Phonak Ultra upgrade - how do we feel about it?

Thank you, @Neville. Appreciate your help! Sure seems like Phonak is dragging their feet on this one. Feels like it’s taking longer than usual.

Doesn’t help that my Phonak Naida B90 plus CROS died Memorial Day weekend and I am surviving with my Oticon Xceed 1 plus CROS for now.

@cvkemp , it’s not like whenever I put on my Spheres in the morning I notice the different sound of the Phonaks vs. the Oticons and wish I had that Oticon sound back. I got used to the more mechanical sound of the Phonaks pretty quickly. I didn’t notice a significant improvement in speech comprehension vs. the Mores when i used the standard Phonak programs. It would not have been worth it to me to switch to the Spheres if the Spheres didn’t have the Spheric mode. I believe you have said in the past that with your well-tuned Intents you don’t have problems with speech comprehension in noise.

I’d suggest you trial the Spheres and have your audi set up a separate Spheric program that you can engage manually. Then take both the Spheres and your Intents to really noisy or echoey places and compare your speech comprehension among the Intents, the Spheres in non-Spheric mode, and the Spheres in Spheric mode. If you don’t notice a very significant improvement with the Spheres you might want to wait for Oticon’s next release. I’ll bet the next Oticons will have something resembling Phonak’s Spheric mode.

How are people finding Lyric for varying audiograms, ski slope, mid frequency, reverse sky slope? It seems it would be ideal for roughly flat audiograms.

I’ve never fit a lyric on a cookie bite or a reverse slope. Lyric users are rare and those losses are rare, and so I just haven’t had the mix yet. I have a guy who has normal lows and basically just forced himself to get used to the minor occlusion, but he loves them anyway. Others are generally good candidates. Cookie bite tends to show up younger, and so those patients aren’t into their best earning years yet/have a lot of other expenses (kids, new home) and cannot justify the recurring cost of the lyric. I think for reverse slope it might be too peak-y; it’s generally built for gently sloping losses and adjustment options are limited. Plus, anecdotally, reverse slope people tend to be a bit more sensitive about their ears which doesn’t necessarily go with an extended wear device.

Every single one of our long-term lyric users is male though. Turns out when it comes to hearing aids men are more vain–or possibly just value the “no fuss” element a lot more highly. Best case scenario with a lyric person is that they come into the office once every 3-4 months for a 10 minute swap and then otherwise never think about their hearing aids aside from avoiding getting water in the ears. No batteries, no wax filters, no nothing–that’s probably nice. Maybe they are also more willing to risk pain and gore? Just a little scratch in the ear canal can really blow the ear up dramatically with a lyric–say you sleep really strangely and put pressure on it and something bruises or scratches, and then removal becomes a painful problem because of fluid build-up behind the device and. . . it can get unpleasant. But lyric guys just want to let it heal and try again.

We’ve had some patients in the Lyric for 15 years now. It’s a bit wild to me. Invest that annually at 6% over 15 years and that’s a house downpayment. It’s not the majority. A lot of lyric users start in the lyric and move to something else once they are more comfortable with the idea of having hearing aids. But the guys who love them really love them.

Just got a follow-up response from Phonak. There are two relevant bits of information:

On your Poco X7 Pro smartphone, please select “Hearing Aid” when pairing your Phonak hearing aids. This is the correct category for Bluetooth-enabled hearing aids and ensures optimal performance.

The other option is typically used for wireless earphones, earbuds, and headsets. Choosing the right setting helps enable features like spatial audio (if supported) and hearing health volume monitoring.

…So if your phone has a separate “Hearing Aid” option for the R-Phonak connection, use it.

Further, Phonak Ultra hearing aid is an upgrade for existing Phonak Infinio and Infinio Sphere hearing aids that uses a software/firmware update.

The new Phonak Infinio Ultra Sphere includes several improvement such as an optimization of its dedicated real-time AI chip for even greater efficiency, and Spheric Speech Clarity 2.0 delivers clearer speech from any direction with up to 30% more efficiency than before. You can read more here: AI Noise Cancelling Hearing Aids | Infinio Ultra Sphere18

Please note, existing Phonak Audeo Infinio R and Phonak Audeo Infinio Sphere hearing aids will require an upgrade to bring them onto the Ultra platform.

…So nothing earth-shattering here, but it’s a confirmation that once your Infinios are running 1.1.11.0, they are Ultras - and you can sit with the cool kids at lunch! (Phonak promises that you’ll be able to understand what the cool kids are saying. They do not promise that it will be anything very interesting.)

The link they sent is pretty much what we’ve already seen - not super detailed, but there’s no mention of any hardware changes (and “Ultra” is in parentheses in the headline). And looking at the linked updated User Guide, it doesn’t even seem to mention the “Ultra” part - although it does include the new EasyGuard as one of the earpiece options.

I’m not saying they aren’t different, just that they aren’t AS different as people sometimes make them out, particularly in a quiet setting. Compression settings can also be largely matched.

I don’t think anyone using the Sphere hearing aids (prior to the upgrade) would consider it a sub optimal experience.

My audiologist put the upgrade on my hearing aids and it was a very modest improvement.

I think Phonak is working toward continual improvement and seriously doubt they would withhold something better.

I expect that smaller, incremental updates will in fact be sent OTA - I can’t imagine that Phonak wants providers to have to get involved every time there’s a little fix or improvement. The Ultra upgrade, OTOH, is bigger than they seem to feel comfortable with as an OTA download.

Can’t always trust AI at face value. The I90 is an Infinio, but as pointed out this firmware update is too large and requires the updated fitting software.

And here’s more, just in - not that it adds much to our store of knowledge:

We completely understand your frustration and appreciate your patience.

We can confirm that our ERA chip is "Ready for Auracast". However, at this time, we’re unable to share specific details about future releases or provide a timeline for full Auracast compatibility.

Rest assured, we will inform our users as soon as the Auracast feature becomes available.

So it’s still an open question, but (at least by implication) they’re saying that we will eventually get LE Audio and Auracast.

I suspect that if more phones/venues/computers were already LE-Audio enabled, Phonak would feel a greater sense of urgency; but at this point it would still be a mostly theoretical advantage for most Infinio users.

My hearing aids arrived in the mail yesterday and I wanted to install the firmware, but it seems they upgraded to ultra because I already have that version.

@DonRadlauer said:

I suspect that if more phones/venues/computers were already LE-Audio enabled, Phonak would feel a greater sense of urgency

I suspect if Phonak enabled LE Audio and Auracast on their aids, venues would feel a greater sense of urgency in installing Auracast transmitters.

Just wait until they put out the Ultra Plus in the Spring…..

Does the Audi need additional training from Phonak for upgrading the software to Ultra? My Audi said that she’s waiting is waiting for this training in order to upgrade my Audeo Infinio 90 R with Cros. Is it worth going to another Audi and pay for the upgrade since I wouldn’t have a service agreement with her, unlike in the case with my current Audi?