Oticon Intent 1, Phonak I90 Sphere, or Starkey Omega AI 24, which should I choose?

That and the take notes will help your audiologist.

You know the drill.

Definitely my audiologist has gotten use to my long emails before my appointments. I have 3 journals that I keep. 1 general daily activities. 1 for my health thoughts and research. And my my written talks with my God. At this time I am concentrating on my vision, I have macular degeneration and it has gone from being dry in both eyes to being wet in my left eye. But my vision is actually the the best I have had in years. My diet and the supplements I take are so important. But my faith is the most important.

Where are they available? Been a Costco patient for 6 years and have Jaba 10 which has wax build up issues till I had them rebuilt this past week. Tried the new pro 30 and was not able to hear in noise any better. Rebuilt ones are working fine now but the 190 sounds like a good idea for next pair. Our Costco audio said to wait until since mine are not to old and working well

As a DIY’er, I have the luxury of being able to try out a lot of things. Last night I decided to try out Phonak’s features like SoundRelax, NoiseBlock, Soft Noise Reduction and WindBlock. SoundRelax is the suppression of sudden loud noise suppression. NoiseBlock is just droning noise reduction like for fan, vacuum cleaner, car noise. Soft Noise Reduction is the suppression of soft noise (like the humming of a refrigerator) over useful signal. And WindBlock is self explanatory, wind noise reduction. These are in the Phonak Target SW.

I decided to just max all those parameters out in all 4 of the built-in programs except for Spheric SILN and Music. I must say that the net result is quite effective. The combination of them put me in like a coocoon state where I practically don’t hear any noise except for speech or sounds that are not droning on. It’s quite a different experience compared to the Oticon HAs which embraces the open paradigm and does not give you much noise reduction options in the fitting software, except for Speech in Noise setting.

In this aspect, if you’re the type of person who likes peace and quiet anywhere unless there’s speech or useful sound, then the Phonak can give you that option. But if you don’t want all the fancy noise suppression features, then you can simply keep all the sounds opened up as well, to get a similar experience compared to the Oticon aids. So with Phonak, you have both options. But with Oticon, there’s very little option for constant noise reduction.

@cvkemp said:

I am wondering if that would be good for me and my tinnitus. I don’t use a tinnitus setting as just wearing my INTENT1 aids my tinnitus isn’t noticeable to me, unless I am in an extremely quiet environment.

What I’ve found so far - and keep in mind that I’m a newbie with fairly pathetic hearing loss - is that the Spheres do help, but they needed some tweaking. In particular, in my last visit (the same one where I got the Ultra update, which my provider hadn’t even heard of yet even though they did have the new Target 11.1 running) I had them turn noise reduction way down in “Calm” and “Comfort in Noise” - specifically to provide me with some of the “extraneous” high-frequency sounds, as well as treble from my car stereo, that can help mask tinnitus, and mmmmaybe even encourage some neuroplasticity to reduce the phenomenon over time. I’ve also created a “Calm + Ambience” custom program that’s the same as the automatic “Calm” program but with quiet sounds boosted a bit, so when I want to go off Automatic I can give myself an extra dose of treble “noise”.

My wife also built a white-noise generator in our backyard: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=102342627341831519 (this pic features Chico the Rampaging Beast-Thing, our latest domestication project). Here it is in action: https://www.facebook.com/reel/13313357380873048 She tells me that @CombatWombat knows a thing or two about building this type of anti-tinnitus apparatus…but I think he may have cheated by using power tools instead of just a shovel and pickaxe.

Maybe an odd question. I understand that the Phonak Spheres charger has a battery in it. How many times can it recharge the aids with out needing to be on a charger.

From what I can tell, it’s good for 3 full charges. I can’t believe that the included standard portable/battery-based Phonak Sphere charger is so much smaller and lighter than the Oticon version. Plus the Oticon battery-based portable charger version is optional for additional costs, at least for me on the Real.

Hey Mr. V., it seems you’re having a blast with the Spheres, and you’ll soon be revoking your Oticonian citizenship for the dreaded Phonakian cult!

I didn’t notice any reference to your impression of NonSense, oops, I mean AutoSense, heh!

RU using it, and is as transparent as Oticon’s reaction to changes?

Just curious.

I guess you and Chuck are going the Phonakian way. Bye, bye @cvkemp , and @Volusiano . Not too many of us left here anymore.

My INTENT1 aids will be my backup aids. So I will be using them at times just to keep them fresh. When I get my Phonak Spheres the INTENT1 aids are getting refreshed. New ear molds and new batteries.

Haha, yeah, I’ve been trying out AutoSense 7 to see how good it is, now that I know the (very clunky and awkward) way to find out which of the 6 built-in programs the Automatic AusoSense 7 picks at any given point in time. When I’m in my car driving, it does tend to go into Speech in Car mode for example, but not necessarily always. I find myself constantly checking up on which program AutoSense 7 picks out for me in various situations, then try to rationalize whether that would be the appropriate environment for the program chosen or not.

Today I had a chance to sit outside of a food store where they have the music on speakers, and it’s right next to a busy road with lots of traffic. That was the first time I saw AutoSense pick out the Spheric SILN mode, when the music was loud. But when a new softer song went on, not as loud as the previous song, AutoSense picked out a different program. Sometimes it was Comfort in Noise. Other times it was Speech in Noise. In all programs, though, my wife’s voice sitting right in front of me was clear and loud. So the verdict is still out on how well I think AutoSense 7 works. I think it’s not bad, but I didn’t see any “Wow, this thing is smart” enough. But I’ve only had a couple of days playing with it. And again, it’s an absolute DRAG each time to have to go through the stupid steps just to see what program is being chosen. Phonak really should just display the chosen program on the fly on the top page, and update it automatically every time it changes, instead of making users go through 3 or 4 clicks to find out what it is.

One thing I’m not impressed with is the Sound Relax feature (the equivalent of the Oticon Sudden Sound Stabilizer). I think the Oticon version of this works much better than the Phonak SoundRelax. I still find the clanging of dishes and sudden loud bangs are still not adequately suppressed on the I90.

The Noise Block and Soft Noise Reduction work like a charm, though. If you hate having to hear the AC running or refrigerator running, or the road noise while driving, fan noise, etc., maxing out on these 2 parameters work very effectively to give you a great sense of peace and quiet, and you’re still not missing out on speech or other important sounds. I created a second manual Calm Situation program, and I have one of these with normal default values for those 2 parameters, and one with them maxed out for peace and quiet. This way, at the end of the day or whenever I want some peace and quiet, I just use the Calm Situation program with the maxed out values, so that I can have 2 versions of the same program depending on my mood.

WindBlock on the Phonak is very effective, same with the Oticon. The feedback control seems to be better on the Phonak, because I haven’t had to mess around with anything because I haven’t gotten any feedback. On the other hand, with the Real, I had to make a lot of adjustments to it in the first few days to get rid of the feedback on my right ear.

A question for all Phonak Sphere users on the Program Change tone. I use Google Maps on my iPhone for driving, and after every navigation command, the Phonak program change tone is played as the aids switch from the BT streaming program for the navigation voice command back to the Automatic program. The first few times were OK, but after prolongued use of Google Maps, it got pretty damn annoying to have to listen to this stupid tone after every single navigation command. I had to go into Target to disable the Program change signal alert to stop this program change sound. However, due to this workaround, I no longer hear this program change sound when I legitimately manually change the program, in which case I want to hear it. Just not in Google Maps. Is there any solution for this? Thanks.

The Oticon aids don’t play the program change tone like this while in Google Maps because unlike the Phonak which seems to toggle between AutoSense OS for streaming and AutoSense for environmental sounds instead of mixing them together, Oticon just stays in the same environmental sound program the whole time while it mixes in the streaming sound in with it.

On another note, the Google Maps navigation voice (I picked a female voice) sounds very muffled and not clear like the streaming speech I hear from something like YouTube on my iPhone. Not sure why. Perhaps it’s the voice quality as generated by the Google Maps app that’s inferior to the sound quality as generated by the YouTube app on my iPhone.

Is there some reason all the brands do not offer the option to switch or mix? Maybe it is a BT classic limitation but Widex does something similar with MFi.

A workaround could be to manually select a program rather than rely on Autosense.

I know you just got these but I’m curious whether you can recreate a more open Oticon-like program and not use Autosense most of the time. Anyone with Phonaks not use Autosense at all?

I think with the Oticon on the iPhone, I have to connect it via the Apple MFI interface, then it automatically shows up on the Bluetooth screen as well. So maybe that’s the reason why it’s automatically “mixable” between the MFI streaming and the environmental program being run. The legacy BT doesn’t seem to be involved. It’s the MFI BLE what’s streaming the content, and whatever your current program is in at that time, then the environmental mics picks up the surrounding sound and processes it according to that current program’s settings. There’s no BT program setting per se with Oticon, hence there’s no program change back and forth like with Phonak.

With Phonak, on the other hand, it doesn’t connect to MFI at all. It only connects to legacy BT and it works from there. The Phonak goes into a BT streaming program when there’s streaming going on. But when streaming stops, then it goes back into the environmental Automatic program. So it switches back and forth between those 2 programs distinctly, as shown on their MyPhonak app. This is why it chimes the program change tone every time it goes back from BT streaming in Google Maps to Automatic program when the BT streaming stops, which triggers the Automatic Program chime unless you suppress it.

Because the Phonak aids don’t require the Apple MFI connection, I can still use the MFI connection for my Oticon, so I’m able to stream with both Oticon and Phonak aid without swapping anything in and out.

One quick observation about the NoiseBlock and Soft Noise Reduction. If you’re in a very noisy situation (like loud fan going on in the car), a side effect of these 2 features when they need to work at their max levels (to suppress noise) is that my own voice is also suppressed by these features as a result. If I’m in a place where the noise is not too loud, then my own voice is not suppressed along with it, simply because the Noise Block and Soft Noise Reduction don’t have to work as hard to suppress the noise, and therefore my own voice is not heavily suppressed along with it. Other people’s voices don’t seem to be as affect by this, only my own voice, it seems. So it seems to detect surrounding speeches as speech, but my own voice doesn’t seem to be detected as speech, which is weird.