Has anyone had any experience with the new Phonak Sphere Infinio with open domes?
Wondering if the ‘openness’ of the open domes would let the background noise ‘leak in’ and interfere with the background noise cancellation capabilities in crowds. Hope the picture came through below.
Yes, openness reduces the effectiveness of HA noise reduction by letting the noise leak directly to your eardrums, avoiding hearing aid processing to eliminate it. Phonak and several reviewers online have noted an occlusive fit is necessary to obtain the best noise reduction results with the Spheres (or other HA noise reduction, too). Phonak has online “evidence” of the effectiveness of Spheric processing: Evidence Library | Phonak.
In the following article, labeled as a Scientific Poster, Phonak shows how users found the Sphere performed much better with Spheric Speech Clarity (SSC) than without it and better than two leading competitors. The test situation was 72 dB noise, with female speech at -3 dB compared to the noise. The fine print mentions that 27 experienced adult hearing aid users with moderate to moderately severe bilateral hearing loss aged 58 to 93 years (m=75.1±8) participated. They all wore custom acoustic couplings with 1mm vents, i.e., occlusive molds. A 1 mm vent is a small vent size, and most users with ~normal low-frequency hearing would probably find it an occlusive fit. https://www.phonak.com/content/dam/phonak/en/evidence-library/white-paper/scientific-poster/Improving_speech_understanding_and_listening_effort_for_complex_communication_environments_with_a_novel_noise_reduction_system.pdf (see the lower right of the poster for the info I reported).
YMMV. But I’ve had no problems adjusting to an occlusive fit. As I reported in another post, by increasing the Speech Enhancer setting from a default value of 14 to 16 in Target, I reduced the occlusiveness of my voice considerably. Making a joke, the sense of occlusion is all in your mind and you can get used to it by habituation. As a baby, how did you learn to accept the sound of your own voice in your head and adjust to any changes from baby sounds as you slowly grew up? Because occlusion keeps the interior of your ear canal moist, you have a greater risk of ear infections, but then folks with severe to profound hearing loss need an occlusive fit and manage to get by with it.
There is the following interesting confession by Phonak that Teams and Zoom by using DNN processing along with the greater processing power available on computers have exceeded HA noise reduction capabilities. The quote below comes from the 2nd paragraph of the Phonak Scientific Poster link I provided in my just previous post.
Noise reduction is a broad term with implementations well
beyond hearing aids. Arguably, consumer applications such as
Teams or Zoom have exceeded the noise reduction capabilities
of hearing aids through the use of deep neural networks (DNN),
which require significant processing power, unique architecture
and power efficiency in order to run.
Source: 2nd paragraph of https://www.phonak.com/content/dam/phonak/en/evidence-library/white-paper/scientific-poster/Improving_speech_understanding_and_listening_effort_for_complex_communication_environments_with_a_novel_noise_reduction_system.pdf
I don’t think it should come as a shock that when you have relatively unlimited power and processing compared to the restraints which are imposed on hearing aids, computers with access to cloud processing power can do better. In five or ten years, I expect they will make a lot of progress.
WH
I wasn’t shocked that a difference exists. Just found it curious that Phonak openly put things in perspective, whereas usually it seems HA OEMs are mum on comparisons about anything being better than their brand.
@WhiteHat & @jim_lewis maybe we’re headed back to the Whisper type of “Brain” module for HAs.
This thread is interesting - I’m currently trialling infinio aids with power domes as I couldn’t cope at all with the occlusion of a 1mm vent mould. I accept I might ultimately habituate to it but if I can’t bear it for 5 minutes I’m never going to be able to! I’m hoping the moulds with more /bigger vents will help when they come back.
However , I’m managing them with domes with little occlusion and in respect of the sphere setting I do get good results. For example using in our motorhome to reduce road and vehicle noise I was able to have a conversation with my husband for the first time. Also listen to the music on the radio. Similarly in a busy bar:restaurant I was able to reduce the background noise significantly.
Perhaps not optimally but certainly enough to make a significant difference to me in noisy environments.
You say about Music program? Does your old Paradises have the same fitting setting (also power domes, the same gains in fitting software, etc.)?
There is a setting in Target that your HCP can fiddle around with to reduce your sense of occlusion. However, I haven’t tried it myself. But you might want to inquire of your provider.
What I did find is that certain custom programs can pick up your own speech from the HA mics, amplify it, and greatly reduce your sense of occlusion so your voice sounds almost natural (at least to me!). By going with a custom program, you lose whatever advantages AutoSense 6.0 gives you, but I’m not a big fan of AutoSense and don’t think it works that great, e.g., for me, it’s lousy at switching on Spheric noise reduction in very noisy environments unless I go to an Apple Store level of noise. Spheric noise reduction routinely does not come on automatically in AutoSense in Costco or our HEB grocery store, both of which are relatively noisy places.
I like two custom programs, one a “Restaurant” program, which is basically a Speech-in-Loud-Noise program, and I have a similar program derived from the Calm program. In both these programs, other people’s voices (and sounds) are louder than in my Autosense programs, and my own voice sounds a lot more natural to me, even with cShells that have no vent (so, 100% occlusive). I’m posting screenshots of my Restaurant settings below, and I haven’t bothered removing the overlap between screens of some settings. Typically, in the Equalizer, I might set the Treble level as high or higher than the Middle tones. YMMV as to what works best for each of these settings for anyone who gives it a try.
I think it might be the Dynamic setting, increasing the amplification of soft sounds, along with my increased Volume setting, that makes other voices louder and makes my own voice sound more natural. In playing around with the program briefly now, I also find that raising the Treble level in the Equalizer helps, too, with the sound of my voice, My settings in Target may have some influence on how the Restaurant program works for me, but at 5 AM CDT in the USA, I not going to dig into that now! 
No I have open moulds on my paradises. I can’t hear anything in the van with them. Can’t hold a conversation with my husband or hear anythigg no on the radio unless it’s turned up to a level that is painful for him.
Thanks Jim yes I have fiddled and created settings with my paradises as you say but I find the Infinios clarity of speech is far better for me. I created the identical programme and notice significant difference between the paradises and infinios in the same situation.
@SandraN, you should test your occlusion effect, by saying “eeeeee” (like in “speech”) and “ooooo” (as in “booooo”) and check if you hear the difference between hearing aid turned on and turned off, but still with earmold/power domes in the ears.
If boomy own voice is only when hearing aid is turned on, it isn’t true occlusion effect, it’s ampclusion, which is usually fully adjustable by fitting software.
And what’s the difference with quiet situations? If you see the difference in that, this could be also the result of open coupling. This is why I and @jim_lewis pursued with more closed solutions:
@jim_lewis, does your eamold reach deeply to the bony part of your ear canals?
No, my cShells are very shallow in penetration, I suspect. I don’t think they even go as far into my ear canals as my ReSound custom molds.
On Xavier Delerce’s article, he might benefit from following Harvey Dillon’s style of writing. I only skimmed the translated article, but it seemed he was saying, in part, the more profound the loss, the more difficult it is to rescue speech intelligibility from noise. @SandraN’s loss is drastically more profound than mine, so that may be a tough obstacle to overcome with any hearing aid settings.
What is the difference between ampclusion and occlusion in hearing aids?
Good question — the two terms sound similar but refer to different phenomena in hearing aids:
In short:
Thanks Jim.
Mine is definitely occlusion as I have normal low frequency hearing and can get the same effect without my aids by blocking up my ears with my fingers.
My aids don’t have any gain at those frequencies. I’ve used open moulds for the last 15 years which are so good I can’t tell I have them in. They allow me to use my bit of normal hearing.
At the end of the working day today I took the infinios out and put them in to relax. Like putting a comfy pair of slippers on. I’ll probably still do that if I do decide to buy them. I’m back at the audio on 26/8. The domes I have are not open but large closed power domes. But the occlusion is nowhere near as bad as the solid moulds.
