Well, not for folks like ME anyway. Geez, I think I was born with your audiogram and would I LOVE it now! 
For me, the Sony’s were far superior to my 2017 Costco Resounds (I don’t recall the model). For the first time in years, I heard birds outdoors and quiet cymbals in jazz. I’m a mallet percussionist and have a vibraphone and a marimba. I hadn’t heard the attacks on the bars in a long time. And the sound quality was excellent for live music, playback on a high quality sound system, and streaming. I had two complaints about the CRE-E10s: (1) I still didn’t hear speech in noise very well, and (2) random-seeming sounds in the environment would cause feedback. Even so, pretty good for $1000 OTC that is marketed only for mild to moderate loss. The $5000+ Intents solved (2) but not (1).
After my testing, the audiologist conducted a word recognition comparison on the CREs with the Intents (headphones, no noise, two loudnesses: 45 and 35 dB). The CREs actually did 4 percentage points better at the louder level, but the Intents were 12 points better at the quiet.
If you do want to try them, you can get them overnight from Amazon with a 30 day return. They come with a self contained hearing test program – you put them on, and respond on your phone to beeps at various frequencies. I was afraid that they wouldn’t converge to a solution for me, because my hearing loss is out of the moderate range. But they did.
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Unless, of course, you care a lot about streaming music (occluding provides better bass response) and understanding speech in noisy places (since open fit lets in the noise). So you’re really trading sound localization and occlusion reduction against music streaming and understanding speech in noise. My point is that this is a tradeoff I should make, not Phonak’s software or my audiologist. And that’s exactly why I was intrigued by the MAVs – potentially best of both.
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Well, many interesting findings and insights there … Thanks for sharing. And now that you’ve spelled it out: hearing loss in mild-to-moderate range, well I may as well pass “Go” and not collect my $200 bucks. I’m very lucky that I do so well with the Phonak Lumity Life!
I also agree with your philosophy about tradeoffs. Especially as a musician, YOU alone should decide what’s important and prioritize how you want to hear your world. Ow, I LOVE the vibraphone and marimba - very cool!
Thanks for posting this. I’m looking for backup hearing aids to use at the gym.
It looks like the Sony CRE-E10 fills the gap.
This is consistent with Phonak’s statements. In their evidence whitepaper they write about similar percentage.
@DaleM1, I have a question: can the manual Spheric Speech Clarity programme denoise the sample played by the speakers in a similar way to Adobe Podcast AI (free account)?
Original file with jackhammer:
sample audio files for speech recognition (kaggle.com)
After denoising by Adobe Podcast AI:
https://file.io/h7WaVhTn2moC
I’m sorry, I coudn’t find longer samples. Some of it in the Target software:
I’ll give this a try tomorrow. But I’ve read that the spherical speech in loud noise doesn’t work well with a recorded track in which the speech and noise are combined. I believe it works much better when there is spatial separation, which I used for my experiment.
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Nice experiment Dale, thanks for sharing.
I downloaded the files and did the following tests. Files were played back on Bowers&Wilkens PX7 S2 noise cancelling headphones:
- Original file played back with Phonak “music” program (no compression or other processing except equalization).
- Original file played back with Phonak “spheric speed in loud noise” program
- Adobe Podcase AI file played back with Phonak “music” program.
Results: In all three, the speech is intelligible, except that, to my ear, the word “beer” sounds more like “veer” (all three). S/N level goes from lowest to highest in fairly equal steps. In other words, the “spheric” mode in the Phonaks is a definite improvement, but not as good as Adobe’s (presumably off-line processing). Not bad for real time (6 ms delay).
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Wow, quite a scientific approach! Thanks for testing.
I other words, regarding SNR and intelligibility:
lowest → medium → highest
original → Spheric prog. → Adobe Podcast AI.
Yes, I had to upload the file, and it required a few moments to proceed with AI denoising. However, it seems that the Spheric Speech Clarity program works better than expected with a recorded track in which the speech and noise are combined.
There is a note to HearAdvisor’s independent comparison of Phonak Infinio Sphere and other premium hearing aids including Oticon Intent. your finding is quite in line with their finding, amazing.
Referring to your audiologist as your “PEANUT AUDI” doesn’t make people think what you think it does…
Wow, that was creative…
A son has the latest Sony’s and when my regular hearing aids were being repaired he lent me his as he has an earlier Sony pair and we programmed them via their app on my iphone. As someone said there is nothing to it so buying them in a parking lot doesn’t make any difference in programming but might with warranty but I am guessing. They were actually very good and you can see from my audiogram that I have severe hearing loss.
Your loss is reasonably flat from 250 Hz to 8000 Hz - you should try the AirPod Pro 2 when apple releases the self program. Retest with them in the ear and that may tell you how to tweak the programming
Yes thanks may well be worth a try.
Yeah, I shoulda just said “the IMPATIENT audi!” She literally turned me off to Oticon Intent with her lack of interest, commitment or even caring to spend time with the settings for me. I find it quite intriguing that so many others here do REALLY well with Oticon aids, and the Intent has helped them comprehend speech better than earlier models, too. 
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Since I get my hearing aids from the VA I have some experience with “less than perfect” audiologists. I try to stay informed about what is current in the hearing aid world so I can ask cogent questions, while not coming off as an “expert”.
Strangely, I had a very similar experience with the Intents. Hearing in noise was amazing, but ordinary speech comprehension in ordinary situations such as the one you describe was surprisingly inconsistent. I’m thinking of going back for another trial with a different Audi.
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This is great feedback, and great to see people taking initiative to truly put these devices to the test.