All get the new life environmental protection.
I don’t think the le audio is supported on any iPhones yet. Bt le is a different animal. They’ve supported bt le for more than ten years. There is some transmission format that keeps them from supporting le audio for now.
WH
I sure wish they’d have thought of a different name for le audio. People are going to be confused about le audio vs bt le for 20 more years.
WH
Would these new Phonak’s be able to connect to either LE Audio or Classic Bluetooth or will the LE Audio wipe the Classic Bluetooth out?
They will do both classic and le audio.
WH
The Phonak literature says word recognition improves even more if the Spheres are used in conjunction with a Roger device, something like 61% improvement in word recognition vs. “only” 38% if only Spheres are used.
Would be nice to have some more details on this. I am presuming it works (until “edyoukated”) in the following way. The Spheres have no directionality by themselves in their SNR improvement. They simply digitally filter out noise via the DNN processing. Roger mics have directionality. So, directional sound can be fed to the Sphere DNN processing, eliminating a fair amount of noise to begin with via the Roger directional filtering.
Several years ago Dr. Cliff mentioned HAs could only lead to an ~6 db increase in the SNR but remote microphones could create up to a 26 dB improvement. So, the Roger On or Roger Select are very expensive devices, but according to Phonak, the combined Sphere/Roger performance is going to be way better than a 10 dB SNR improvement.
Since Roger devices are fairly big compared to a HA, I wonder if Phonak will come out with a new version of Roger that has the DeepSonic processor built in, attached to the much bigger battery that comes with a Roger device. Maybe the problem for Phonak there would be since a Roger device can be used with other HA brands, that would make DeepSonic processing available, in a less convenient way, albeit, to other HA brands. So, a no go there for Phonak?
Yeah, what I wasn’t sure about was whether “even better with Roger!” Meant over and above the gains we already expect with Roger, or is that them just saying that at the end of the day Roger continues to provide the best SNR.
Is sphere a program all its own? Or a layer that can be switched on, like noise or directionality? If it has to be its own, you’ll lose it when you go to the roger program. If it is a layer that can switched on, that sounds great.
WH
If you watch the Dr. Cliff video, he turns on the Sphere noise reduction in the app via a separate program.
Jordan
I couldn’t tell whether he was switching programs or changing a setting on a program.
WH
I can’t read any of that, but I’ll believe you. Wonder how it can work with Roger then.
WH
Looks like it could be the latter, that Roger just provides the best SNR.
Because the 61% claim for Roger with Infinio is made on the following Sonova web page:
Phonak elevates sound quality with new Infinio portfolio, introducing a paradigm shift with real-time AI for speech clarity in noise in Audéo Sphere Infinio | Sonova International
Here is the text:
The Infinio platform offers remarkable improvements in:
But reference 5 is only a 2020 paper showing that the Roger Pen provides a 16% word recognition improvement. The Pen only operates in a fixed omni-directional mode whereas the Roger Select operates in adaptive directional mode and provides a 61% improvement in word recognition.
Intervention The two wireless microphones by Phonak, Roger Pen, and Roger Select used the same digital modulation protocol to transmit the signal to compatible receivers. However, the Roger Pen operated in a fixed omnidirectional mode, whereas the Roger Select operated in an adaptive directional mode.
Conclusions The results suggest that the Roger Select microphone can provide significant benefits in speech recognition in noise over the use of HA/CI alone (61%) and also significant benefits over the use of a Roger Pen (16%) in a simulated group dining experience.
Source of quotes: Thieme E-Journals - Journal of the American Academy of Audiology / Abstract (thieme-connect.de)
Theoretically, though, the Roger Select can be nowhere near as good as the Sphere DNN in filtering out noise, so if there were a way to have the output of the Roger pass through DeepSonic processing, the clarity of speech should get even better. Maybe as others have suggested just above in this thread, the DeepSonic chip only works with input from external mics and there is no way to have it process a streamed source or Roger mic input because those are entirely separate DSP channels?
Edit_Update: I read somewhere in the description of DeepSonic processing that the sound input is broken down into 64 frequencies and each frequency is a complex number, having a frequency (magnitude, probably) component and a phase. The phase is presumably something like a time delay in that frequency between ears. Frequency components that don’t have the same phase as a speaking voice might be more likely candidates for noise reduction processing.
So, that might be what’s missing from streamed or Roger input - that it’s missing spatial sound information that allows frequency information from a speaking source to be differentiated from noise coming from other directions. OTH, both streamed audio and Roger On input, IIRC, can be in stereo, but maybe such sources don’t have as much spatial or temporal information as the HA body mics can pick up from external sound sources? Purely speculation on my part as to why no further processing of Roger input might be possible by the DeepSonic chip.
Here’s what I’m not quite fully understanding, what makes this vastly different or superior to what Signia has been doing for years now with their dual chip processing (one for speech one for background noise) and their current multi voice processing?
I understand this is a lot of marketing fluff from all manufacturers (Signia included), so that part of me is really having a hard time believing the hype just because Sonova is labeling it AI. It really sounds similar to what other companies have been doing just with a different label.
To me, AI reminds me very much of what was once hyped as “fuzzy logic”. Not the same thing, I guess, but similar excitement…
I’d agree that skepticism of marketing claims is warranted. However, my sense from the reactions of people I trust is that there is something substantial to this. It won’t be perfect, but depending on one’s hearing loss it could be a significant improvement. Note: If speech in noise isn’t a problem for you (either don’t spend any time in those situations or already do ok with current hearing aids) then these aids aren’t likely to be an improvement for you.
Neville, how would i find out what snr i need, and what i am currently getting? That would be really good information! I have all the setup information from Phonak Target.
I think you’d need a speech in noise test (like QuickSIN) and then likely add a few dB to it.
Yes, a speech in noise test would give you a FUZZY idea of what you need. It’s an artificial measure of a wildly variable real life system, so you need to take the absolute number a bit loosely. But if your SNR loss on the quickSIN, which is probably the most widely used test, is under ~6dB, that suggests that modern hearing aids on their own should provide sufficient support in most situations. ~6-9 dB suggests you’ll probably regularly need extra support if you want to hear in noise, greater than that suggests you’ll always need extra support in any degree of noise. The hope is that advances in this sort of AI will push the category of “hearing aids will be enough” to be wider. But it’s certainly worth knowing if your SNR loss on the quickSIN is 22 dB, in order to set your expectations for the ways in which hearing aids will not help.
Are there tests for this that are better than QuickSIN? Is the QuickSIN result range similar to a matrix test or is matrix different?
Is the 6 dB guidance similar for all current aids? So for example the 10 dB spec on Real 1 and 12 dB on Intent 1 is not fully usable?
Both are fine and similar. Matrix is a bit more useable under certain circumstances (e.g. quick test-retest) quickSIN is a bit faster to administer, both give you useful fuzzy information about SNR performance, although with slightly different measures.
Yes-ish. I’m being conservative about real-world benefit of current directional mics and noise reduction rather than accepting the suggested manufacturer values of whatever in-house testing they did. And I’m giving a general estimate of how we see things falling out clinically. I’m not saying that if you are in that middle range (~6-9 dB) you would absolutely find that you needed a remote mic for some situations, but you are more likely to and as you move beyond that you are much more likely to. But it also depends a lot on the ever shifting environment and your requirements for precision in those environments, etc.
And I can also say that right now I still do not see obvious differences in SNR support between premium models of hearing aids across most of the big 8. Even without independent research doing direct comparisons (which I would love if we had more of, but we don’t), if there were a clear winner, clinicians would slowly converge upon it. That hasn’t happened–different clinicians have different favourites and would also still agree that their clients are not all the same in their preferences.
So right now there is no “best” hearing aid. Will this new release mean that new Phonak hearing aids are “the best” for a little while until others catch up? That’s the mystery. Maybe it’s all a marketting bluff. It’s certainly stewing up a lot of excitement this time though.
