Both in Target and in the MyPhonak app, you can adjust the amount of forward focusing in play with Spheric noise reduction and the strength of noise reduction. You can adjust whether soft sounds are amplified vs. loud sounds suppressed (Dynamic sound adjustment). You can access a primitive equalizer to adjust bass, mid-tones, and treble within limits. And you can save up to 10 user-defined adjustments of the various AutoSense programs for future use (plus your HCP can create four custom programs, IIRC).
Direct Hearing created a custom program for me called RESTAURANT, which appears to be some variation on the Speech in Noise program. With the Spheres, it works almost as well as Spheric noise reduction but doesn’t chew battery as severely as the full-on Sphere mode does.
The main difference between the Restaurant program and full-on Sphere mode is that the Restaurant program doesn’t remove background noise as cleanly as Sphere mode does. The Sphere mode in wide area mode seems to grab onto the loudest voice. A good compromise for both programs is to have speech focus set about halfway on, which favors the forward-facing direction, so you can focus by where you look.
I haven’t worn any other hearing aids but ReSound Omnias and ReSound Quattros, but I’m very happy with everything about the Spheres, especially Spheric noise reduction, and glad I plunked down the cash to get them. YMMV. ****
Edit_Update: The difference between Spheric mode and Speech-in-Noise is nicely illustrated by a Phonak “evidence” image posted by @Bimodal_user (click to enlarge):
Image copied from Phonak Sphere l90 versus l70 - #28 by Bimodal_user
The upper figure shows that theoretically Spheric noise reduction can give you a huge 3.6 dB boost over Phonak’s StereoZoom 2.0 forward-focusing used in Speech-in-Noise. Someone will have to explain the lower figure to me. It seems to show in practice, starting with a test situation where the volume of speech is several dB below the noise, the actual performance of Spheric noise reduction over Speech-in-Noise isn’t that sensational, but both modes are still much better than whatever competitors Phonak chose to display.
**** For perspective, I’m wearing cShells with no vent. The occlusive fit makes my voice pretty loud, but the suppression of noise going directly to my eardrums is great. One can make various adjustments to help with the sound of one’s own voice. My audi charged me $120 each for cShells with new receivers, allowing me to keep my original receivers as spares since any cShell with a receiver problem must be returned to Phonak for repair or replacement.