My Paradise P90R’s are 3+ years old.
I was extremely unhappy with the battery life for the first 3 years. They were sent to Phonak with the charger at the end of warranty.
Bless Phonak. They provided new hearing aids with rechargeable batteries. They are so much better.! And a new charger. Much better.
I had said a bunch of times to the dispensiing audi—
there must be something wrong.
something simple missing in the setup?
maybe my hearing aids are defective/batteries are defective?
sound is the movement of air to your drum not the metal vibrating…
That’s not true. Bone conduction hearing is vibrations that reach your cochlea and at no point in the pathway inside you need pass through air. The vibrations (pressure waves) stimulate the cochlea directly. Sound in air is just oscillating pressure waves (air vibrations), and as @Bimodal_user says, don’t involve any substantial movement of air, e.g. imagine creating a wave in a rope tied to something by swinging it up and down on the other end. A wave travels up and down the rope, but the rope really isn’t traveling anywhere.
The compression (and expansion) of air volumes for a 500 Hz sound wave moving through air at 30 loudness is very small. Relatively little back-and-forth mass movement of air molecules is required to create pressure waves on your eardrums.
For purists, sound waves are longitudinal waves back and forth in the direction traveled. The rope waves I described are transverse waves, perpendicular to the direction of travel.
Edit_Update: What sound really is is a transfer of kinetic energy through the air. At the source of the sound, air molecules get excited and move faster. They hit air molecules in front of them. And the air molecules further along hit and excite molecules still closer to the receiver, etc. The back pressure wave can probably ascribed to ricochets when the behind air molecules transfer energy ahead and from the excited molecules ahead, back-colliding again with the air molecules behind that initially hit them.
For a 500 Hz sound at 30 dB, the air undergoes a tiny compression/expansion of approximately 0.000000445% of its volume. This is an extremely small change, consistent with the low energy and intensity of a 30 dB sound.
For a 500 Hz sound at 100 dB, the air undergoes a compression/expansion of approximately 0.00141% of its volume. The % change in length of an air segment undergoing compression or expansion along the longitudinal dimension will also be very small.
The reason % volume changes I described in my previous post are so small is that the normal (young) healthy human ear can detect incredibly small pressure changes in air relative to atmospheric pressure.
The reference decibel level for a normal (young) healthy individual is 20 microPascals. Atmospheric pressure at sea level under standard conditions is 101,325 Pascals. So, someone who can hear a sound at 0 decibels is able to detect a 0.00000002% change in air pressure. A 30 sound causes a peak air pressure change of 632 microPascals (0.000632 Pascals), and a 100 dB sound causes an air pressure change of 2 Pascals.
So you might think a painfully loud sound would cause incredible changes in air movement. It doesn’t. We just have very sensitive hearing (the better to eat, rather than be eaten!).
Hehe this is a fun topic, it is still sound passing through air until it hits a receiver. I accept that total occlusion still allows sound as there is a mass of air in your ear canal already even if you plug it. I have noticed that occasionally if the plug is tight I hear worse on my hearing aids and reseating them makes it better.
So when I’m not hearing well I pull out myPhonak. I sometimes find that I’m on some program that makes no sense. Or I changed the volume, and didn’t know.
I sometimes find that my isn’t in my ear. Don’t know why. That doesn’t happen often.
If I don’t know why I can’t hear, I change two carefully. That always seems to make a difference.
So I carry waxguards with me. Change them maybe every 5 days or so.
I accept that total occlusion still allows sound as there is a mass of air in your ear canal already even if you plug it. I have noticed that occasionally if the plug is tight I hear worse on my hearing aids and reseating them makes it better.
For me, the main problem with a completely closed fit and well-fitting earmolds is in ascending and descending in plane flights - pressure equalization.
We may consider a situation where someone puts on a non-vented, occluding earmold at 1 atm pressure and then goes on a flight at 0.7–0.8 atm in an aircraft cabin, with the mold perfectly sealed and without manipulation.
Then, a condition arises in which the pressure in ear canal is higher than the pressure in the tympanic cavity on the other side of the eardrum.
Then, indeed, reduced mobility of the tympanic membrane could occur.
There are more examples—putting an earmold in at low altitude before hiking a mountain, etc.
Thanks so much for your informative posts! I am a new hearing aid user who picked I90 Spheres for my first aids. I am trying to get the most out of Spheric mode after 3 sessions with Hearing Specialist when in spheric mode in loud environment voices sound abit muffled or like at the bottom of a well. I asked the specialist about getting molds rather than the small vented domes he prescribed but was told as my low freq. hearing is pretty good molds won’t work. Anyway I wanted to ask if you found any tips in Spheric mode if you experienced this.
Hi Jeff
All is good with my Phonak Infinio Sphere 90, but curious if there is a way to stream blue tooth to just one hearing aid. My audiologist contacted Phonak and was told “no”. When streaming with bluetooth. I don’t hear people when they talk to me. I have to remove hearing aid from one ear. But then, while I can hear, it is hard to understand.
but curious if there is a way to stream blue tooth to just one hearing aid. My audiologist contacted Phonak and was told “no”.
That’s the one thing I don’t like about Phonak. I was told the only way is to unlink the Aids but then other features (not sure which features tho) may not work as well.
When streaming with bluetooth. I don’t hear people when they talk to me.
Did you try changing the ambient balance? When streaming, go into the app, click on ambient balance (only shows while streaming) , and then move the slider toward surrounding.
Another idea for when you will be in noise using sphere. Feel free to discard. Get some “foamy” noise reducing ear protectors. Make a slit the long way to let the wires be more in the middle and put this behind the receiver so it blocks out the noise. No need to rerun the numbers for changing domes. Low cost. Maybe big return.
I tried that, but it did not work. Then I adjusted the balance to remove bluetooth sound from one hearing aid, but that just made the hearing not work. Thanks for suggestion. I guess nothing is perfect.
I haven’t posted an update in a while so I thought I would share a quick update…
So I’ve been wearing these Phonak Sphere Infinio I90 hearing aids for four months now. I like them so much I decided to purchase them in December. My audiologist gave me a break on the price because I was only two years into a three year service contract on my Phonak Lumity hearing aids and he credited back the remaining year and applied the credit to the new Sphere hearing aids.
I spent two weeks in Florida over the Christmas break and had an opportunity to experience being on vacation with these hearing aids. Some of the interesting listening environments included:
Walking on the beach
Swimming in the pool (without dunking my head)
Going on walks
Many extremely noisy restaurants
Shopping
Going to the gym in our condo
Grocery shopping
Playing boardgames
In almost all cases, the Sphere’s provided significant improvement in hearing for me and the Sphere mode activated and provided clarity when it was needed the most. Battery life has been excellent even during days when the Sphere mode was in use for a few hours (typically at a restaurant). I can’t stress enough how game changing the Sphere mode is for noisy situations. I know there are some people who are concerned about the higher power drain of the Sphere mode but I have tested it over and over again during the last four months. I can honestly tell you that it is rare that I end the day with less than 50% remaining on my batteries for both hearing aids. I think we all overestimate the amount of time we spend in noisy places and the most common use case for the Sphere mode is a 2 - 3 hour visit to a noisy restaurant for dinner.
Couple of interesting observations. Wind block still isn’t the best. It definitely cuts out the wind but it does so at the expense of speech clarity. This was only annoying when walking along the beach on a windy day. It was fine for walking but annoying when walking and trying to talk to someone at the same time.
Another interesting thing about the Sphere’s is that they don’t suffer from the single sided battery drain that I experienced with Lumity. With both Sphere and Lumity, one hearing aid acts as the Bluetooth connection for both hearing aids. With Lumity, I would end the day with the bluetooth connection hearing aid at 20% less battery than the other hearing aid. This still happens with Sphere but it’s typically only a 5% difference at the end of the day.
Bluetooth is excellent on Sphere but I still suffer from the occassional signal drop off. After four months of use I’m absolutely convinced that this drop off is caused by Bluetooth interference coming from other bluetooth and Wifi devices. Not sure why this happens but the signal typically re-establishes itself within 20-30 seconds. It still might be a software bug but my gut tells me it’s signal interference.
The biggest benefit for me with the Sphere’s is that I no longer get anxious when I know we are going somewhere where it will be really noisy. When the Sphere AI mode kicks in, my speech comprehension is fantastic and I can hold a conversation is some of the nastiest noise environments (i.e. The Cheesecake Factory is a good example).
That’s my update. Best advice is to do a trial and test the hearing aids for your self.
What do you mean with Bluetooth being excellent, in what way? Since you mentioned still getting signal drop offs
There are occasional drop offs but they occur far less often than my previous Phonak Lumity and Resound hearing aids. The other improvements are much longer range and classic Bluetooth means you can connect them to directly any devices that will accept a Bluetooth connection. Not perfect but best in class for sure.
Canada (Toronto) YYZ
Kent, England
Poland
Rural New England
