Phonak Audéo Sphere

@MDB said:

Phonak was groundbreaking with their Sword Chip when they lowered it to 28nM from 65nM. At the time, phone process size was around 5-7nM. From what I gather, it is tremendously expensive to develop chips on very small processes. Smart Phone manufacturers deal in enough volume to make it profitable. I’m not sure about HA manufacturers

This is true, but the good news is that smartphone manufacturers’ demand for leading edge nodes is what makes it (eventually) possible for HA manufacturers to gain access to smaller process sizes. In other words, once TSMC spends tens of billions of dollars to create a 5nm chip fab, they will keep that fab running as long as possible, even after smartphones have moved onto smaller processes.

I don’t know what the Deepsonic chip is in terms of process size, but I expect that HA manufacturers will continue to benefit from process shrinks, even if they are 5+ years behind what smartphones are using

@Ryan_D said:

Right now a bottle neck is simply power consumption (as we’re seeing with this first gen product from Phonak). But chips continue to get smaller and power requirements continue to get lower

I’m guessing that in 5 years or so, the 3 hour limit for the Deepsonic chip will appear laughable. I think the big jump for AI in hearing aids will likely come when we can have the AI chip running 100% of the time. But that said, most HAs work pretty well in quiet environments right now, so limiting the AI processing to only very loud situations is probably going to give people at least a significant portion of the benefit that we’d see if AI were running 100% of the time.

Has anybody tested the sphere mode while in a car?

For me, car is the most challenging environment as I always hear a lot of noise at high speeds and voice gets masked by the engine/wheels/wind.

If the sphere mode is able to isolate voice not only in noisy environments like restaurants but also in cars, it would be a game changer for me.
For example, the Roger On helps me only in restaurant but it’s not effective in the car…,

I assume that in the automatic there will be no sphere, but you can set a second programm with the sphere and use this in the car, should work but I have not yet tested them.

BTW this 3h limit is only on automatic, this to ensure that the hearing aids will run a “whole” day.

I have moulds with a small (1mm) vent so I should benefit greatly from Roger On… and I do at restaurants. By car is another story…,

@Neville said:

How do you mean? Lumity speech in loud noise program also kicks in at 69 dB at either ear. I think in the paradise it had to be 69 in both ears and back in the venture audeo I think it was higher at 73 iirc.

I mean that information should be easily accesible on Phonak website in PDFs, such as:

"In AutoSense OS, following modes kick in, when:

1. Calm situation - [conditions with dB numbers]
2. Speech in Noise - [condition: noise: x dB; speech signal: y db]

etc., etc."

Totally agree. I just got a pair of the Spheres today on a trial and it seems like the AI mode kicks in once you hit a certain noise threshold. So it’s definitely not on all the time (and that made me realize the 3-4 hours you get with it becomes super usable) but when it does kick in, it’s like you have a mic on that person and its going straight to your ears. I can’t wait to see how good this gets in the next 5-10 years.

@Misterref78 said:

I assume that in the automatic there will be no sphere

@Bimodal_user said:

AutoSense OS 6.0 do has Spheric Speech Clarity. You can also set it as manual program.

@WhiteHat said:

I read that as “while in the car”

WH

Yes in the car, of course it has it on the automatic, you can deactivated and set it to a second programm or there are 3 option when it will be activated: medium loud noises, loud noises, very loud noises.

For those who have the Phonak Target software, I was able to download 10.0 today (was at 9.1). UK user.

Activation level goes from 0 (moderate noise) through default 10 (loud noise) to 20 (very loud noise) but no details as to what dB those numbers relate to.

They mentioned 69dB, so with that slider you can set it at predefined level, interesting, and a battery saving mode for just 3 hours a day (24 hours?) you can bypass that limit as well

So this is why Speech in Car is separated AutoSense OS program. Do you not see any improvement with this?

I’ll try the Music program, too, even if our settings might differ greatly…

No, I’ve added them all as additional programmes, and all disappointing. They may reduce noise, but they alsk reduce clarity, to me. The voices sound dull.

in the fine tuning it is possible 3000 khz, amplify the soft sound to make the speech sound sharper. Try it. Maybe it will be better