Returning Phonak Infinio Sphere I90s

[platypus]

Did all that. Thank you. Believe me, I tried everything to make them work for me.

[EMBY5703]

To be honest, I was presented with two brands that seemed identical on paper. I chose the Phonak because I was told the other brand was finicky with android. Down the road, if my hearing continues to deteriorate, obviously, the HA that better addresses the loss will be the choice.

[user322]

I have to disagree with you. If you scan this website, you will find lots of Jabra users who returned them because they were so bad with Android (myself included).

[danhuddleston]

@Misterref78

you don’t take hearing aids because of Android compatibility

Many here would differ with you loudly! Yes, the #1 thing for most hearing aid users is to be able to hear well. Most folks with hearing aids could be helped with several different brands/models.
If the number 1 most important aspect of hearing aids is addressed, then most of us have a preference of which bells and whistles we want to add. I also prefer to be able to stream and support of my Android is very important to me.
Everyone is entitled to choose the things that are important to them.
I also believe that we are all entitled to voice our opinion on our preferences without being pounced on by someone who chooses to disagree.
My 2 cents worth,
Dan

[Misterref78]

Yes after testing you can then decide if the one with very good android connection is worth to be taken even if it’s not that good like the other one with unstable connection.
but to be honest, all other brands that already have LE Audio will fit better with Android than Phonak, but this also means that you need a new phone that support LE Audio.
I liked the way Phonak connect with everything with BT but for me it was not worth to take those only because of that because Oticon Intent was much better for me and thanks to LE Audio (but also with Low BTE) they have a stable connection with Samsung S24, and of course if you use an old or cheap phone it will never work good with such hearing aids.

but you cannot just look at the whitepaper and decide wich would be good, this is not a robovaccleaner or a TV, this is something that is such different to so many people

I was always wondering why people in this forum had so many “new” hearing aids but now I start to understand, no wonder when you buy hearing aids only by reading a whitepaper or is influenced by advertising.

I buy my hearing aids every 6-7 years but I am testing those and I chose the one that is best for me, not what the brand suggest me to be best.

[1Bluejay]

LOL, I’m gonna MAIL you my aids for adjusting if I ever get the Spheres. You walk the walk and talk the talk. I wish I was a DIYer. It seems daunting to learn all these tricks 'n tips.

[lewbobski]

For me solid hands free calling is essential as is streaming from my PC so my wife doesn’t have to also listen to what I am watching.

[Volusiano]

@platypus

The Infinio AI spheric chip claims to greatly improve speech understanding in noisy environments. And by all accounts and reports on these forums, it seems to be helping many people.

For some reason, I did not have that experience. In fact, I question if the AI feature was actually working on the pair that I trialed. My audiologist did what they could to dial them in, but it resulted in all sounds being muffled and no human voices coming through audibly. The opposite of what the marketing folks at Phonak portray and users have reported experiencing as well.

I did notice slight improvements with some features, but no wow factor when it came to Spheric Speech in Loud Noise.

Overall, I only found a marginal improvement in the Infinio over the Lumity. But again, it could be that I received a faulty pair where the AI chip is not working.

I was going to ask if you wear open domes or at least bass domes with vents because your low frequency hearing is still fairly OK. With open domes or with the vents, they let the noise in and this would negate a lot of the noise blocking that the AI can do for you to achieve that wow effect.

But since you said that the sounds are muffled and no human voices were coming through audibly, I guess it must have been something else wrong at play here.

[Bimodal_user]

@Volusiano

But since you said that the sounds are muffled and no human voices were coming through audibly, I guess it must have been something else wrong at play here.

I bet on underfitting medium and high frequencies (which correcting requires also tighter acoustic coupling).

Maybe upward spread of masking by low frequencies? (there is dr Cliff video about that).

[jim_lewis]

@platypus said they were a DIYer. I’m still learning Target, but a lower fitting tab in Target is "Audibility Fine Tuning, in which you can play various speech sounds and adjust gain in suggested ways to make that sound audible, e.g., the F or S sound. IIRC, there are more global “dumb” fixes under the Automatic Fine Tuning tab that platypus could have tried. (click to enlarge)

[jim_lewis]

Relative to @platypus’s complaint that Spheric noise reduction wouldn’t turn on, if one creates either a linked or a copied manual copy of Spheric Speech in Loud Noise, then in the MyPhonak app, you can turn Spheric processing on at any time. Invoking the program manually doesn’t depend on the noise environment. And you can see the effect by playing back the various Target media samples of speech in low SNR environments through your computer speakers.

At home, though, I haven’t been able to manufacture any noise environment that gets Spheric processing to turn on automatically in AutoSense. It would be great if someone could come up with an easy-to-emulate-in-your-home test scenario so one doesn’t have to go to a noisy bar or restaurant to test out various program modifications to the Spheric Speech in Loud Noise program.

The following website has a number of non-English speech in noise samples: SFX - Restaurant, Outdoor, Busy, Spanish Walla, Children, Music | Epidemic Sound

One of the better examples there that you can clean up considerably by invoking manual Spheric processing in the MyPhonak app is the following speech sample: SFX - Outdoor, Spanish Walla Close, Busy, Spain | Epidemic Sound

[Paul_T]

I’ve nearing the end of a 3-week trial of the new Sphere I90s, having used Marvel M90s for the last 5 years and having trialled Lumity L90s a few weeks ago. I too have not been impressed with the I90s - the noise reduction system has not been evident even though I visited several not-so-noisy restaurants. But what is absolutely surprising to me is the sound quality. It is undoubtedly inferior to the Lumity L90s: my wife goes to bed before me, so I therefore reduce the TV volume then from around 20 to 10. With my Marvels and with the Spheres, I crank the volume up to its maximum and turn the TV subtitles on. But with the Lumitys, I increased the volume by only 2 points instead of 6, and felt no need for the subtitles. Somehow the Lumitys are able to increase the speech volumes without distortion, leaving the TV background pretty well unaltered. I shall be purchasing a pair of Lumitys in the near future.

[Bimodal_user]

@jim_lewis , there is a lot of sound samples in Phonak Target also. You need to download them separately in the update section of Target software (see link below).

@jim_lewis

The following website has a number of non-English speech in noise samples: SFX - Restaurant, Outdoor, Busy, Spanish Walla, Children, Music | Epidemic Sound

One of the better examples there that you can clean up considerably by invoking manual Spheric processing in the MyPhonak app is the following speech sample: SFX - Outdoor, Spanish Walla Close, Busy, Spain | Epidemic Sound

Great links! I couldn’t find them a few weeks ago:

Phonak Infinio Sphere vs Oticon Intent – quantitative word recognition testing

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 th…

@DaleM1, maybe that would be useful for your tests.

[glucas]

Sorry, but this sounds like a woeful fit. Did you have real ear measurement?

[Bimodal_user]

@Paul_T

having used Marvel M90s for the last 5 years

With domes or earmolds? I don’t see your tonal audiogram, but acoustic coupling can make a HUGE difference, along with making old hearing aids with proper coupling, um, “better” than the newest with bad coupling…

@glucas

Sorry, but this sounds like a woeful fit. Did you have real ear measurement?

I definitely agree.

(The shorter bar = the better hearing in noise)

There is a graph that shows that OLD, analog, 1-channel HAs fitted with REM are better in noise than the best-on-the-market, ~10 yrs newer digital multichannel HAs fitted with first-fit (without REM).

[jim_lewis]

@Bimodal_user

@jim_lewis , there is a lot of sound samples in Phonak Target also. You need to download them separately in the update section of Target software (see link below

Thanks. I know that and have done that. But I was looking for sounds I could provide a link to and everyone could access easily. I might run into copyright issues if I posted a Phonak MP3 file here (not even sure the Discourse website software can handle that file type).

P.S. Here’s where I mentioned using Target media in the post you quoted:

@jim_lewis

And you can see the effect by playing back the various Target media samples of speech in low SNR environments through your computer speakers.

[Abarsanti]

@jim_lewis

At home, though, I haven’t been able to manufacture any noise environment that gets Spheric processing to turn on automatically in AutoSense. It would be great if someone could come up with an easy-to-emulate-in-your-home test scenario so one doesn’t have to go to a noisy bar or restaurant to test out various program modifications to the Spheric Speech in Loud Noise program.

I was able to trigger the spheric mode by putting YouTube on my TV and searching for a video “Loud restaurant noise” and turning up the volume. Then I just needed to start talk talking and it triggered it for me.

[Neville]

I picked my car because it had a better radio.

Vroom vroom

[Bimodal_user]

@jim_lewis

P.S. Here’s where I mentioned using Target media in the post you quoted:

@jim_lewis

And you can see the effect by playing back the various Target media samples of speech in low SNR environments through your computer speakers.

Oh, my bad, sorry. I read that fast and didn’t notice mentioning about Target.

I agree with you about accessibility and copyright issues.

[platypus]

Some answers and comments to people’s helpful suggestions above.

1. I use power domes. No venting.

2. AutoSense 6.0 did invoke “Spheric Speech in Loud Noise” when I entered a noisy environment - as expected. I also had a manual version of the spheric program which I could invoke at any time. it was very clear that I was in the Spheric program when testing.

3. The Lumity aids, the ones I have had for two years, also have a speech in loud noise program. I also have a manual selectable mode for that program. It is this mode that I am comparing between the Lumity and the Spheres. I could not detect an amazing difference between Lumity and spheres in this mode.

4. Many, if not most, who have the spheres have had a very good experience with them including me if I was coming from Marvels or Paradise. If someone is due for new aids I would highly recommend Phonak’s Sphere I90s.

5. Lastly, I continue to emphasize that the best outcome for hearing loss treatment, no matter which modern hearing aids are chosen, will depend on the competency of the audiologist one works with. I’m grateful to the ones that drop in to this forum now and then and give us their advice.