I recently bought a pair of Phonak i90 Infinio Spheres. It’s the first time I’ve purchased without an audi or Costco involved. It was an interesting experience. I bought my Sphere i90’s from Genesis-Hearing-Healthcare, which is an eBay seller, online retailer and a long-time HA center owner and operator. They are an authorized Phonak dealer. I got the pair for $2327, including the charger, tax and shipping.
I used Phonak Paradise hearing aids previously, and after a new hearing test, I decided it was time to have the HAP reprogram them and to look at new HA options. I was surprised at the jump in technology from the Paradise and Lumity to the Sphere i90 Infinio’s. After researching the Sphere i90’s, Starkey Omega, and Oticon Intent, I decided the i90’s fit my needs the best, which is a combination of hearing improvement and the situations I am frequently in.
I’m in my mid-seventies and my twenty sixth year of retirement. About forty percent of my day is spent streaming–TV or the phone. Another forty percent is in quiet settings talking to people, working on the computer or working in one of my work shops and twenty percent is in noisy environments that make hearing speech difficult. While understanding what someone said in noise was hard, I could tell them if the bearing sound from their HVAC blower was bad news. Not real useful!
All three of the brands had some form of using a neural network chip. Only Phonak had two chips, the ERA chip for sound processing and a chip for neural net processing of noise. Having had experience with chips and neural networks, I liked Phonak’s design the best.
After deciding on the i90’s, I took a close look at prices. I talked to audi’s and spent time looking at internet seller pricing. There are a lot of options. Considering only authorized Phonak dealers, I found prices ranging from around $7,000 down to $2450 per pair. All of them included the standard Phonak trial period, warranty and either in-house fitting or remote programming. My final price was $2327 including tax and shipping.
For every seller that made my list, I used Gemini AI to consolidate and pull all of their reviews from every source, looked at who owned them, found all the corporate data available for each one and their affiliates, checked their BBB info, researched their location and any property records and finally, considered their length of time in business and any changes in ownership.
I decided to buy the Phonak aids from Genesis-Hearing-Healthcare, which is an eBay seller, online retailer and a long-time HA center owner and operator. Their price on eBay was $2450. I marked it as a favorite and waited a few days to see if they offered an automatic 5% discount that eBay sellers frequently use on liked items. An offer came back at $2327, so I bought them. I found a couple of other online/eBay sellers that were close in price but turned out not to be authorized dealers.
(Be aware that eBay likes to charge sales tax on HAs, even in states that don’t tax HA purchases. Ask the seller to fix it.)
I sent Genesis my and asked for a couple of minor adjustments. They were very responsive and within a week I had my new HAs.
With my Paradise aids, I wore c-shells on number 4 M receivers. I needed them to improve my hearing as much as possible with the Paradise technology. I planned on wearing c-shells with the i90’s also. Genesis quoted $150 a pair, including tax and shipping, on the number 6 M c-shells. Phonak strengthened the 6 receiver wire and connectors to make them more durable than the 4’s, which I replaced at least once a year. However, the change also meant I couldn’t use my spare 4’s on the sphere i90’s.
Since the c-shells take two to three weeks to arrive, I asked Genesis to send the i90’s with the new EasyGuard domes so I could try the new domes out also.
To my surprise, after only the initial programming and with the EasyGuard domes, the i90’s were excellent.
Back in 1997 and 1998, I let our engineering staff share our company knowledge on DSP chips with the engineers working on the Sonic Innovations Natura HAs. At the time, we were using leading edge low voltage 22 bit DSP chips in our products, While Sonic didn’t need that level of precision, they wanted 11 channels to make the Natura customizable across the entire audiogram instead of just a couple of large blocks. At the time, my wife wore Starkey analog hearing aids. After looking at the new Sonic design and their software, I told my wife I would get her a pair of the first Natura’s Sonic made, and that they would change her life. and they did. For me, i90’s are to the Paradise HAs what the Natura aids were to the Starkey analogs. The difference is that dramatic.
Originally, I planned on using my long-time local audi for tweaking the i90’s even though Genesis included remote programming in their price. It turned out that my audi wanted a rather large “adoption fee” upfront that included multiple visits for fitting changes. What I can afford versus what I’m willing to pay are two very different issues. I didn’t think I needed more than one visit, or possibly two, to tune up the i90’s, so why pay for more out of the gate. I called other audi’s, asked several questions, with one being if they had fitted any i90’s. I made an appointment with one that had a really good local reputation.
When I got to his office, his receptionist kept apologizing saying he was running behind. An hour later, while we were discussing Phonak, Starkey and Oticon aids, I asked him what version of Target he was using. When he said version 8, I knew he hadn’t fitted anyone with any models of the Audeo Infinios. I should have left right then.
I told him that Target needed updating before he could make any changes. After an hour and a half of updating misfires and explaining how to use Target to make the changes I wanted, I finally gave up. Unfortunately, he saved the fitting session. Not stopping him from doing that was as big of a mistake as going there in the first place.
After that waste of time and money, I thought I would just do a remote with Genesis and get things straightened out. I didn’t know that saving the fitting session on a computer other than the one that Genesis used to do the initial setup meant they were shut out from ever doing remotes again without an in person fitting. They offered to reset the HAs if I mailed them back, but that’s really risky due to a potential loss in transit and the cost of insurance. And even with insurance, collecting on any lost item with any shipper is a long and nearly impossible process.
At that point, my options were down to finding another audi or programming the HAs myself. I had Target v11.2 on my computer and had done training sessions with it before I went to see audi v8. However, I didn’t have a NoahLink, so I bought a new v1 unit for $88 on AliExpress. I got it for that price by using a welcome buy combined with coupons.
I spent a couple of more days doing practice sessions on Target until I felt comfortable with v11.2. I also decided to try a different approach to tuning the hearing aids for me. I used the Gemini bot to predefine the changes and my options for making them. As users of Target know, there are often multiple ways to reach the same result.
The answers an AI bot delivers depend on the questions and how they’re stated. Essentially, the same question has to be asked multiple times using different phrasing and words. In addition, every change that’s made to an HA has trade offs, and understanding the pros and cons of every adjustment is important.
Asking how to adjust the volume for a specific program in Target is much different than a question like how to reduce the tinny sound of female voices. A vague response is something like lowering the gain on the high and mid frequencies. Doing that will definitely change the sound of female voices and a lot of other sounds as well, but it might not be the best way to achieve the desired outcome. In addition, tinny is only one description of the problem. Shrill, piercing, metallic, harsh, and grating are also other possible descriptions of less than natural sounding female speech.
I input close to a hundred questions with various wording and descriptions of each that I wanted. Most of the questions were directed specifically at the i90’s and the Target steps needed to make the changes, but some questions were general HA questions about things like floor hiss, feedback and occlusion.
For each objective, I copied all the possible fitting changes and the pros and cons of each one into a word document dedicated to that topic. Once I had all the Gemini solutions collected, I read them a few times and thought about each adjustment method and its trade-offs. I also practiced the specific fitting changes in Target to make sure I knew how to do each one, even the ones I didn’t intend to use.
Rather than wait for the Noahlink to arrive from China, I borrowed one locally for a day. After setting it up, I used it make a master copy my Paradise HA’s and the i90’s.
To finish the fitting on the sphere i90’s, I changed one setting at a time. If the instructions from Gemini included multiple methods to fix an issue, I tested each one separately. I did it this way to increase my understanding of the tradeoffs associated with the solution and the difference each one made in my understanding of speech and hearing in general. After going through all the possible adjustment options for that problem, I picked the one I liked best and kept it.
It took about an hour and a half to go through everything, but in the end, I was exceptionally happy with the results. I felt my hearing was at least 95% as good as it was going to get in every situation. I could have gotten there in one fitting session if I had steered clear of audi v8 and skipped the remote. With all the options I went through, it would have been nearly impossible to do it with remote programming. The Genesis remote HAP is a very nice person whose sanity I didn’t want to disrupt.
This is what worked for me. It may or may not work for anyone else. Some fitters may feel they can push their HAs closer to 99% with more tinkering. I stopped where I did for a couple of reasons.
When I was in grad school, I developed what I called the carnage axiom-if someone tries to maximize or minimize anything, they’ll likely break it. So, 95% is good enough for me.
And finally, there’s the law of diminishing returns. Achieving each percentage increase above 95% becomes geometrically more difficult. It’s like playing golf. Shooting 120 is easy, and the cost per shot is relatively low (if golf were cheap again). Getting to 80 is challenging and requires a lot of practice and the cost per shot is increasing. Zero-handicap players have a very hard time improving their game by just one more stroke, and the cost of eliminating that stroke is huge.
One change I made needed zero input from Gemini. The ERA sound processing chip in the i90 aids is faster and has more onboard memory than the Paradise PRISM chip. It uses the 5.3 Bluetooth standard, which reduces power consumption and increases stability. And that’s all great, except the i90 default when using the TV connector is set to automatic syncing. No matter where I was, in the garage, basement or backyard, when anyone turned on the TV, my aids immediately started streaming the program. I fixed that first!
You’re ignoring this member’s posts.
New Jersey
Singapore
Doncaster UK
Poland