My Phonak Sphere vs Virto, Paradise and Marvel

I replied in another space I guess. But thank you again for your reviews and clarification.

You know, you and others here posting about being able to hear - pretty effortlessly! - while wearing the Phonak Sphere is REALLY fabulous.

I can’t help but think ALL of you enjoying this new ability to comprehend speech better than ever before are going to see some improvement in word comprehension if you get tested at a later date. My word comprehension score was bumped up after wearing Phonak’s Lumity Life aids for about 1.5 yrs (they replaced the Marvels).

It’s reassuring and gives credibility to the claims. Plus it’s just incredibly EMPOWERING to be able to take part in conversations without anxiety, effort or insecurity! LOVE IT.

Here’s to that BRAIN + EAR connection!

@1Bluejay said:

My word comprehension score was bumped up after wearing Phonak’s Lumity Life aids

@1Bluejay
Unfortunately I am not in the situation that I could have my word recognition tested at the moment. I would really like to see what the difference would be!
The only thing I can do now is guess, but I’m pretty sure it’s much better than it was with my Virto P90… And I hope that some of us could get their word recognition tested to prove this.

Today in the afternoon I went to a social salsa event were I normally have to turn of my P90’s as the music is too loud to survive without ear protection. Then my custom moulds do their work as protectors. Problem is that I can’t hear if people want to talk to me.
This time I went there with my Spheres to test the functionality. The music/ noise was demped pretty good by my Speres and my same custom moulds, but this time not turned off. And next to that I could still understand people talking to me and others next to me. Surprising.
Unfortunately also here I could not see in my app if the automatic program did choose for the loud noise suppression. Can’t imagine on the other hand that the Phonak didn’t choose for loud noise and the Sphere program.
After about two and about 2,5 hours for a short moment the music came true very loud, there must have been an automatic program chance. These moments were very short, one second or less. But there was no chance in the continuty of playing loud music. So I’m not sure why this was and what happend. In Target settings my Sphere function is allowed for above the 3 hours limit.
Also streamed some music from my phone today which was good.
I took with me my Roger On but didn’t got it connected. Don’t know why, as my Roger On In is connecting without any problem. But left that at home so have to repeat that experiment another time. Or maybe one of the other Sphere users does this to inform us.
Connection with my Roger On by BT fails with the not connected sign on the Roger, also here I don’t know the cause of that.

@Emile030 said:

The Roger must have been connected to another device already when I tried to connect as I also use 4 pairs of Phonak HA’s.

Roger mics can connect to MANY hearing aids at once. It isn’t bluetooth, no 1:1 connection.

WH

@WhiteHat said:

Roger mics can connect to MANY hearing aids at once. It isn’t bluetooth, no 1:1 connection.

Thanks @WhiteHat
You’re fully right WhiteHat. That’s what I thought also. And to prove it I just tested it out with more than one HA model on at the same time. (Normally I just use only one pair at once )

So I still don’t know what caused the connection problem to one of my Roger ON’s with my new Spheres at the moment. But I’m glad it works now at the end. And thank you for your appreciated thoughts and help WhiteHat.

Confusing! In myRoger app, it seems that I’d have to select the mic I wanted to use with my aids. Due to my clusterpuck of TWO pairs of rechageables and TWO Roger ON iN V2 mics all cross-licensed and able to work in any combination, I seem to recall that if I wanted to switch the V2 I was using for TV streaming I’d have to first select that mic manually in myRoger.

If this makes your head explode, just ignore. I no longer have myRoger on my phone.

You have very interesting earmolds - sound canal quite as in the earmolds for BTE style. I think about deep earmold going past second bemd of ear canal.

I also consider without vent to make me safer considering traffic with many cars with illegally modified “silencers” (not funny) which can make even 120 dB of any kind (!). It is outraging!

@Emile030, could you post photos with your deep earmolds? Do you have a P receiver? How do you deal with occlusion?

I’d thought the app was updated recently. Did you delete and reinstall?

@Bimodal_user said:

could you post photos with your deep earmolds? Do you have a P receiver? How do you deal with occlusion

@Bimodal_user
The dark hard one is an original Phonak and the silicone one is an original custom made Pluggerz for noise blocking which fits a lot deeper into my earcanal.
The Pluggerz do not have any venting as they are made for noise blocking but the Phonak has.
Difference in noise blocking between the two is big as the Pluggerz realy block, not only because of the venting (which you can block by a plug of chewing gum for instance.
The Pluggerz has a more or les open canal (for the filter which I took out) in which I could press my receiver in really thight.

There is of course some more occlusion. But in my Spheres the effect is less prominent then in my other HA collection. Must also say that one gets used to a bit blocking over time. This effect of imbalance between bone conduction and air conduction is not disturbing me anymore. Therefor I am happy with the results with my Spheres.

I have M receivers by the way.

@Neville said:

I thought you were having trouble connecting y the spheres to the app

You’re totally right. Don’t know why I wrote the Roger On, but I’m meaning the Spheres. And the story as I wrote is about the connection with the Spheres! Sorry about that. I don’t hope dementia is getting me because I made a post before in which I accidentally exchanged things. I edited my post above. Please don’t beat me…

@Emile030 said:

The Pluggerz has a more or les open canal (for the filter which I took out) in which I could press my receiver in really thight.

I have very similar Phonak canal cShell.
About Pluggerz - very interesting. So finally, it is possible to make something similar to cShell with the possibility to change the receiver on your own (probably only M to M not M to P, but still, this is progress).

The only drawback is the possibility of dampening sound on the short section between the Cerustop and the Pluggerz tip, but it probably is overcome by proper fitting.

@Emile030 said:

There is of course some more occlusion. But in my Spheres the effect is less prominent then in my other HA collection.

I think it is probably due to a similar phenomenon as is described in the quote below. The signal from the receiver overcomes the bone-conducted sound a bit. Someone, please correct me if I am wrong. I wonder if your lower pitches gain is the same in Sphere as in your previous aids with poorer occlusion.

@jim_lewis said:

Figure 5.15 shows how gain through a vent path and gain through an amplified path (your HA’s) combine to produce the overall gain that you hear in your ears. Did not see details in text on size of vent used for illustration (a reference is cited in the text for figure) - based on Fig. 5.11 shown above and loss of gain depicted in Fig. 5.15 for amplified gain at low frequencies, the venting depicted in Fig. 5.15 is probably about a 2 mm vent. Dillon says when any one path has more than 10 dB of gain over the other, that path is the dominant and effective path.

@Emile030 said:

Therefor I am happy with the results with my Spheres.

Glad to read it.

@Emile030 said:

I have M receivers by the way.

With a deeper earmold, there is less need for stronger amplification due to the lower remaining ear canal volume. Good, you have a wider bandwidth compared to the P receiver.

@Bimodal_user said:

With a deeper earmold, there is less need for stronger amplification due to the lower remaining ear canal volume. Good, you have a wider bandwidth compared to the P receiver.

I have ear moulds that sit further then the second bend. The sound is so much better with the longer ear moulds.

@Zebras, yes, the red silicone ones (semi shell?) with 0,8mm vents. I liked them very much. I even saved it to show it to my HCP. Consider titanium option also.