’re from Oldenburg - a city where the Oldenburg Test was developed and is used worldwide. So it’s quite possible that there is good audiological care available:
I’ve just received my Sphere and am waiting for my first deep placed titanium earmold with pressure vent. I’ll see what improvement I get over the power double domes.
I peeked at your audiogram, your loss is similar to mine. Have you always been a user of DSL v5.0? I tried it, and initially I thought it worked pretty good, after awhile I thought it was a bit harsh (children yelling had me on edge).
I went back to Adaptive Phonak Digital, in the Global Tuning tab I set the Gain Level to 105% so that all programs would be increased.
Perhaps I need to try DSL v5.0 but set the Gain Level to 90 or 95%
I have Lumity 90s, seriously considering Sphere Infinity 90s
Wow, quite a decently conducted audiogram! Not only were uncomfortable levels measured, but also 125, 750, 1500, 3000 and 6000 Hz, which I have rarely seen before in tests. And I’m surprised they didn’t check 8000 Hz.
If I interpret speech audiogram correctly, you have WRS 100% bilaterally at 115 dB, so I am not surprised that you still could obtain benefits from HA. So why are you candidate to CI?
today I began testing the Spheres. I have 14 days for the test. I’m rereading your “shootout” and have questions so I hope you don’t mind. As I read, questions pop up and I’ll ask as I read if that’s ok. I decided to try the Spheres even though no coil because your reviews made me what to test these. So question is now you wrote “engage the new Sphere AI noise reduction” == is this something automatic or is it something I have to turn on?
The Sphere program will automatically turn on when noise goes beyond a certain threshold (i.e. 70 db). You will know it turned on because voices become sharp and the background noise drops off and sounds a bit weird.
Your audiologist can also setup a separate manual program in the app to allow you to manually activate the Sphere program.
If you are not sure if the Sphere program is activated in the automatic program, open the app and go to the first tab (Home). You should see that you are in the Automatic program. At the bottom, press the “Adjust program” button. At the top of the next screen it will show you what program AutoSense is in right now. If you are in the Sphere AI program and you don’t have a manual Sphere AI program, you will notice that there is a “Save as new” button on the bottom of the screen that will let you create and save your own Sphere AI program.
I’m looking at scren after pressing “Adjust program” button. At the top of this screen I see “Adjust Calm situation (Automatic)”. Does that mean “Calm situation” is the Autosense program I’m in?
I will ask the audi to do the separate manual program, but I mentioned it to her and she said she’s not able to do that. I’ll ask again.
Correct! AutoSense is now in the “Calm situation” program. You can now click the button at the bottom that says “Save as new” and this will create a manual “Calm situation” program for you…which you can also fiddle with and make adjustments.
We were at a semi-quite restaurant last night with another couple. Sphere’s were not good; about as good a my own K10s. Tried adjusting them, but it was useless. The other nite we were with some other friends (8 people). These not good there either. Same as with my own K10s. Any suggestions? Really disappointing because the days before the restaurants, things were going really well.
Unfortunately, the youngest employee at the place where I had my ear impressions made made a mistake and told me they could program my Phonak hearing aids if I bought them elsewhere. It turns out they don’t have Target software.
I’ll temporary go DIY route. There will be pressure vent and deeply placed so maybe larger probability of less dicrepancy compared to REM-based fitting.
