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Phonak Infinio Sphere vs Oticon Intent – quantitative word recognition testing

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I have been wearing the Oticon Intent 2 for a couple of months now (professionally fit with custom ear molds by an audiologist following best practices). While I have been happy with the performance for speech in quiet environments and for music fidelity (primarily live music or on high quality playback systems), I’ve been disappointed with the performance for speech in noise and for the general lack of noise supression. I have asymmetric hearing loss, moderate to severe and bordering on profound in the 6 – 8 kHz region. Low frequency (< 1.5 kHz) loss is mild in one ear, moderate in the other. I tried the Intent 1 (conducting the same tests described below), and found no statistical difference for word recognition in noise.

For the past week, I have been trying out the Phonak Infinio Sphere I90 with vented domes (small vents). My subjective reaction to the Spheric Speech in Loud Noise program is similar to others’ reactions. They are set up so I can manually select this program, and I have used in it noisy restaurants, a trade show, a party, and driving at highway speeds while engaged in conversation. Compared to other I have used, they are amazing in these situations.

Still, even though the Spheres clearly raise the signal-to-noise ratio for speech in noise, I wanted to quantitatively determine how much better I understand the speech in these situations with the Spheric program. So I set up and performed following test.

Restaurant noise was produced using an online recording played over a pair of high quality stereo speakers with 8 ft of separation and about 10 ft. in front of me. In addition, a moderately noisy fan was turned on about 20 feet away, off to one side. Speech was produced using an online word recognition program in which a speaker reads 50 one-syllable words. This was played back using a portable Bluetooth speaker positioned about 3 ft in front of me at ear level. Volumes were adjusted so that I could understand some but not all of the spoken words in the introduction to the WRT. I performed the test 4 times. The first and third time used the Spheres, and the second and fourth used the Intents. I expected my scores to improve over time as I unconsciously “learned” the word list, so the experiment design gives a slight bias to the Intents.

The four raw scores in order were 29/50 (Sphere), 23/50 (Intent), 34/50 (Sphere), and 25/50 (Intent) for combined scores of 63/100 for the Infinio Sphere, and 48/100 for the Intent. This is a 31% word recognition improvement of the Sphere over the Intent. I believe this is statistically significant and corroborates my subjective impressions.

The restaurant background noise I used is: (262) One Hour of Restaurant Background Noise from Behind the Bar - YouTube57

The spoken word list I used is: (262) Hearing Test #2. Word Recognition Test - YouTube61

I do have some concerns and issues that I think my audiologist will be able to resolve in Target, but there is one that I’d like other input on. The myPhonak app, running in the background, is using up 50 – 60% of my iphone battery life. I’ve gleaned what information I can from the battery information under Setttings. I don’t believe the issue is streaming or location services. I’m going to load the software on another iphone and try that. Any ideas out there?

20 people in this conversation19 min readJump to latest

Well wow! I just want to say that this is the kind of creative experimentation I really enjoy reading about! REAL LIFE simulation with crowd noise, ambient noise and then the words you are tasked with comprehending. In my dreams THIS is what audis would do for EVERY pair of aids they sell to us. Yep. That’s proof in the pudding. To just do , tone tests, yada yada beforehand, then send us on our merry way after we pick up the programmed aids is NOT the full story. It’s kinda like buck-passing. So if we feel the aids aren’t performing, it’s up to US to take the initiative to get back to see the audi and then be able to articulate the issues.

Hearing is so nuanced and individual that nothing surprises me when it comes to make/model vs outcome and optimal user experience.

My own anecdotal experience: I trialed the Intents for 2 weeks a few months back. Granted, I had an audi with the patience of a peanut setting them up. But I was actually annoyed at how LITTLE I understood speech right in my own house. We had some work done inside, and the tech guy would be 5-6’ away and I was simply UNABLE to even figure out what he was saying.

By contrast, after wearing Phonak Lumity Life aids for 2 years (they replaced my Phonak Marvels), my word recognition score - as measured by the PEANUT AUDI - showed an improvement over what I used to comprehend with my Marvels: from about mid-70% to low 80% word recognition. That happened gradually as I gained more confidence wearing the Lumity Life aids and over months, getting better at comprehending what was being said around me. It was pretty amazing, and now I have more confidence talking with other people.

Now if only they’d shrink down the Phonak Sphere so I could give them a try… :wink:

Currently I’m testing a demo version, and I actually don’t know which receivers are attached. Thanks for the link; I’ll study the various receivers. I also don’t know whether to ask for the slim fit or the cshell molds. Or acrylic vs titanium.

If you look at your receivers, it will have a letter and a number on it. The number is the length of the wire and the letter represents the power. You probably don’t have MAV if you have vented domes. MAVs go in either universal slimtips or the titanium slimtips.

WH

In reply to @1Bluejay

Thanks for the feedback. I’ve read that the Sphere program doesn’t work well with a pre-recorded voice track with added noise, so it seemed that separation in both depth and azimuth was important. I agree with you that everyone’s hearing is different, and even quantitative (and presumably repeatable) studies like mine are still anecdotal. But I was happy to validate my subjective impression of these.

A while back I used a similar methodology to compare the Intent with the Sony CRE-E10 . Interesting that the improvement of the Sphere over the Intent was much greater than the improvement of the Intent over the Sony.

In reply to @WhiteHat

The receivers have the printing “2M”, so the M receiver, 2 cm long wires ?
It’s pretty funny, I have studied the ActiveVent but didn’t connect “MAV” with them. So I was studying all the MAV curves, trying to figure out the benefits of the MAV :slight_smile:
When I got the loaners, I asked my audiologist about the activevent technology, and she discouraged it because many people are so annoyed by the clicks as it changes state. I could probably get used to this, but I’m not sure I want the 2.5mm vent when it is open. Seems very large. Right now, both the Intent custom molds and the Phonak power domes have more like a 1mm vent.
I’m interested in your thoughts, and how you concluded I am just outside the edge in one spot (and well inside the envelope everywhere else).

Your right ear is probably not a MAV candidate as it does not call for an .

Nice experiment. I saw a protocol for real-world speech in noise testing at a conference once but I’m not sure the results were ever written up. My recollection is that they made a little iPad program that would flash a words to one speaker and allow three others to type in the answer. Four hearing aid users would go into a noisy place, each with an iPad, take measurements of the noise, and then they would all act as speakers and listeners for the various word lists.

I’m trying to better understand optimization of vent sizes. I assume you concluded my right ear does not call for an because there is significant low freq hearing loss, so the low frequencies need amplification which works better with more occlusion. But independent of the , occlusion is better for streaming and noisy environments (for different reasons, which I understand). So if these benefits are more important to me than the downside of the occlusion effect, then I should get very small or no vents, right? How can Phonak software or an audiologist select vent sizes based purely on measurements without considering the use cases important to me?

In reply to @DaleM1

@DaleM1 said:

I’m interested in your thoughts, and how you concluded I am just outside the edge in one spot (and well inside the envelope everywhere else).

Your rt is at 100 at 6khz. The top of the range is 95 from 2 to 8, I think.

WH

In reply to @DaleM1

If low frequency hearing really is very normal, an benefits sound localization as well as just occlusion, and sound localization benefits scene analysis. If someone’s thresholds are 10 out to 1khz sloping thereafter, it really doesn’t make sense to do anything but open, maybe a MAV if the ear is big enough, but an open MAV is more occluding than an open dome in most ears.

Once there’s more hearing loss across the board, I prefer moving to a closed fit pretty quickly. But the occlusion effect doesn’t really adapt out the same way gain does. Occlusion is strongly impacted by individual anatomy both because of just size available for venting in the ear canal but also different skull anatomy and how the low frequencies are transmitted. Your right ear is a clear custom tip ear. To try to get an idea of what you might tolerate in your left you could try some closed or power domes with your hearing aids turned off and chew crunchy things and talk to people and see. Custom tips are more occluding than but may be less occluding than snug power domes if vent space is sufficient. cShells are more occluding then hollow acrylic slimtips.

In reply to @DaleM1

@DaleM1 said:

A while back I used a similar methodology to compare the Intent with the Sony CRE-E10 OTC. Interesting that the improvement of the Sphere over the Intent was much greater than the improvement of the Intent over the Sony.

THAT gets my attention! Wow. It just goes to show that aids and top-line aids are beginning to blur. I recall reading a post here that VERY favorably rates the Sony. I’d be curious to try that myself, but with my level of loss, ack! I’d just be out several hundred dollars only to come crawling back to my $7000 grand Phonaks. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

@WhiteHat said:

The Sony CRE-E10 rolls in a bit over $1k, unless you are getting them out of a car trunk at the 7-11. :wink:

Hey, where I live, I’d only need to drive 40 min south and do JUST THAT, lol! But then, who would help me set them up? Or are these Sony ready right out of the box?

For me, the Sony’s were far superior to my 2017 Costco Resounds (I don’t recall the model). For the first time in years, I heard birds outdoors and quiet cymbals in jazz. I’m a mallet percussionist and have a vibraphone and a marimba. I hadn’t heard the attacks on the bars in a long time. And the sound quality was excellent for live music, playback on a high quality sound system, and streaming. I had two complaints about the CRE-E10s: (1) I still didn’t hear speech in noise very well, and (2) random-seeming sounds in the environment would cause feedback. Even so, pretty good for $1000 that is marketed only for mild to moderate loss. The $5000+ Intents solved (2) but not (1).
After my testing, the audiologist conducted a word recognition comparison on the CREs with the Intents (headphones, no noise, two loudnesses: 45 and 35 ). The CREs actually did 4 percentage points better at the louder level, but the Intents were 12 points better at the quiet.
If you do want to try them, you can get them overnight from Amazon with a 30 day return. They come with a self contained hearing test program – you put them on, and respond on your phone to beeps at various frequencies. I was afraid that they wouldn’t converge to a solution for me, because my hearing loss is out of the moderate range. But they did.

In reply to @Neville

@Neville said:

If someone’s thresholds are 10 dB out to 1khz sloping thereafter, it really doesn’t make sense to do anything but open

Unless, of course, you care a lot about streaming music (occluding provides better bass response) and understanding speech in noisy places (since lets in the noise). So you’re really trading sound localization and occlusion reduction against music streaming and understanding speech in noise. My point is that this is a tradeoff I should make, not Phonak’s software or my audiologist. And that’s exactly why I was intrigued by the MAVs – potentially best of both.

In reply to @DaleM1

Well, many interesting findings and insights there … Thanks for sharing. And now that you’ve spelled it out: hearing loss in mild-to-moderate range, well I may as well pass “Go” and not collect my $200 bucks. I’m very lucky that I do so well with the Phonak Lumity Life!

I also agree with your philosophy about tradeoffs. Especially as a musician, YOU alone should decide what’s important and prioritize how you want to hear your world. Ow, I LOVE the vibraphone and marimba - very cool!

In reply to @DaleM1

@DaleM1 said:

I was afraid that they wouldn’t converge to a solution for me, because my hearing loss is out of the moderate range. But they did.

Thanks for posting this. I’m looking for backup hearing aids to use at the gym.
It looks like the Sony CRE-E10 fills the gap.

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