Phonak unveils Lumity hearing aid platform

@Neville said:

Resound says %150 increase in speech understanding

I think maybe they added on an extra 100% by mistake. 150% increase is an increase of 2.5 times (unless my maths is worse than I thought). The mind boggles actually. They’re saying that I’d hear 2.5 times better than I would have done using their previous model. On one hand you think “let me at it!”. On the other hand you think- as you say- what does it mean anyway?

Better speech in noise. So what does that make my paradise, crap in noise?

Judging strictly by the video, it looks like they’re induction charging. It also looks like a smaller charger & it possibly has battery power included.

Once they burn the AI network to silicon, it takes advantage of all it learned, but doesn’t learn any more. I don’t think that is generally understood, and marketing sure likes to take advantage of the lack of awareness.

WH

Give them a couple years, in the mean time I think you’ll see lumity in the various form factors, but I don’t expect a big pickup in performance. New silicon will come, and then new capabilities in the different form factors.

If I could get my HAs flashed to the new code, I’d probably do it. But I’m not going to be surprised if they don’t support that.

WH

Only rechargeable? I really like how small my marvels 312 are. How much bigger would these be?

I don’t understand why the rechargeables should be larger my More1 rechargeable aids are the same size as the ones with the 312 batteries

When the Paradise was introduced I sampled the rechargeable ones and thought they where huge. But they might have been the RT version. I chose to keep the Marvels because the batteries would not last me a complete day and also because the problem with static during BT phone calls persisted.
But I am hopeful again that Lumity will finally let me make clear BT phone calls. And curious after the first user experience and how long the batteries will last.

@hearingtracker3 said:

But I am hopeful again that Lumity will finally let me make clear BT phone calls

Maybe,but I doubt it as it’s the same chip and BT as paradise, sometimes it’s not just the bluetooth in the HAs that causes your issue, but the mobile phone.

Phonak Target and Media had to be updated to version 8.0.

It would be nice, if nothing is fundamentally different between a P- aid and an L- aid in the hardware, to get the new bits. Not that I expect it. But I can wish.

WH

Yeah, I don’t think it will happen. There is some precedent with the Marvel getting a significant FW upgrade and even more surprisingly the Costco KS9 got it too, but I’ve never seen it upgrade to the equivalent of a new model.

@d_Wooluf said:

I think maybe they added on an extra 100% by mistake. 150% increase is an increase of 2.5 times

In the 2022 white paper by Jespersen et al. (link below), the authors explain how they get the 150% improvement - and give it as a factor of 2.5. The results are shown in Fig. 4 from that paper.

And quoted from the paper, here’s how they do the math:

Results

Both legacy Ultra Focus and Front Focus showed significant
improvements over their respective omnidirectional modes.
Of even greater interest was that Front Focus provided a
significant improvement over Ultra Focus (Paired samples
t-test: t = 6.17, p < 0.001). The mean directional benefit for
Ultra Focus was 4.3 dB while Front Focus provided a mean
directional benefit of 8.6 dB. Front Focus provided a signifi
cant improvement of 4.3 dB over Ultra Focus (Figure 4). By
rounding this benefit up to 4.5 dB, this would represent an
intensity ratio of 2.5, allowing us to estimate an incredible
150% improvement in speech recognition in noise for Front
Focus compared to Ultra Focus.

To get the 2.5 factor, they converted their dB difference to sound intensity, apparently.

The sound put out via Front Focus is 2.5 times more intense relative to omnidirectional background than the sound output relative to background noise with the One’s Ultrafocus. (when I do the conversion, I get a sound intensity ratio greater than 2.5, ~2.6 if I use 4.3 dB and ~2.8 if I use 4.5 dB - so it’s possible I don’t really understand where their 2.5 factor comes from)

See middle white paper on this support page: Hearing aids ReSound - ReSound OMNIA support2
[13512_136155017 (webdamdb.com)

@davekstott said:

Judging strictly by the video, it looks like they’re induction charging.

From skimming through the user guides, it’s still contact charging, not induction charging. Although contact charging might be finicky if you don’t get the contacts right, it’s more efficient (~95%) in charging Li-ion batteries than induction charging (~70%) and you don’t heat the batteries as much for the same charge put in (~30% of induction charging is wasted as heat). Various manufacturers say the heating of batteries by induction charging does not significantly affect the product lifespan but when Phonak wants the devices to last 5 years and has no control over what room temperature a user decides to charge their batteries at, contact charging might be a better bet (also, the HA body has to have a pickup coil, which might add to the size of the body). Phone manufacturers usually define product lifespan as just a few years until Apple made them think different (sic)…

Link to user guides in following post:

Phonak unveils Lumity hearing aid platform

On the speech “improvement,” I think both Phonak and ReSound are claiming that only relative to their previous line of aids/software. So, it’s all relative. Although everyone’s hearing is different, it’s too bad there is no benchmark test for speech in noise, etc. Although benchmarks for CPUs and GPUs are also a bit of malarkey compared to real world use, at least there’s a sort of common standard whereby you get a bit of a feel how your smartphone, for example, can perform relative to other …