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Got my first set of Phonak aids today

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In reply to @jim_lewis

@jim_lewis said:

Forget the name of the function, Speech Recovery, I think.

If we’re thinking of the same thing, it’s Speech Enhancer, and it’s a special feature of the “Calm” program - designed to give an extra boost to soft voices in quiet environments. (Having a kitten on your lap is optional but recommended. :grinning_cat_with_smiling_eyes:)

I was finding that in Calm mode I was getting too much treble in these situations - my voice and my wife’s voice were taking on an unpleasant shrill edge. (My hearing loss is real, but pretty mild - so I don’t really need all that much amplification.) I was advised by a couple of our more experienced gurus to turn the Speech Enhancer down (I think it’s at something like 8 now), and that seems to have helped. It does seem to pick up some background noise as well as voices.

(Chico the Rampaging Beast-Thing adds: Purr. Purr. CHOMP!)

Edited
@DonRadlauer said:

I was finding that in Calm mode I was getting too much treble in these situations - my voice and my wife’s voice were taking on an unpleasant shrill edge

IIRC (I have to check for sure), the Speech Enhancer boosts mainly lower frequencies. But - as I said - perhaps my memory is unreliable in this matter, because I set in “20” value long time ago…

EDIT:

I’ve made a few photos of screens where the bright red field represents the range of Speech Enhancer (in Polish “Udoskonalenie Mowy”):

20251227_160028(1)

Without that fields:

20251227_160110(1)

I believe I said this before but I am finding that the difference in the custom ear molds that Phonak made for my Spheres and the custom ear molds made by Oticon for my INTENT1 aids are so different. It seems that the Phonak ear molds stay in place do much better than the Oticon ear molds. But I am not getting any feedback from either set of ear molds. But the sound is so much better from the Phonak ear molds.

A huge difference between the Spheres and INTENT1 aids is how music sounds. And definitely speech in really noisy environments is much better with the Spheres, but I must say the lack of background noise when the Spheres switch to speech in noise is unnerving at times, I actually wonder if my aids have powered off. I am not seeing the issues I have read about with battery life of the Spheres, none Ultra, I wear my aids on average 15.5 hours., I stream on average 4.5 hours and I am in noisy environments on average 5 hours and at bedtime I have on average 63% battery life left.

Edited

I noticed this morning at my Men’s meeting just how much better that i was able to understand everyone around the meeting room. And the TV that we use for our morning Bible lesson sounded wonderful. And I didn’t have to make any adjustments to my Spheres to hear.

. Here is my comparison with my Oticon INTENT1 aids. Both sets of aids have their own strong points and weak points. With my Oticon INTENT1 I enjoy a more surround sound of my forest environment that I live in. With the Spheres I find speech understanding so much better, I enjoy music again, but it seems the Spheres removes some of my enjoyment of the natural environment that I live in. The Spheres are also so wonderful in noisy environments, meets, doctor’s appointments, and Church services. The Oticon INTENT1 are great for walking the forest trails. I enjoy the sounds of nature much more.

In reply to @Bimodal_user

@Bimodal_user said:

I’ve made a few photos of screens where the bright red field represents the range of Speech Enhancer (in Polish “Udoskonalenie Mowy”):

Interesting. Here’s what I see in Target for my prescription, if I crank up Speech Enhancer to 20 for greater visibility:

image

…So for me, the feature kicks in at 1500 Hz, and has its strongest effect between around 1700 Hz and 5000 Hz. (My actual current setting is 4 - which is barely visible on the graph.) It’s apparently based on where my aids are actually providing amplification; in my case, there just isn’t much going on until 1500 Hz. “My” Speech Enhancer could definitely have been causing (or at least contributing to) the shrillness I experienced - I think. (At lower settings for Speech Enhancer, the extra gain is at the same frequencies; it’s just much harder to see on the graph.)

I’m not really sure I need Speech Enhancer at all; but my current setting of 4/20 shouldn’t be doing much in any case.

I thought I would try to explain how things have changed since receiving my Phonak Spheres i90 hearing aids. My stress level has dropped, leading to.my blood pressure dropping. I am more aware of conversations, and I can even tell where the person is that is talking so I can face the person to better understand what is being said. I created my own program for walking the trails that allows me to hear nature, to help me detect the direction of an interesting sound. It is wonderful hearing the wind in the tree tops. Hearing squirrels run in the fallen leaves. Hearing someone walking up behind me or hearing someone riding a bicycle coming up behind me. Hearing the slow moving water in the creek. I love hearing the birds singing, the woodpecker at a distant tree in the forest. I love being in my yard and hearing the wind chimes that are placed in a few places around our property. I love the fact that i can listen to the TV without always needing it stream to my aids. Most of the time I can hear my wife talking from another room. I love being able to stream audiobooks from my phone, Kindle, Fire tablet and my android tablet without the need for an extra device. My backup aids, Oticon INTENT1, which was my primary aids before receiving the Phonak Spheres, are wonderful aids but not great in really noisy environments. I always thought they had a natural sound until i receiving the Spheres. The Spheres have a deeper sound that makes the Oticon INTENT1 aids sound tinny. I never could understand anyone that was soft spoken until the Phonak Spheres. I know no hearing aid will ever give me normal hearing. But to be honest I can’t remember what normal sound is like. I have been wearing aids 20 years and my audiologist has told me I should have been wearing aids for more than likely 40 years.

Yesterday was my scheduled day to wear my Oticon INTENT1 aids so the batteries could be exercised as well as the smart charger. What I find amazing is how well my audiologist has been able to adjust my Spheres to sound like the Oticon INTENT1 aids. Sure there is a difference in sound. The Spheres have a slightly lower pitch than the INTENT1 aids. I did not go into a noisy environment yesterday but I did hike to forest trails. I did stream my normal amount of audio books. But I did find for watching TV I needed to stream the audio to my INTENT1 aids while with the Spheres I just use the Myphonak TV program. The Sphere trail program I created is better for the forest trails than the INTENT1 default program. I only gave the default program for my INTENT1 aids. I noticed a some what tinny sound while streaming the TV and audio books with the INTENT1 aids. But overall comfort I felt just as relaxed and comfortable with the INTENT1 aids as I do with the Spheres. But again I did not go into a really noisy environment with the INTENT1. The Spheres are definitely better in noisy environments. One other thing I noticed I couldn’t hear the sound system of my Jeep Grand Cherokee as well with the INTENT1 aids as I do with the Spheres.

I am wondering what if anything that the Ultra firmware update will bring to my experience with wearing the Spheres.

@cvkemp said:

I am wondering what if anything that the Ultra firmware update will bring to my experience with wearing the Spheres.

Glad you have your spheres well-adjusted and are happy with them. The biggest difference with the Ultra firmware will likely be the battery lasting longer when in sphere mode for speech in noisy environments. Also, autosense should do a somewhat better job of figuring out what kind of sound environment you are in at any given moment.

I am not having any battery life issues, and the only real complaint I have is that the aids are too quick at switching to speech in noise.

Edited

Well, you will probably be even happier with the battery life then. There is an adjustable setting in the Target fitting software for when spheric mode will kick in. It can be adjusted so that spheric mode kicks in up to +/- 3db from the default noise setting. If that hasn’t already been adjusted, you might want to have that bumped up 1, 2 or 3 db. On my first adjustment, the Phonak rep insisted on setting that on -3db for me because she felt most everyone would rather have it kick in at the earliest possible setting. I’ll see what I think about that over the next few weeks. There is also a setting for how quickly autosense switches from one program to another, which could be adjusted to a slower switchover if you experience very brief periods of speech in loud noise and don’t want to switchover to spheric mode unless you have been in loud noise for a bit longer amount of time.

I will have to talk to my audiologist as I don’t or even own a windows computer. Or a modern computer for as that is concerned. I manage just fine with my android devices. And to think I am a retired IT professional with a Microsoft Certified System Engineer Master level background. When I retired I was burnt out.

Yes, definitely talk to your audiologist so you can get the Ultra update and have an adjustment made for when sphere mode kicks in. :+1: I am a longtime software engineer and definitely understand where you are coming from. I am also an Android user but could not get by without a PC as well. Enjoy your retirement and your spheres.

My audiologist has lowered the high frequencies of my INTENT1 aids.

Well I have been wearing the Spheres for 2 months now and this morning I finally get to experience them in full autosense mode in a somewhat noisy environments. I saw the Spheres smoothly go in amln out of the Spherical program as needed. It wasn’t irritating or disturbing they just did their job smoothly and effortlessly without me having to do anything. That is the way all hearing aids should function. While I do have the dedicated Spherical program now I will have it removed.

I am removing the manual program that was set up when I first got my aids. The automatic program is enough, the aids do automatically what the manualprogram does no need for duplicates. I am someone that believes that I should be able to put my aids on in the morning and forget about them until I remove them at bedtime.

Autosense is the aids default program that automatically determines the settings needed at the time and changes as needed as the environments change. My Spheres are not yet updated to the Ultra firmware so I have autosense 6. The Ultras have been upgraded to autosense 7. The main thing I have heard is improved battery life. And there are over all improvements to the firmware in general. But I have read some negatives to. It seems there are issues with the Bluetooth connectivity and possible issues with some of the autosemse settings. All seem to be minor issues.

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