Phonak Infinio Sphere I90 Review (Another One!)

I will try watching some home movies to give an update there. I can tell you that playing some computer games with speakers, I did notice that they were trying to dull the sound down as if it were background noise. I’m 99% sure that this is more of a noise reduction/compression setting thing rather than a Phonak/Sphere thing. Maybe some others with more experience with Phonak can chime in. It’s my one big pain point with these but even just messing with turning the noise reduction to 0 in the app seemed to make that stop.

I’m coming from the Oticon world where there isn’t much noise reduction, if at all, so I prefer to just hear things as they are. The Phonaks feel a little aggressive in this area but I thought the same thing with the KS10 when I tried those. Should just be a fine tune issue.

100% I got 3 years out of my Oticons before the batteries needed to be replaced. I read some Phonak docs when these first came out that showed how many battery cycles you got before you had decline in the charge and I think they were claiming something like 4 years. I can’t exactly remember. But with any rechargeable, the batteries will need to be changed at some point. One of the things I hate about this trend to move everything to rechargeable but it’s a small inconvenience for something that happens infrequently.

@Ryan_D said:

I will try watching some home movies to give an update there. I can tell you that playing some computer games with speakers, I did notice that they were trying to dull the sound down as if it were background noise. I’m 99% sure that this is more of a noise reduction/compression setting thing rather than a Phonak/Sphere thing

I’d go along with this. I used “Music” in my last visit to the cinema. I felt that the compression in the APD fitting software kept the volumes pretty well. The louds weren’t too loud and the quiets were audible. Also, noise reduction didn’t cut in, to take sounds away. I can’t see the Sphere chip helping here at all, it would surely just get confused.

I’ve tried listening to youtube videos of people talking in noise and cranked it up. It doesn’t trigger the sphere mode turning on. So there’s something going on in the model that is able to tell the difference between people talking and a recording of them talking. Maybe it is different in a theater but I couldn’t get it to swap over by “tricking” them.

I had a similar experience when testing the Lumity. It only worked when I used multiple devices, with a recording of a person talking directly in front of me, and other devices playing background noise on either side.

While trying out various options (Airpods, various OTC devices, etc.), I used to go to a crowded cafeteria-style food court, play an audiobook on my ipad’s speakers, and see how well the device isolated the narrator’s voice. When I tried this with the Lumities, I was initially frustrated because it just wouldn’t work at all. Then I realized it had focused on the group of people talking at the next table, who I was directly facing, and I was getting excellent isolation of their voices relative to everything else. I don’t know how it sense that the ipad voice wasn’t really a human, but since I got it to listen to humans rather than digital recordings, I decided I could live with that.

@CombatWombat said:

Then I realized it had focused on the group of people talking at the next table, who I was directly facing, and I was getting excellent isolation of their voices relative to everything else. I don’t know how it sense that the ipad voice wasn’t really a human, but since I got it to listen to humans rather than digital recordings, I decided I could live with that.

Perhaps your microphones are facing too far upward, so when you bow your head to your iPad, they receive sound directly from the next table instead of the tablet.
I have that problem with previous receiver cable. According to the measurements, I should have gotten a size “2” cable, which was too long and caused my HA to wobble on my auricle. I’ve got the size “0” now, and it is better.

See that post:

Phonak Audéo Sphere

Maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit, but I am somewhat disappointed that Audeo isn’t L-shaped. It would be an improvement to align the two microphones more horizontally to improve their effectiveness. [image] (from Providing Some Direction – Beamformers Explained)

.

Speaking of speech and noise signal from the same loudspeaker:

@Ryan_D said:

I’ve tried listening to youtube videos of people talking in noise and cranked it up. It doesn’t trigger the sphere mode turning on. So there’s something going on in the model that is able to tell the difference between people talking and a recording of them talking. Maybe it is different in a theater but I couldn’t get it to swap over by “tricking” them

I think you are correct that automatic Spheric mode relies a bit on directional signals. However, I suppose that in the manual Spheric program, things would be different.

@Bimodal_user said:

Perhaps your microphones are facing too far upward, so when you bow your head to your iPad, they receive sound directly from the next table instead of the tablet.

I don’t believe they work that way. From what a scientist friend of mine said, when I asked him how a RogerOn works out direction from 3 mics in a straight line and a 4th on a different plane, especially with thise mics pointing upwards.

Out of curiosity, what did your scientist friend say?

To be fair, I can’t remember exactly, but I suggested that maybe it was relating to the speed of the sound reaching each microphone. I think he suggested it was more the “phase” of the sound waves. This sounds more plausible. I did notice the placement of the 4th mic on the RogerOn, would help determine direction, due to triangulation with the nearest 2 of the 3.
Peter

@Ryan_D said:

read some Phonak docs when these first came out that showed how many battery cycles you got before you had decline in the charge and I think they were claiming something like 4 years. I can’t exactly remember

I just had my batteries replaced in my L90s. They weren’t even 2 years old and yet the battery life had declined substantially to the point where they wouldn’t last a full day for me. That said, I wear them relatively hard — 17+ hours including many hours of streaming. So I do a lot of full charge cycles, which is what wears down batteries.

I wanted to replace the battery in my Paradise 90-RT after 2.5 years of use when I sent it in for warranty inspection. Despite the fact that I even offered to pay for it, the audi told me that they do not replace on request.

Ah ya, that’s right. Time flies I suppose. That’s pretty crazy that you had to change the batteries after only 2 years. I got 3 out of mine before they were dying by the end of the day and I thought that was pretty short.

That’s where you just tell them that they’re dying early and make it a warranty issue

All very clever tech, though I would welcome more insights when it comes to handling of live music.
And… if you happen to be new to highly directional devices, do take care in traffic! Three times I came near to death walking on country roads when
vehicles approached from the rear, totally
unheard. And they were petrol/diesel, not super-quiet electrics.