I think the hearing aids get mixed up when the sound is coming from many different directions (i.e. speakers all over the place).
It is possible that some latency occurs (perhaps due to long runs of wiring to various speakers). Or in a large enough venue, there can even be a bit of latency from the time it takes for sound to travel to the hearer from a far-away speaker versus a near speaker. If that happens to be the case, then my guess is that no setting would help.
Have you considered external Phonak accessories such as those in the Roger range to enhance your HAs processing even more?
IMHO, you don’t need any Phonak accessories with the new Sphere hearing aids. The only exception being the TV Connector2. They do such a good job getting rid of background noise that I can hear quite well without any further help.
Good example was dinner last night. The next door neighbours invited us to have dinner at their golf club. We arrived at 7 pm and were seated in the dining room. There were only a few tables occupied nearby while we ate and I noted that there wasn’t enough noise to trigger the Spheric noise reduction. When I opened the app to check which program Autosense was using, the app indicated “Speech in Noise”. There definitely was some noise including the conversations at the other tables and the sound from the NFL game that was being played from a large TV screen that was on the wall 10-12 feet away from our table.
I could hear all the people at our table quite well but just for fun, I decided to manually turn on the Spheric AI program via the app to see if it made any difference. WOW!!! The moment the Spheric AI activated, almost all of the noise around our table completely disappeared. Gone were the conversations at the other table along with the NFL game playing on the TV. The voices at my table were now crystal clear and it was almost like we were sitting in a completely empty room. I’ll be honest with you, it was a totally weird experience and it made me start to think about where it might be useful to trigger the Spheric AI even in sound situations that are not bad enough to automatically turn it on. Maybe you are at a coffee shop reading a book and you just want to dial down the background sounds for some peace and quiet. Maybe studying for a test or finding yourself in a situation where you want to concentrate on something without interruptions.
So to answer your question…not sure you need a Roger with the Infinio Sphere’s. Maybe it would be useful in a lecture scenario where you are 20 feet away from the speaker and you want to leave the Roger on the desk to hear better at a distance. Not sure.
IMHO, you don’t need any Phonak accessories with the new Sphere hearing aids.
@JordanK
Thanks for your informative topic on this forum. I really appreciate your contributions.
As yo know I’m also a Spheres 90 owner/ user. And as you are I’m impressed with this new type of hearing. Everything you describe I’m happy to experience in the same way.
But… now it comes…
To the sentence you used has to be added “nearly” or “almost” as this is a bit exaggerated.
In my very positive feeling I could have written the same sentence. But I will add on my account that I still see some great advantages in the use of Roger. But I agree that the new Spheres are an heavy attack on their importance.
The pointing possibility, to very selectively listening in just one direction, is still what fails in the functionality of the aids. And although you can even regulate this in the myPhonak app the Roger can do better, directer and faster.
Hope I didn’t offend you.
The pointing possibility, to very selectively listening in just one direction, is still what fails in the functionality of the aids. And although you can even regulate this in the myPhonak app the Roger can do better, directer and faster.
Thanks for the clarification. Point well taken. And no…I’m not offended. I really appreciate hearing from other people on this forum who are using the new Sphere’s and can confirm or deny what I am experiencing. I think I just an eternal optimist. The Sphere’s aren’t perfect. They still struggle when there are many nearby conversations going on at the same time but they do offer an improvement vs my Lumity hearing aids in this scenario. I can see how the directional capabilities of Roger would help with this.
Jordan… you stated you checked your app and you were in “Speech in Noise”. prog. did the ’s automatically switch by themselves?? I know with my resounds I have to click on HA to change prog.
Here’s what I think. Roger will continue to be a useful thing, for schools and places where you have to listen to someone from a distance. … Roger is just a microphone, I suspect that later the sphere feature will be enabled to be used via Roger. Therefore, the microphone on the hearing aid is turned off and the sphere is used, which will receive the sound through the roger.
Perhaps this feature will be enabled in the next series of hearing aids. I still want the possibility of using the sphere for sounds streaming from YouTube or something else to better understand the speech of, say, a TV show.
I use two pair hearing aids (unitron blu) and phonak audeo paradise. The reason is that the battery life is too weak, so I have Unitron for most of the day at work and Phonak for the rest of the day. and I realized that it is good to use two pairs, so that the device can rest longer so that it does not break down and the receivers have time to dry, so that it is not necessary to constantly change the .
@markoo355
Drying of the receivers surely is needed to keep them long enough. But for battery lifetime and performance you can throw away the other ones. (I also have a big collection available)
Jordan… you stated you checked your app and you were in “Speech in Noise”. prog. did the HA’s automatically switch by themselves?? I know with my resounds I have to click on HA to change prog.
I was in the Automatic (Autosense) mode when I entered the restaurant. The myPhonak app lets you see what program the Automatic mode has selected (automatically). I then manually changed from the Automatic program to the Spheric noise reduction program.
@JordanK
Your reviews help me a lot.
And you helped me when I had a real problem with my Phonak Audeo Paradise P90R’s.
It’s been about a year and a half, and my hearing instrument specialist found mistakes in my setup when I left the firm that provided them. Since then he has had them inspected by Phonak and they kindly replaced both and my charger.
Had some time this afternoon so found some more things to test with the Sphere’s.
Bike Riding
Went on a really nice 1 hour (18 km) bike ride along my favourite nature trail. As soon as I started out on the ride, the wind picked up and started blowing against my hearing aids. As you all know, wind noise can be very annoying when you are walking or biking outdoors. When you ride 25 kph into a head wind, it’s super annoying. The wind block on the Sphere’s does ok when walking. When you are riding at 25 kph it doesn’t seem to do anything. I tried switching manually to the Spheric noise reduction program (held down the up button on one of the hearing aids while riding) and it didn’t seem to improve anything. The best course of action is to mute the hearing aids when riding in windy conditions. My audiologist program setup the hearing aids to mute when you briefly hold the down button for a second. That works but you then lose environment sounds…which isn’t the safest option when you are riding a bike on the street. I’m going to ask my audiologist on Monday to see if he can adjust the wind block feature or create a special program for riding a bike outdoors.
Music Program with a live Instrument
I finally got the courage to get my much loved acoustic guitar out and I tuned her up. Sharing a photo in case anyone else likes playing the guitar.
I haven’t been playing too much in the last number of years because the guitar just doesn’t sound good and it drives me crazy. My audiologist has told me that music sounding out of tune is caused by cochlear hair cell damage. I think I’ve been ignoring the guitar cause it bums me out a bit. That being said, the time was right to try again. Anyways…started finger picking a few tunes to get in the mood and it sounded kinda nice through the Sphere’s. It started out a bit muffled but after about 30 seconds, the Music program kicked in and the guitar sound was nice and rich. The guitar is a good instrument for hearing aids because the string sound is sorta in the 82 Hz up to around 5 kHz range. Not sure it sounded too much better than my Lumity hearing aids but it did sound decent and brought a smile to my face. Might just started carving out an hour a day to start playing again. I forgot how much I missed playing. Would be interested to hear how other guitar players have faired with the Sphere’s. I’m also going to have the audiologist take me through the settings on the Music program on Monday too.
Still need to see a movie at the cinema. Maybe this weekend.
@JordanK
Your reviews help me a lot.
And you helped me when I had a real problem with my Phonak Audeo Paradise P90R’s.
It’s been about a year and a half, and my hearing instrument specialist found mistakes in my setup when I left the firm that provided them. Since then he has had them inspected by Phonak and they kindly replaced both and my charger.
So thank you!
You are most welcome. Helping other people is what makes me smile.
I have an idea about the wind, I used to have Phonak Naidaq50 and older variants of Naida. They worked well in the wind because they had a filter on the outside that prevented air from getting trapped in the microphone hole. That’s why it sounds terrible and that’s why the hearing aid turns it down and that’s why it doesn’t sound good. The problem can be solved with such headbands to prevent air from entering the microphone. Or a cover for hearing aids.
I think the hearing aids get mixed up when the sound is coming from many different directions (i.e. speakers all over the place).
That’s Autosense at play.
Have your audi create a manual program for that.
Perhaps Phonak has an equivalent to Oticon’s Lecture Program that they can add for you. It basically aims the mics forward.
Just a guess.
I got Infinio hearing aid and have been playing with phonak app. My app doesn’t show spheric in loud program but shows restaurant instead of it. How can I get spheric program? And when I use Bluetooth streaming to listen to music through iPhone. It causes distortion and I can’t hear voice at all. Should I avoid streaming and listen through speaker ?
That’s a beautiful guitar. Hard to tell from the photo…is that a Martin parlor 12 fret? Looks like a flamed mahogany top, or maybe koa? Would love to hear some sound samples if you ever want to post some. Thanks for all the info on the Phonak Spheres! I have a pair on order. They were supposed to arrive today, but I didn’t get the call yet, so fingers crossed I’ll get them next week. Seriously excited to get them, as my wife and I do a lot of entertaining in noisy restaurants for our business.
Bike Riding
Went on a really nice 1 hour (18 km) bike ride along my favourite nature trail. As soon as I started out on the ride, the wind picked up and started blowing against my hearing aids. As you all know, wind noise can be very annoying when you are walking or biking outdoors. When you ride 25 kph into a head wind, it’s super annoying. The wind block on the Sphere’s does ok when walking. When you are riding at 25 kph it doesn’t seem to do anything. I tried switching manually to the Spheric AI noise reduction program (held down the up button on one of the hearing aids while riding) and it didn’t seem to improve anything. The best course of action is to mute the hearing aids when riding in windy conditions. My audiologist program setup the hearing aids to mute when you briefly hold the down button for a second. That works but you then lose environment sounds…which isn’t the safest option when you are riding a bike on the street. I’m going to ask my audiologist on Monday to see if he can adjust the wind block feature or create a special program for riding a bike outdoors.
You can check which program (environment) AutoSense enters while riding a bike through the myPhonak app, and then ask your audiologist to strengthen the wind block for that program.
AutoSenso 4.0 switches to the Comfort in noise program when I am riding an e-bike at 30–40 km/h.
Phonak launched two versions of the Infinio hearing aids. Infinio with a deep sound chip that has the Sphere option. The hearing aid is both larger and thicker because, in addition to the chip, it also has a larger battery. And a regular infinio that is more similar to previous versions of hearing aids. Are you sure you have infinio which supports Sphere?
Try pairing the hearing aids again, clear all old pairings in bluetooth settings and then pair again. Pair first the application and then the audio stream by scanning in the bluetooth settings. There must be a total of 3 connected devices. 2 are for the app and 1 is for bluetooth audio streaming. … If the problem persists, try another smartphone.
Thank you so much, your reviews are always excellent.
Bad news for cyclists, no improvement.
Ideally you should give a roger to your cycling friend to hear him well.
@JordanK:
While you are cycling on the trail or on the road, you should try when someone is talking to you.
Maybe in Spheric noise reduction it emphasizes the voices and lowers the wind noise.
If there are no voices, probably the Spheric AI noise reduction does not know what to do…
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