Phonak introduces Paradise, a new paradigm in hearing aid sound quality

Correct.

20 characters.

edit: page 58. Phonak Paradise uses BT 4.2

I don’t know why y’all are concerned about Bluetooth version 4.2/5.0/5.2 etc

Bluetooth classic profiles date back to 2.1 and will continue to be supported even when cell phones and other devices are finally released with 5.2. In other words 4.2/5.0/5.2 etc doesn’t matter as it all will use 2.1 based technology.

Version 4.2 only comes into play with these Phonak hearing aids to support the Bluetooth connection to the myPhonak app.

Yes, 5.2 is going to eventually be useful for hearing aids audio streaming but there are still many years until there will be enough technology out there that actually supports it, and until then Bluetooth classic will still be supported and useful. It has to be, because so many other devices use it (car systems, speakers, headphones etc).

There’s also no guarantee that cell phone manufacturers will adopt 5.2 or the hearing aid support it provides as it is in direct competition with Apple’s Low energy Audio protocol and Android’s ASHA protocol. Look at BT 5.0, iPhones have not implemented the dual streaming audio function, only Samsung and LG has.

You also may see that hearing aid manufacturers don’t immediately adopt it because of their use of made for iPhone and Android low energy audio protocols. If anything Phonak might actually end up being the first to do so because they have continued to avoid these proprietary protocols in favor of universal standardized options.

@bigaltavista said:

no guarantee that cell phone manufacturers will adopt 5.2 or the hearing aid support it provides as it is in direct competition with Apple’s Low energy Audio protocol and Android’s ASHA protocol.

mfi and ASHA are of interest only to those who wear hearing aids. LE Audio is for everyone. It will bring better latency (gamers, watching videos), improved battery life, improved audio quality, audio sharing, broadcast audio, multiple and independent streams. The phone manufacturers will support it for those reasons. The hearing aid manufacturers will support it because they were the ones that asked for it in the first place. They want to bring hearing aids into the connected mainstream.

I agree with you about Bluetooth Classic.It’s not going away.

I interpret dynamic to mean adaptive. I am guessing that this is only short term memory. For this session only. But I don’t really know. I have been trialing M90s and have decided to migrate from Oticon Opn to Paradise. My sense is that the Phonak approach works slightly better for sounds arriving at the hearing aids for me. The real driver is access to more bluetooth direct input in an Android environment. Getting the air gap out of the equation makes a huge difference.

Check My Thinking Please—Paradise Questions

I am migrating from Oticon Opn to Phonak Paradise. Yes, interoperability with Android is a driver.

I realize I can pair with up to eight BT devices and have two of those active simultaneously.
I plan to use a TV Connector as well.

One of the BT pairing and connections with be an Android 10 phone
One will be a Windows workstation with a BT radio.

Let’s say the phone and workstation are paired and connected. I can toggle between the two by tapping my ear with the P90R I think. Then if I leave the range of the workstation BT radio, the P90R will suspend that connection and be open to traffic from the phone? No action on my part needed? Or do I have to overtly toggle to the phone?

If I activate the TV Connector by feeding it a signal, will the P90R give that input precedence? Automatically? Does it drop one of the BT connections to accomplish this? I am hopeful that I do not have to make a selection in the myphonak app.

If I terminate the TV Connector signal, are the phone and workstation both active again? Perhaps they are if the TV Connector is a separately managed signal?

Is there a precedence set (phone always, or last used)?

Does phone traffic override TV Connector traffic automatically?
TIA

@VinceJ said:

can toggle between the two by tapping my ear with the P90R I think

Nope. Afaik. I have 13t version not R, but tapping is for voice assistance, stream pause and play and if I remember correctly, volume up /down…

Sound will come through which device is sending it.
I think it gives phone a priority though, don’t have 2 phones to test it.

In theory.

In practice I find it extremely unreliable, buggy, and have to restart the aids and bt connection on the devices.
Huge disappointment.

So in theory thing with coming in and out of range should work. In practice despite my best debugging efforts I haven’t been able to track which steps I have to do exactly in order to be sure which one will work. Since there’s still bug with notifications which steal stream, and if you turn off bt on device or just disconnect aids, how they refuse to connect back again without restarting them or bt or whatnot.

Stupid.

Marvels were easy, you kill the bt on device you don’t want, or connects to the one you want and its active. Works!

@VinceJ said:

If I activate the TV Connector by feeding it a signal,

TV connector is either connected or not, eg either in automatic or manual mode. It has precedent in case of manual selecting, but if I remember correctly, with automatically it messed up with bt, and they just didn’t want to work together or I couldn’t figure it out. I prefer manually connecting to tv, so I changed that in the fitting sw and now tv has precedence, no other bugs noticed.

@VinceJ said:

Is there a precedence set (phone always, or last used)?

No information, only guesswork. Still didn’t realise how it works, but it’s buggy af.

Crashed app several times per day, app refuse to connect to the aid, no matter if I repair bt force close the app… Again bunch of bugs.

I wear one ha as ha and another as expensive headphone, no hearing loss, no adjustment for it. Same receiver from marvels - now I have irritating distortion.

And feedback. I can’t put my hand close to that p open fit receiver, it screams at me.

Marvels didn’t do that.

Almost same settings, both done with rem, exact same receivers (transferred from marvels to paradises).

Unless I get confirmation that firmware update is on the way, paradises aren’t worth half of the money they ask for them. Buggy product that was rushed over to release. Amount of frustration over the ‘features’ and no noticeable improvement over hearing part compared to marvels, for my case, just not worth the trouble.

If marvels were their flagship, paradises are candidates for worst ones.

I don’t know got if marvels were so buggy when they were released, now they’re well rounded product worth it’s cost and paradises are somewhere in their dust.

Judging how they messed up sound in aid that doesn’t do any aid, this new ‘paradigm’ is laughable
Sound quality my ax

Blacky, could it be that the firmware in your Paradise is not up to date?

@Zebras said:

People were saying this with the Marvels as well.

I was wondering about that. So they’re testing in the production

Do you maybe remember how long it took them to become stable? Or which topics can I read about those complaints?

For example, bt on my computer sees them, but refusing to connect to them until I restart the aids and all connections.
Marvels did connect slow but I have a feeling they were more predictable.

Hmm. We seem to have one of those knotted tangles of string. Pretty common with new releases.

Blacky, do you think the dominant theme of your hiccups was bluetooth? Even the distortion you mentioned might be traced to the connection. It seems the Paradise, with a new processor I realize, is largely a Marvel with a motion sensor and improved (perhaps wishful at this point) connectivity. I am involved with 3 other beta test platforms at the moment. Interesting and engaging if you can tolerate the pain. Remote support does not include firmware updates. I think I remember that from somewhere and that is pretty common. Unfortunately, a visit to the audiologist consumes most of a day for me. I was trying to arm myself prior to Paradise delivery on the 10th of September. I suspect Phonak will ultimately deliver the features they advertise. It might takes 6-12 months. If I had the Marvels presently I would postpone delivery. So I think I am bound to be a beta tester for Phonak. There are worse things. With the right mindset it could be an interesting journey.

@VinceJ said:

Even the distortion you mentioned might be traced to the connection

To one ear but not the other? Maybe connection between them, but that’s not BT anymore.

Feedback issues and other stuff shouldn’t have anything with BT.

Something is really screwed up.

And paying several thousand to be a beta tester doesn’t look tempting for me.
It’s not unsurvivable, it’s just pathetic that they release buggy stuff and ask us to pay for it. And advertise supreme sound quality that’s what makes me angry.

I’ve never been at the beginning of the release cycle for HA before and I’m just disappointed. Very. And angry because it is frustrating especially when you have something to compare with which works.

I don’t want to pay high price and wait a year to get product as it is advertised today. If my fitter confirms the waiting, I’ll just buy marvels. I want reliable HAs that don’t frustrate me, today.

I don’t depend on remote support, I DIY so I’ve checked myself if there’s an update, there’s not.

And if you need 1h trip, I’d recommend investing in noahlink wireless and downloading target, and getting familiar with it. It’s annoying if you have to travel just so that someone changes the order / ads custom programs, change behaviour of buttons and similar. I mean, chances are that you won’t do it

You are 100% correct. I don’t think they see the it as beta testing. We morphed into that thinking based on our perception of the product’s status. I am guilty in that regard.

I agree with you that we can expect upgrades only on paradises from now on.

That’s only thing stopping me from throwing those immediately out of my ear and run to my fitter begging to return me marvels. I want to talk with him in peace
Partially I hope he’ll call someone to find out if firmware is planned and when.

He can call, but you already know the answer.

Blacky, I was under the impression that the double tap was only available on rechargeable P90s. You have 13 batteries w/ double tap? I’m interested. Please confirm. I don’t want rechargeables. TIA