Phonak Spice

@Kadougan said:

@Sonor/Zildjian: For the difference between Phonak and Oticon…they are very big…audiologically and in application…but both are at the same level…and in front of everyone else!

This must be drummer-talk I don’t understand what you’re getting at.

My opinion is that while the new phonak line doesn’t seem to offer a great deal of immediate improvements it is quite impressive that they have come out with a new line within 1 year or so of releasing the original Audeo Smart. As phonak usually does they will continue to develop new products using the new platform over the course of the next few years and we should see some more improvements/features added. I’m also hoping that the new platform includes some ability for firmware/software upgrades in the future. The whole “APP” marketing tactic leads me to believe that there may come a time when clients purchase upgrades (or apps) as they are available. Would be better in some ways than having to buy new aids everytime something new is released.

Respectfully disagree- Phonak didnot have wireless sincronization in their aids- and now they say they can use an array of 4 microphones which can change the width of the directional mic (is really another fancy description of wireless sync). So really they are
NOT really offering anything new or revolutionary. Siemens and Oticon has been doing this 3yrs ago. To me, it seems they did not have a new premium instrument and they have throw this in between. Their software is indeed superior, they are on to something.
But from the features point of view this instrument disappoints really.

@xbulder said:

Respectfully disagree- Phonak didnot have wireless sincronization in their aids- and now they say they can use an array of 4 microphones which can change the width of the directional mic (is really another fancy description of wireless sync). So really they are
NOT really offering anything new or revolutionary. Siemens and Oticon has been doing this 3yrs ago. To me, it seems they did not have a new premium instrument and they have throw this in between. Their software is indeed superior, they are on to something.
But from the features point of view this instrument disappoints really.

Take a step back here, IF the Spice system is capable of delivering noise reduced speech across BOTH ears using cross head beam-forming, then it is revolutionary, as 2nd and 3rd order directionality massively enhances the signal to noise ratio.

If the system just gets both mics working the same plot at the same time I agree with you.

Clearly this product has not been launched in your areas yet. I attended the EUHA and the SPICE launch and can tell you it is revolutionary. It does not simply sync the two aid’s directionality but uses 4 mic beamforming using wireless datatransfer to improve SNR by another 3db. So true 4 mic beamforming, which totally unique today. Added to this are several other new features as well as a much improved soundflow and automatic voice tracking in Auto Zoomcontrol. I’d say other manufacturers might be left way behind with this release.

we would need to see details then to make a final statement. Ill be waiting for their presentation to give a final opinion. Lets hope they raise the bar

@Um_bongo said:

This is critical. That’s 30% in recognition terms - when most of the other manufacturers are claiming incremental increases of 0.1/0.2 dB are significant.

This looks like a more important paradigm shift than bluetooth IMHO.

Compare this to the “facts” an Oticon headoffice aud tried to feed me at EUHA claiming split directionality offered 8db SNR improvement over omni in the Vigo replacement. He went further to say each 1db SNR improvement = 20 to 30% speech discrim in noise improvement. With statement such as those I can only assume they are affraid. I was so shocked I simply walked away.

@hearnow said:

Compare this to the “facts” an Oticon headoffice aud tried to feed me at EUHA claiming split directionality offered 8db SNR improvement over omni in the Vigo replacement. With statement such as those I can only assume they are affraid.

Wasn’t from the southern hemisphere too was she?

Sorry, just saw the edit now. You could be right about them trying to up their figures, they sound like they are bricking it.

@Um_bongo said:

Wasn’t from the southern hemisphere too was she?

No, HE had a strong Danish accent with good command of the English language.

As for Phonak beamforming, they’velimited it to a manual program as it is extremely aggressive and has a very narrow beam, litterally picking a single speaker from a crowd. The normal directionality has also been improved by 1db SNR using a new directional based noise reduction algorithm. They demo’d live instruments on the very noisy show floor and the effect was amazing. No other manufacturer dared use live instruments for anything apart from showing audio streaming.

Now if I could just by a REAL pair of x-ray glasses.

And a real phone booth for changing into my tights.

TerryB

Seriously, this makes me wish I wasn’t about to be handed a pair of Core Audeo Smart IXs next week.

@hearnow said:

Clearly this product has not been launched in your areas yet. I attended the EUHA and the SPICE launch and can tell you it is revolutionary. It does not simply sync the two aid’s directionality but uses 4 mic beamforming using wireless datatransfer to improve SNR by another 3db. So true 4 mic beamforming, which totally unique today. Added to this are several other new features as well as a much improved soundflow and automatic voice tracking in Auto Zoomcontrol. I’d say other manufacturers might be left way behind with this release.

Hearnow,
Did the Phonak rep happen to mention anything about an upgrade to the iCom?

Doesn’t Starkey have a HA that has a speech enhancement feature, i believe its called “IQ” that would be similar to the Phonak

@TerryB said:

Now if I could just by a REAL pair of x-ray glasses.

And a real phone booth for changing into my tights.

TerryB

Seriously, this makes me wish I wasn’t about to be handed a pair of Core Audeo Smart IXs next week.

The aud has about 60 days to exchange it for the new model, so ask.

@Stratuscom said:

Hearnow,
Did the Phonak rep happen to mention anything about an upgrade to the iCom?

No change to icom

@tboy said:

Doesn’t Starkey have a HA that has a speech enhancement feature, i believe its called “IQ” that would be similar to the Phonak

Hello,

The beamformed directionality is far in advance of what you can get on any other aid. Proper binaural hearing aids have been possible in the lab for some time, but we’ve not seen real time transfer of signals from ear to ear up until now, due to the data rate requirements from very low power devices.

I expect someone very clever has written a codec to analyse the difference between the incoming signals from both aids in terms of direction, amplitude and frequency. This then pulls only the differential data from either side which gets added to the opposing ear. The reason it’s clever is that you don’t need to transmit the whole of the incoming signal across the head, merely the differences between right and left, which takes far less effort.

@tboy said:

Doesn’t Starkey have a HA that has a speech enhancement feature, i believe its called “IQ” that would be similar to the Phonak

There’s no resemblance between voice IQ and beamforming at all. Voice IQ is just sylabic noise reduction as far as I can tell. Others have been doing it for years