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Phonak Ultra upgrade - how do we feel about it?

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is not all or nothing. One could buy a Noahlink Wireless (or cheaper Airlink 2) just to update firmware or make small tweaks such as the tone volume. It’s much less than $395 and a better long-term value. If one decides to dabble in self-programming later, the Noahlink is on hand and works with many modern hearing aids.

In reply to @d_Wooluf

All I care about is speech clarity, stable Bluetooth, and natural sound. is fine in theory, but meaningless until it’s implemented. Phonak should focus on refining their and firmware stability before chasing another broadcast standard no one’s using yet.

In reply to @d_Wooluf

@d_Wooluf said:

I read our competitor’s blog whereby they say (and I’m paraphrasing) that Auracast just isn’t ready yet and therefore they will hold off including Auracast in their hearing aids and in their classroom audio distribution system . . . for now (or perhaps for years; basically as long as possible). Sad to say, there was some misinformation included in the blog and while I’m not going to respond point by point,

Appreciate the insight, but from a user standpoint, “not ready yet” is starting to sound like code for “we’ll wait until it threatens our proprietary ecosystem.” Most of us just want stable Bluetooth and clear speech — not marketing chess moves.

Every time someone explains this stuff it sounds like a secret handshake. If you ‘upgraded an Airlink to a Noahlink,’ maybe just explain how instead of dropping acronyms like we’re all in the lab with you. Some of us actually want to understand, not decode riddles.

You have to understand that many of the older generation aren’t technology savvy. I have friends my age that haven’t touched a computer or even a smartphone.

I understand that being in the upper half of my eighties but I don’t think that is the case here. I deleted the post.

In reply to @JordanK

Sadly, even the new, fency-schmency version of AutoSense sometimes has a problem recognizing some music as music - although admittedly, my taste in music is fairly eclectic (lotsa classic jazz, lotsa Indian classical, and smatterings of all kinds of other stuff, including pretty much everything The Incredible String Band ever put out). On my drive to work this morning, Ravi Shankar’s Concerto for Sitar and Orchestra was playing… AutoSense applied five different programs to this (Speech in Car, Speech in Noice, Speech in Loud Noise, Spheric Speech in Loud Noise, and Calm) - literally everything it had except Music!

It does much better with more conventionally Western music - but clearly our Swiss friends need to widen their musical horizons!

The one thing that I will say about the new Ultra firmware upgrade to the Sphere’s (after being in a few noisy places this weekend) is that Phonak has significantly improved the effectiveness of the signal processing model running on the Deepsonic chip. This really is the most significant part of the Ultra upgrade but the weird thing is that it’s kinda hard to appreciate what is going on.

The reason I say this is that the noise reduction is so good that you don’t really notice it coming on and you also don’t really notice how well it is doing to remove the noise. I’ll give you an example:

My wife and I took our adult kids (and their significant others) to a sushi restaurant on Saturday night. This was my first big outing with the Ultra upgrade and I was curious to see how it did. We walked into the restaurant and sat down at a table for six in the middle of the restaurant. There was lots of conversations going on at our table and at the adjacent tables as we reviewed the menu and we then placed our orders with the waitress. To me, the restaurant didn’t seem that loud. Reason is, I could hear all six people at the table speaking extremely clearly and even the waitress’s voice was extremely clear. Being a deaf guy who is always self conscious about talking too loud, I automatically lowered my voice to match the low noise level of the restaurant. I quickly noticed that my kids were having issues hearing me and asked me a few times to repeat myself. I found this really weird because it wasn’t noisy in the restaurant. I then opened the myPhonak app and switched from the Automatic program to the Music program (which has zero noise reduction). The avalanche of noise was so crazy that it startled me and I ended up jumping back a bit and saying “Holy Sh-t”. The kids all stopped talking at once and asked me if I was ok. I then asked everyone at the table if they were finding the restaurant to be extremely noisy. They all nodded their heads in agreement. Thing is…I was hearing ZERO noise. Not only that, I wasn’t hearing the typical weird, warbling background noise that you hear when the Sphere AI mode kicks in.

So…not sure what Phonak did to improve the AI model in the Ultra firmware but it definitely is significantly better at filtering out the noise while keep everything sounding a bit more natural. You actually won’t notice this unless you go into a few really noisy places and then experiment by turning off the Sphere mode to hear what the environment sounds like with no AI processing. To me, this is the biggest upgrade with Ultra.

Just sharing in case others find it useful. Anyone with the Ultra upgrade should try it out in a really noise place and confirm.

Jordan

Interesting that it denoises so much that situational awareness is altered. There could be situations where that might be dangerous. Folks here have mentioned hearing cars when cycling. What if Sphere denoises the car noise as it is not speech. Following your example of voice volume, what if a loud voice or scream is needed for safety and your mind tricks you toward too low a voice volume. What if noise is at unsafe level but you do not perceive that leading to noise exposure (and/or Sphere mode turns off, the battery dies, etc.). What if warning sirens, alarms, etc. are denoised.

Here is a link to Dr. Cliff’s review of the Ultra. Apologize if it has already been posted

In reply to @wtolkien

I have been buying and using top end devices for 18 years. I have had a marketing and PR business for 33 years. My clients include Microsoft, Siemens and 100 others. I find that pretty much all of the hearing manufactures marketing to be almost funny and not what l’d consider to be clear, easy to understand and effective. They all kind of sound the same. Each company has a tagline, each pitches us on why their latest is greatest, and at times I think their marketing and PR itself has no clue on how to grow revenue in an honest easy to understand campaign. Sometimes It appears to me they intentionally use marketing and PR to upsell us inappropriately, like i.e. the recent Phonak Ultra 2.0 release because on their website Sphere, I90’R and their all have the word NEW next to them, when in fact the only thing new is the 2.0 firmware update available to all,current device owners. I do applaud Phonak though for the 2.0 release because all of the advancements seem to be very real, and they have fully developed the Deepsonic chip with game changing software.That is impressive if we Sphere users see a big improvement across the board with our hearing and battery capacity. Phonak’s rebrand was confusing and they have had to clarify it all. Its a bit embarrassing, and it shows how mediocre PR and marketing can raise question about the brand, or create a questionable perception. Moral of the story is we as users really need to research and test before we buy to understand firsthand what the technology really is and does for our hearing. And manufactures would be better served having top tier marketing and PR. Lastly, any provider, or audiologist that charges anything more than a low office visit cost, or a free upload for firmware in my opinion is unethical. $495.00 is disrespectful at best.

In reply to @JordanK

@JordanK said:

The avalanche of noise was so crazy that it startled me and I ended up jumping back a bit and saying “Holy Sh-t”.

HI, I have the P70T model with 2P speakers, am reading a lot about this subject since an upgrade in the coming years will be required, but let me tell you one thing, my wife has really good hearing and one thing she really hates is going to a noisy resto, now here we have the tech. to eliminate a very big society issue but those with good hearing do not, apart from staying away. One day she maybe wearing noise cancelling buds just to enjoy going out again. So for now we just stay away. I’m not convinced that this is the best way to treat people with good hearing. Just my 2c’s

I think deaf people need the radical noise reduction that these new hearing aids bring to the table because our word recognition scores are much lower than someone with normal hearing. The AI noise reduction does bring some risk of removing important background noise but after using the Sphere’s for a year, I have noticed that the Sphere mode typically only activates when the noise is really bad combined with nearby speech. This is typically a restaurant or maybe a shopping mall/grocery store that is very noisy. The Sphere mode doesn’t activate on the street although I was in NYC last week for business and ya…downtown Manhattan sets off the Sphere mode just about anywhere…haha.

I haven’t ever found myself in a situation where the Sphere AI cut out critical sound and put me at risk.

Jordan

It’s an edge case. They might be able to implement the 4D approach Oticon uses to detect say walking in Manhattan. They could possibly run a partial Sphere mode. Future gens will improve, especially once someone catches up to Sphere.

I just got back from the audiology clinic and my audiologist is ordering the Phonak Spheres and Roger pen microphone for me. He said that at this time the Phonak Spheres are the best possible technology for my hearing loss.

In reply to @JordanK

Fascinating — I had a similar restaurant experience with the upgrade this weekend. Now that you mention it, I wish I’d done that same A/B test. For me, the difference wasn’t huge compared to the previous firmware, but I did notice the overall noise level seemed a bit lower while voices stayed just as clear.

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