I am trying to decide between Phonak Sphere versus Oticon Intent.
I have the usual hearing issues even when wearing my 4 year old Starkey Livio 2400 hearing aids - hard to hear in noisy restaurants, wind noise, poor clarity when others talk even in somewhat quiet rooms, and the usual ‘most everyone needs to talk a bit louder’. And I really enjoy listening to high quality music recordings.
Does my provide any guidance?
Notes from the audiologist tests: Bilateral, mild sloping to severe L, profound R sensorinemal (my interpretation of doctors handwriting) loss. Word recognition is excellent R and poor L.
Discrimination test results: R 96% correct. L 76% correct.
I have both the Oticon INTENT1 and the Phonak Spheres I90 aids. With the INTENT1 I have the connect clip, TV Adapter, and the EDUMic. With the Spheres I have the Roger ON 3 microphone/TV adapter combined. My review is this both are excellent aids. But the Spheres are awesome in very noisy environments. The INTENT1 aids for me doesn’t help me understand speech in extremely noisy environments. If you aren’t in really noisy environments then the INTENT1 aids are great. The INTENT aids with the latest firmware is compatible with , and LE audio Bluetooth. The Spheres has Bluetooth Classic and connect to more Bluetooth devices at the present time. I will try to answer your questions if I can. I can only do so from my personal experience.
That depends on you. I am a veteran with a combination of genetic loss and military service related hearing loss. For me the extras are very important with my INTENT1 aids. With the Spheres the Roger On microphone comes in handy for meetings, lectures. The TV adaptor allows me to hear the TV without the TV volume being loud and I can even mute the TV speakers and still hear the TV.
I wear the Sphere I90s. Good in restaurants and one on one noise. Spheres are the best I’ve used in wind and tolerate things like hoodies and toques really well. Oticon pairs better with iPhones. Spheres pair better with Android. Get the TV streamer.. you won’t regret. I’ve got three Phonak TV streamers.. all free when bundled with new . I travel with one.. can even be used on an airliner.
Are the TV adapter and microphone required? I would think good hearing aids would not need them.
Not required but many people using correctly adjusted, high quality hearing aids find that and TV adapters and other ancillary devices to be helpful. These devices typically improve the signal-to-noise ratio, making it easier for the user to understand the signal. I use one generation older aids Oticon (Real 1) and find the TV adapter very useful, especially with soft or accented speed when watching TV or listening to something on a computer (Zoom, etc).
Sound from an omni-directional source falls off according to the inverse square law. So let’s consider the case of a remote microphone worn by a person you wish to hear. The remote microphone is probably a bit less than a foot from the person’s mouth. If you are 10 feet away from that person, the sound pressure level from their voice is approximately 100 times lower at the hearing aid microphone than at the remote microphone. So the “signal” you wish to hear can be much louder compared to the noise “background” when using the remote microphone.
A similar thing happens with the TV Adapter where the signal (TV sound output) falls off in a room as the distance (viewer to TV speaker) increases compared to the room noise (HVAC fan, refrigerator, conversation, etc) using the hearing aid microphones. The direct signal from the TV Adapter doesn’t fall off with distance and won’t include the room noise if the hearing aid microphones are muted.
I have never worn the Phonaks, so my opinion is obviously lacking real world experience. I currently wear the Oticon Intent 1 hearing aids.
However, I did some research on this because Phonak keeps coming up as highly recommended. However, based on my research (and I stand to be corrected on this), I would stay with the Oticon.
The problem with Phonak is four fold.
Like Resound and Widex they seem to prefer having different environmental programs for quiet, noisy etc. When I was trialing out the Widex, I could actually hear the hearing aids jump from program to program - even mid speech. It was extremely irritating. I don’t know if this is a problem with Widex only.
When I used to wear Resound (well over a decade ago), I found that the environmental programs consistently got things wrong and whatever program Resound decided I needed based on the environment I was in just made things worse. These environmental processing programs just never worked for me when I was wearing the Resound.
One thing that I really love about the Oticon hearing aids is the open paradigm where you can hear everything and Oticon allows the brain to naturally filter sound. Granted Oticon does do a lot of processing in noisy environments, filtering out or reducing the volume of things, but it’s nothing like how Widex, Resound and presumably Phonak work. Phonak etc create an artificial bubble where you can supposedly hear well in noise within that bubble, but I always felt cut off from the rest of the world being in that bubble. I always hated it as it felt unnatural and artificial. Oticon is by far my preferred listening experience.
The last thing, based on my research is that apparently Oticon still takes the crown for speech discrimination although obviously Phonak shines in noisy environments over Oticon as result off this bubble effect. However, I would prefer Oticon to help me get pretty much all the speech, instead of having to ask people to repeat themselves (which according to other people is a slight issue with Phonak). Not that Phonak is bad, but Oticon really does shine for speech discrimination.
Hope that this helps. Just for reference, I hear speech very well in noise with Oticon. I always struggled to hear speech in noise with Widex or Resound. So, I don’t think that Phonak would suit me.
With respect to the environmental switching, I think it’s fair to say that Phonak did have a problem with this in previous versions. I experienced this as well. However, it depends on the Autosense version. I believe that from Autosense 5, things have improved a lot. My understanding now, when using Autosense 7, is that I have not seen any user reports/anecdotes of people complaining about this. There have even been subtle adjustments to correct a problem whereby Autosense was falsely jumping out of mode into the music program.
With respect to Resound and Widex I suspect they too have corrected a lot of previous issues with better firmware/AI algorithms etc.
With respect to the open paradigm of Oticon, I agree, this was one of their biggest selling points. I wear Oticon Intents and I have a pair of Oticon Xceeds and I can testify that in a lot of environments I have heard clear unfiltered speech, and it is fantastic. However, I would caveat that by saying that in the very loudest environments I have ran into problems, which is why personally I am switching to Phonak. I believe that the open paradigm suits people with a more moderate low frequency loss, but for a higher low frequency loss, it runs into difficulties. However, I love the Intents and I am almost gutted to consider alternatives.
With respect to speech discrimination, I don’t think that is fair. Phonak is renowned for it’s processing in trying to achieving comprehension of speech, even to the point of compromising on the clarity so it sounds slightly artificial. It is trying to deliver comprehension of speech. I have worn both and I can’t honestly say that Oticon is clearer, except in certain environments, such as the car, where I have had more success than Oticon. However, it is very naunced. The Phonak’s have achieved better zoom capability, for example, in very noisy environments than the OPN variants I have used, although I have had success in zooming with previous versions of Oticons I have used.
I think it’s very hard to generalise and say one is better than the other for all classes of hearing loss. I think for mild/moderate loss, the Oticon Intent must be a fantastic hearing aid. But for more severe losses the Phonak has the advantage of the Sphere AI and the Roger suite of accessories.
I have never worn Phonak, so I don’t have real world experience wearing them. My comments are based entirely on researching what other people on this forum reddit and other websites have said.
I trialed the Widex hearing aids only last year and I can state they have definitely not fixed this irritating jumping around in programs.
I agree, based on what I have read, Phonak’s artificial bubble does make a difference for people who struggle to hear speech in noise and even Oticon doesn’t help them. I am very fortunate that I seem to be one of those rare people that hear very well in noisy environments (only when wearing Oticon though). Interestingly enough I have both low and high frequency loss, yet I hear well in noisy environments with my Oticons.
Note - one important point. Is your problem with Oticon an Oticon issue or is because they fit you with Vac+ instead of . I found that I heard much better in the car with NAL-NL2. The problem is not Oticon, it’s their fittting rationale does not boost the higher frequencies sufficiently. Other users on this forum reported the same thing - boosting the higher frequencies helped them to hear properly in the car.
With regards to speech discrimination, I am not meaning to be unfair. I base my statement on the fact that I repeatedly see everywhere, Oticon ranks as the best for speech discrimination over all other aids. That is not to say that Phonak are bad.
Try Oticon with NAL-NL2 and I think you will be pleasantly surprised at the improvement in hearing high frequencies. Vac+ is underfit.
I don’t think I have a problem with high frequencies. Well - my high frequency loss is bad, acknowledged It’s just in really noisy environments, where the +10Db benefit from the Intents doesn’t give any benefit. I don’t think Vac+ is the issue as I was fitted with . However, I will report back once I have trialled the Spheres.
Thanks all for the comments. I am leaning towards the Sphere 90s but not decided. This process is like figuring out what tube preamp to use in an audiophile system, everyone has opinions but no real hard facts to drive the decision process.
My audiologist, a ‘Doctor of Audiology’ says both hearing aids are very good. She sells more of the Oticon because the Phonak are much more expensive. She sold and adjusted five Sphere 90s last year so not a lot of experience with them.
I should have added, I am buying thru ZipHearing using a local audiologist so the price for the Oticon Intent 1 and the Sphere 90 is the same, $4900. This makes the decision a bit more difficult.
It is a very difficult one. It could just come down to user preferences, if, all things being equal, you get the same performance roughly in quiet and in noise. For me, the advantage of the Intents, I found, was simpler operation and that I did not notice any switching. On the other hand, I think the connectivity with the Phonaks is superior. Up to 8 devices can be connected, 2 simultaneously. This may not sound significant, but when you use these devices every day and have to switch between them, having in the worst case to turn the Oticon on and off can be inconvenient. That said, with respect to connectivity, the Oticon is compatible - now. For the Auracast fanbase, this is a big plus.
I would see if you could trial both to see what your preferences are personally, and if you notice any difference in performance.
My unaided Word Recognition is 16% R and 24% L. I tried the Oticon Intents and returned them. I tried the Phonak I-70 and returned them. When I tried the I-90 Sphere Ultras, the difference blew me away! The I-90 Sphere have a function called Speech Enhancer (I think the only model that does) that works in normal environments and it really helps me. I’m retired, lead a very quiet life, and am rarely in large groups or high noise environments. I told my Audiologist we should run the word recognition with these hearing aids in and compare the results to my unaided scores. Haven’t done it yet…she said next appointment! I’m sure the results will be dramatic. I highly recommend you try the Phonak I-90 Sphere before you buy. They are expensive, but for me it is well worth the extra cost to be able to recognize words and know what people are saying without guessing!
I don’t think Vac+ is the issue as I was fitted with REM
I would highly recommend trying to compare with Vac+ and see what you think. Quite a few people have said that Vac+ is just not boosting the high frequencies sufficiently and it was only when they (myself included) moved to NAL-NL2 that various hearing issues were resolved. This has nothing to do with which just verifies the fit. Vac+ is intended for acceptance of hearing aids (making sounds natural), whereas NAL-NL2 focuses on maximum speech comprehension.
No, sorry, this is not the issue. I have used with Phonak and have had more success with V5, which is fit by the NHS on my Exceeds. In actual fact, I had NAL-NL2 fit on my Nadia Lumitys, when I wore them for under a year, and the performance was awful in noise. I found that it did not apply enough prescriptive gain in the high frequencies and DSL V5 was much better when I switched to it. I have left the Vac+ standard fitting on my Intents, because I believe it is sufficient. My issues are pretty clear to me - in extremely loud noise, I am not getting enough benefit to hear peoples voices around me. This has been demonstrated on at least 4 occasions.
As someone that has both and has a cookie bite hearing loss, I disagree with you. Sure I am now 78 and I am loosing my high frequencies too. I love both the Intent1 aids and the Spheres. I can choose either depending on what I am going to do. But I choose my my Spheres for streaming. I choose my Spheres for meets, lectures and restaurants. I will choose my Intent1 for relaxing, walking the forest trails. But my Spheres are my choose of there is more than one person to have conversation with.
Hot Springs Village, Arkansas
England, UK
It’s just in really noisy environments, where the +10Db benefit from the Intents doesn’t give any benefit. I don’t think Vac+ is the issue as I was fitted with . However, I will report back once I have trialled the Spheres.