Phonak Audéo Sphere

[Neville]

@Bimodal_user

Where you get this screen? And where can I find the information such as: fitting range, tier comparison and datasheet of Audeos and nee receivers?

I pulled out out of the fitting software. Tier comparisons and fitting ranges are going to be pretty identical to the lumity with the exception that if you get the sphere model you have access to the AI program.

@CombatWombat

What do you mean? If I tried to use it for longer than 3 hours, would it tell me I’d exceeded my allotted time for today, like parental controls on a tv?

Presumably it will just flip out of the AI program and back into the regular speech in noise program unless your clinician has turned off the limit, or if they have it will just continue in the AI program and give you a low battery beep earlier in the day.

@PCamp

I was about to get the Audeo Lumity RIC 90 but held off after I heard on this forum something new was coming out. I probably wouldn’t go for the Sphere model but was curious about whether the new Audeo R Infinio 90 would be worthwhile over the Lumity since the technology is 2 years newer.

I wouldn’t upgrade from the lumity if you already had it unless you were going to the sphere. If you don’t have the lumity already and are just holding off on upgrading, then getting to infinio over the lumity would probably be a cost comparison. There ARE improvements with the infinio, so unless you can get an extra good deal on the lumity I’d probably lean towards the infinio. I’m just expecting it to be a much more modest improvement than if one was getting the sphere. Along the lines of Marvel to Paradise, or Paradise to Lumity.

[user246]

if your hearing loss is in the severe to profound range probably you have dead cells
in the high region. Therefore, there is no point in having that extra bandwidth.

Lower the bandwidth less chance of feedback

[WhiteHat]

Does it show up in the new Target version?

WH

[Euang]

Re LE Audio and classic bluetooth etc.
I am no expert so some of (or most) what I say may not be particularly accurate, but here is my bobs’s (or 2cents in American) worth.

I welcome the inclusion of LE audio in the new Phonak aid. Bluetooth classic can stream both data and speech/music. BT LE could only stream data but some technical changes in BT5.2 and the inclusion of the LC3 codec (LE Audio) has allowed the streaming of speech & music. Auracast is a basically a commercial broadcast app to stream to the Bt LE LC3 codec.

It will help battery life and quality in streaming speech/music to any phone or device with BT 5.2 and above “where the manufacturer has included the correct codecs”. My own phone has BT 5.2 but seemingly, not the correct codecs. This means that most PCs and phones etc over a year or so old will still require BT classical or a commercial codec to stream and therefore BT classical will not disappear for some years and battery drain will remain highish on BT classical. Where all the correct elements exist (BT5.2 & codecs), streaming quality will improve and battery drain reduce.

With the new aids we have both classic and LE audio so if your phone is new expect better battery life but Phonak perhaps cannot make a claim like “If you have a new Samsung S24 you will have good battery life, the rest of you can suffer on”. As a rider, I live in a retirement village where at least half the men wear hearing aids. Very few have cell phones newer than 3 years (and most of those would be Iphones)

Sorry to be so wordy
Euan

[raylock1]

@user246

if your hearing loss is in the severe to profound range probably you have dead cells
in the high region. Therefore, there is no point in having that extra bandwidth

I agree with that. I was just surprised that the UP had a slightly higher upper range than the P

[user998]

Clarity in speech in noisy environment is what interests me most. Do you know the difference between I-Sphere 90 vs 70?

[CombatWombat]

@WhiteHat

I’m kinda sad they dropped the caribbean pirate color.

Me too! Not gonna lie, part of the reason I was thinking about upgrading was because I really want a pair that color… maybe I’ll just see if I can get the housing on my Lumities switched out.

[AbramBaileyAuD]

Just confirmed, no telecoil in the RICs. Sorry to anyone hoping for that! We’ll update things on our end.

[RobHooft]

I am still very underwhelmed by Phonak’s “Evidence library”- not a shred of serious clinical efficacy studies there, as you would for instance see for medicines that are sold at considerably lower prices… The improved Bluetooth is definitely nice, but I still don’t see easily swappable rechargeable batteries (more relevant than ever now with power-hungry AI and, possibly, new EU legislation), no telecoil. The AI-driven noise reduction examples given concern traffic- useful, but people are probably more interested in cocktail party situations, music background. Sorry for being somewhat cynical, coming from the Pharma world, but let’s see what real-life users in this Forum have to say…not in a rush to upgrade personally, living in the quiet suburbs with little noise…

[jim_lewis]

Perhaps I don’t understand how the AI noise reduction kicks in. It would be nice if it worked like the Phonak StereoZoom effect, i.e., you don’t have to manually turn it on, but it’s always on standby (until you reach your three-hour actual usage limit). Just like the pre-trained DNN inserted into the HA models previously, the main processing unit could realize, Oops! Now, we have a speech-in-noise situation that would benefit from AI noise reduction. At that point, just like StereoZoom kicking in, the AI processor would turn on and stay on as long as the speech-in-noise situation that triggered it remained. The user leaves a speech-in-noise situation, i.e., the wife shuts off the microwave or stops speaking to me while she’s standing right next to it. The main processor says, Aha! No noise or no speech, back to regular processing with the pre-trained DNN settings for the sound environment I perceive the user in. And the AI noise processor goes back to standby, preserving your three-hour actual usage limit.

So, is AI noise processing “automatic” in the Sphere device, or do you constantly have to turn it on or off at the peril of using up your battery allowance? I’m in mostly quiet to moderate noise environments, but for things like the wife talking in front of a running microwave (she’ll never learn/remember good speech hygiene!), it would be great to have active AI speech enhancement kick in only when needed. If it did that, I could probably easily make it through the day with a three-hour usage limit as it’s only a matter of a few minutes here and there during the day that I’d really need it.

[tenkan]

@jim_lewis

So, is AI noise processing “automatic” in the Sphere device

Would have to be automatically, it’d be tiring to manually do this, like AutoSence, it’s on when AI decided it was warranted, hopefully it’d get it right most of the time.

[lello58]

This 3-hour limit seems very annoying to me. For example, if I go to the movies, I think that AI processing is activated and therefore if during the day I have already used part of the 3 hours what happens? Halfway through the movie does it go back to the default situation?
Or maybe the movies are not considered a speech-in-noise situation?

[MDB]

From the Product info Sphere seems to be a manual program. The only difference between the 70 and 90 models seems to be the “Speech Enhancer” feature which I have no idea what it does. Edit: Sphere Speech in Loud Noise is in AutoSense and also available as a manual program.

[ziploc]

It seems to me that Phonak could have solved this battery life/ three-hour limit issue by using an external processor to do the heavy-duty AI processing, like the Whisper brand did before they went out of business.

I, for one, wouldn’t mind carrying a small processing unit like the Whisper “brain” in my pocket. That would allow Phonak to use AI unrestricted by the size of a HA or the drain on a HA battery.

[ziploc]

I wonder if that manual AI program is accessible through a button on the HA, or if it requires a phone app.

[jim_lewis]

@tenkan

Would have to be automatically, it’d be tiring to manually do this, like AutoSence, it’s on when AI decided it was warranted,

@MDB

From the Product info Sphere seems to be a manual program.

I’d say the following figure from the “EVIDENCE Library” suggests that the choice is AUTOMATIC and governed by AutoSense. If you take the diagram literally, the DeepSonic AI processing to remove noise is only invoked when AutoSense determines that the user is in a Speech-in-Loud-Noise environment and switches to that environmental setting.

Source: https://www.phonak.com/content/dam/phonak/en/evidence-library/white-paper/technical-paper/PH_Insight_SphericSpeechClarity_210x297_EN_028-2684-02_V1.00.pdf

You can find the cited source as the leftmost link on the following Phonak web page: Evidence Library | Phonak

Perhaps you or your fitter can tune under what conditions you want to have Spheric Speech Clarity processing available, i.e., whether it should also run for Speech in Car, Speech in Noise, etc., and maybe even to what degree (in ReSound HAs with more ordinary processing, you can choose how aggressive you want noise removal to be, for example).

Somebody fire up the Spheric Speech version of Target and let us know the score there in what control the fitter has over when and where Spheric Speech Clarity processing is deployable - or do any options show up in the latest version of MyPhonak (although maybe an HA user wouldn’t see such controls until they paired their smartphone with Infinio Sphere HAs)?

[CombatWombat]

It’s been a while since I’ve played with this, but my recollection is that you can take any Autosense program and copy it as a manual program, make modifications to it, and then choose whether or not those modifications are applied to the Autosense version of that program. I’ll be surprised if there’s not a way to configure programs so that Speech in Loud Noise + Spheric Speech Clarity can be manually activated.

[AbramBaileyAuD]

Added to our comparison engine today. Let me know if I missed anything:

Phonak Audéo Infinio vs. Phonak Audéo Lumity: What's the difference?

[MDB]

Ah, it’s both. Spheric Speech in Loud Noise is in both Autosense and available as a manual program.

[DamonHill]

In that case, in order not to let Autosense consume the 3 hours automatically, one could ask the Audiology to take it off Autosense and make it just manual…