How does the Sphere mode perform at the cinema, in a car or in environments with a lot of echo?

@DamonHill said:

I’ve been reading many threads and reviews about the Phonak Sphere but I haven’t been able to figure out yet how it behaves at the cinema

That’s what I’ve been asking for a while now, but apparently no one here is a movie fan.

Even people with normal hearing cannot follow the dialogue in movies… When at home, “Approximately 40% of global Netflix users keep subtitles or closed captions on all the time”. No HA can ever solve this imho…

I picked up my I90 Shere Ultras on Thursday last week and had no issues in the car, sadly not tried in the cinema yet, have to admit the spheres sound better than the I90R trial units I had for 6 weeks, the sound is less tinny and feels fuller, but I’m still not at 100% gain for my loss yet as this is my first set of HA’s

Haven’t been to a movie in years, but my I90 Spheres were a big step forward in the car. On my first tune-up, asked for some more noise reduction (older suv) on Car setting. Had been using a customized Car setting. Now Car when in automatic is great and I don’t use a tweaked setting anymore.

What Rob said! Tried to watch a DVD the other night and couldn’t understand the dialogue. But then my wife, who has normal hearing, couldn’t understand it either. We turned it off and read books from the library.

I’ve got the same problem with echo.

Similar comment as for movies- no HA on Earth will help you in cavernous places with awful acoustics, like churches. But I do wonder if sound-canceling audio devices can be tweaked to eliminate echoes.

@DamonHill said:

And how about echo? Does the Sphere mode have any effect on that? Places with strong echo are a great challenge for me…

Just a thought Damon. I would imagine that in vehicles and environments with Echo, Autosense (for i90s) would switch the aids over to “Speech in car” and “Comfort in echo”. As far as I know, neither use the deepsonic chip.

I experienced the sphere mode for the first time yesterday in a supermarket, it’s a bit strange, I did feel like i was in a bubble, and the voices sound different, but I could understand what was being said to me, the interesting thing is that announcements on the tannoy system clearly cut through.

A little disconcerting would be my best description, but I am also new to HA’s having finally been convinced to get my hearing checked.
Like a lot of new things it takes time and perseverance to get the brain to accept the new norm, I had a similar experience when I moved to varifocal glasses, at first they drove me mad now I don’t notice I’m wearing them and often go searching for them (whilst wearing them).

I trialled the I90R essentially for most circumstances the same as the spheres, when I got my spheres they changed the domes to easyguards, maybe because they seal better or just the fact that it’s a membrane instead of a true hole, the sound feels more natural less tinny, but as I have seen from the posts on here our hearing loss is pretty unique and the audiologist is the key to unlocking the best from the technology.

Yeah but you can ask your Audi go create a program based on the Sphere mode and then set it manually through the app.

That way,you can use\test the Sphere Mode in every context.

Yeah, thats exactly what I was wondering…