So, not directed at any 1 person on the forum or hearing aid reviews in general, but my goodness me, we really need to get a grip on our expectations regarding the Infinio in Spheric mode and battery life. Perhaps my expectations were set because of the field I used to work in, so hopefully this helps people a little.
For context, I want to talk about something I was doing about 23 years ago on a computer. Back then, I was a sound designer. I used a program called Soundforge. You can still buy it today.
It came with the 1st iteration of the Sony noise reduction plugin.
this bit of software would allow you to take a file, an old tape recording for example and then send the plugin a tiny sampel of that recording. a tiny snippet of hiss. You could then get the program to remove that hiss and leave the recording virtually clean and intact.
That operation would just take 1 little snippet and the snippet had to be a fairly constant sound to work properly. If it fluctuated, if it had different noises in the snippet, it just wouldn’t work.
Also, it would take anything from 1 minute and upwards to remove the noise from a file on a fairly fast computer for the time.
Now let’s consider a few things about the Phonak Spheres.
- They are identifying speech out of a ton of background noise and fluctuating patterns of sound. Not just 1 snippet of speech, not just one voice. They are processing millions of different sound types and frequencies to do this.
- They are leaving the speech fairly, not completely, but fairly clean and ripping away the background noise in the process. That’s basically the reverse of what Soundforge was doing, so much much more complex.
- They are taking input from multiple directions and multiple voices all at once. That is to say, they have multiple instances of this sound processing happening at the same time. This can be proven quite simply if you engage Spheric mode within a group of people you’re talking to, within a crouded noisy place, you can hear multiple voices. So the processing isn’t linniar, it’s adaptive depending upon what the AI is picking up.
- It does all this virtually real-time. Let’s pause for a second on that point. Everythihng I’ve described above, all those millions of calculations per second, it’s doing that with almost no delay. You walk in a room, you engage Spheric mode, HA’s start processing.
- Remember that fast old PC I was talking about? guess what? something far more powerful is now on the side of your head. Something probably no bigger than a fingertip if you squished it out to match the size of the hearing aid. I say something, it’s actually one on each side of your head. Those tiny things are running all the above with a battery and microphones and blutooth and 2 buttons and a motion sensor in them and they’re also talking to each other to make sure the correct processing is happening on the correct ear. 7 hours? we’re lucky to get 7 friggin minutes.
OH and by the way, the parameters for Spheric are adjustable. The diameter of the sphere, the level of noise reduction. So you have a really good amount of control as to what comes into that Spheric bubble if you play around with the app. Is it perfect? heck no. It doesn’t know that you don’t want to pick up the annoying kid behind you that just happens to be in the bubbles range. What it is though is a very very good start.
Now I know people will come back and say Starkey Edge, Oticon intent do the same thing. They really don’t. They do something similar, but nothing but nothing in my humble opinion rips away that background noise like the Spherics do. Whether you like what the Spherics do, whether you like the sound that’s a very different matter. I would personally never turn that mode on unless I was sitting down in a very safe space, because taking that much environment away is dangerous for me with no eyesight.
However that’s not really the point of the post. My point is just to say that before we go bashing the Spheric battery life, remember 2 things:
Firstly, They do all that I put above, in a package that you can curl a single small finger around and they do it in real time.
Secondly, Spheric mode is not meant for all the time use. If you’re in a party for more than 7H then yes, I can see you might have a problem. Otherwise however, the battery on these things is insane and I think more than enough to get you through a decent day with moderate Spheric use. If you have to use Spheric all the time, a different solution is probably needed. If you don’t want Spheric, well either a regular Infinio will do the job, or, just don’t turn on Spheric mode and you have a huge friggin infinio battery. I used mine for 18H a few weeks ago and ended on 70% battery.
Right now, Spheric is the worst it’s ever going to be. The next iteration will be better and better so on and so on. Also, the competition is going to be very very serious for the next round of HA’s. Battery life is going to get better for sure as processors get smaller and more efficient.
Exciting times ahead.
I’ve no idea how the Starkey NN responds, I never used it in Edge mode, but definitely worth checking out. I’ve heard people say both worse and better than the Spheres. I don’t personally use either at the moment. Also from what I recall, the Starkey has a better IP rating over the Intent which may make it more useful for off-grid trips.