From KS10 to Sennheiser Sonite Rise easiest transition ever

I made the change from Phonak P90Rs to the Sonite Rise a few weeks ago, with programming done at Costco. The first fit is so close to being ‘correct’ that I only see very minor adjustments possibly being needed.

The ‘automatic’ program works well across various scenarios & I have set up custom programmes for noisy environments such as restaurants and noisy car journeys. The ‘Speech in 360’ program is also very good at speech enhancement in noisy environments. Voices and other sounds have a well rounded tone that is very easy on the ear.

I have found the transition to be absolutely trouble free & the Sonites work with the Phonak TV streamer & Roger OnV3 when needed.

I find the understanding of speech in noisy environments a lot better on the Sonite Rise than on my old P90s. This is a significant step up in capability with the Sonite Rise being equivalent to the Phonak Infinio Ultra i90.

I also had the KS10s. I was going to trial the Rise, but decided to go with the Phonak Sphere i90s.

The Rise is priced really well at $1600. I paid $2327 for the Sphere i90s, which after a lot of research I thought would work better in my case. Noise really creates problems for me. I’m close to a severe hearing loss. The Sphere i90’s use two separate chips. The ERA chip is the sound processor, and the Deepsonic AI chip handles the noise reduction. When I tried the Sphere i90s, I was really surprised and pleased, especially with the Spheric noise in speech program, so I spent the extra $700 on them. The battery life of 56 hours has turned out to be exceptional given the number of hours I have to use Bluetooth and the Spheric noise reduction. My batteries have never gone below 40% after 16 hours of use.

The online audi I bought them from, Genesis-Hearing-Healthcare, has been great. I’ll miss Costco service, etc., but like you, I love these hearing aids. And my transition was also easy. I have a couple of Roger devices and the Phonak personal mic. I use a VOIP landline speakerphone frequently. I attach the personal mic to the speaker and turn the phone volume way down. The personal mic streams the landline to my hearing aids. That really helps me understand people with accents.

I transferred the Roger licences from my KS10s to the Sphere i90s, which was a pain, but I got it done. (Thanks Phonak for that issue!)

Even though Genesis has great remote fitting options, I decided to return to DIY. So far, it’s worked well.

I hope you have continued success with the Rise.

My cell phone is for restricted use only. I don’t give anyone, people or companies, my number unless they are important to me. I try very hard to keep my phone number from getting on the data resellers’ lists. That way, when I get a notification of a text or a phone call, I know it’s important and not junk calls and texts. I can leave notifications on and not get dinged to death all day long.

I have a VOIP landline that I use for 90% of my phone calls. It costs me $10 a month. I have two phones connected to it. One is a portable phone for people with hearing problems. It has boosted volume controls so I can hear a caller even without my hearing aids, and equally important, it lets me block crap calls with one button. I get 1 or 2 a day instead of the dozen or more I would get without the blocking ability. The other phone is a conference call phone. It lets me talk hands-free. and does a lot of other stuff like link multiple calls into one, etc. Depending on who I’m going to talk to, I may need streaming to hear everything clearly. Ninety percent of customer service is offshored, and those calls come with a variety of accents and talking speeds. That’s when I use the partner mic to stream the call to my aids.

Shortly, all customer service phone calls will be handled by an AI assistant. So, I’ll be able to understand the AI generated voice, but I’ll never get good customer service again because the point of AI-driven customer service is to let a company say they have responsive service while pissing off the customer so bad they never call back. Then I won’t need the partner mic.

Well that explains it.