Phonak Audéo Sphere Infinio 90's .. another review

Which Phonak streamer do you have? I have the Spheres on order and I am considering the TV streamer, but the Phonak site does not list the Spheres as compatible.

@MDB The difference for me is night and day. If we’re going to watch a movie, I grab a connector from my desk and bring it to the living room. I leave the optical cable and the USB cable in the back of the TV so I don’t have to mess around back there. I do have some ability to hear dialog, but it isn’t nearly a good when I don’t use the connector. When I sit with the baby watching his programs, and I don’t really care, it is fine. I like it enough I bought a second one out of my own pocket. (VA has paid for most of my hearing kit.)

WH

I have the TV connector V2. Works perfekt with the spheres.

I have the Phonak TV Connector V1. It’s excellent, but I have it on a “smart plug” so I can easily disable it.

@jim_lewis said:

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Me too. All of those issues.

I’d agree with @Ureout and others who’ve replied. I’m not sure if the improvement I notice is as dramatic as his, but over the ~6 years I’ve used the ReSound TV Streamer 2, it’s definitely improved my speech comprehension in watching streamed movies and movies on disc (not enough experience with the Phonak TV connector but I’m sure the result will be the same).

Someone wrote up a very good explanation of why recently, but I can’t find it now. Our home entertainment center is in our family room, which is a large 2-story enclave with sheetrock walls and ceiling open into the front hall that has tile floors (it also opens into the kitchen, with another tiled floor). So there are plenty of sound reflections and reverberations. Our TV sound goes to a Yamaha amplifier that has a big bass subwoofer that probably doesn’t help much in terms of reverberations, either.

OTH, streamed sound from the TV comes directly to your ears. Some people like to put a remote mic by the TV but that can pick up the reflections and reverberations, too, and has a battery to wear out (or run out) with time.

But I like the TV streamers like ReSound’s and Phonak’s for two additional reasons. One is I can listen to things like football games or election returns without forcing my wife to listen, whether she’s at work or sleeping in our bedroom nearby. Also, I can run to the frig or the bathroom during a commercial break and still hear what’s going on. Both the ReSound Streamer 2 and the Phonak TV Connector have excellent distance penetration and I can go several rooms away and still hear the TV audio with either, realize the commercial break is about over, and hustle back to the TV.

@Ureout said:

im, just wondering have you expierienced any of the other problems I posted… low battery alerts and left HA shutting down for a few seconds or phone calls not streaming because of R phonak HA disconnect in bluetooth settings?

The first day or two that I had the Spheres, I experienced a low battery alert or two, but I knew it couldn’t be so and just ignored it. In the past week, I haven’t experienced any low battery alerts. So, the way we use our Spheres must differ. I get relatively few phone calls and only stream an hour or two a day. I actually turn off the classic BT R-Phonak Hearing Aid connection in iOS BT settings as part of my scheme for maximizing battery runtime during the day (don’t know how much effect it has, but if that classic BT connection is inactive during most of the day, it ought to save battery). My guesstimate is with it on, streaming only ~1 hour a day, only a brief phone call or two, I can get close to 40 hours of runtime on a full Sphere charge. With the R-Phonak Hearing Aid classic BT connected all day, I estimated 25 to 30 hours of runtime on a full charge. My charge typically drops 35% to 45% on ~12 hours of use. I charge to the low 70 percentiles, and after 12 to 14 hours of use, the right hearing aid is around or somewhat below 40% charge, the left 5 to 10 percent higher.

I do find the % SOC in the MyPhonak app is slow to keep up. Force killing the MyPhonak app (swipe app completely up and offscreen in the iOS App Switcher screen) seems to force fresh readings. Turning off and rebooting the HAs works even better to make the MyPhonak app show the latest SOCs for each HA.

If you get a lot of phone calls during the day, turning off the classic BT connection used for phone calls and streaming might not seem the thing to do. But in iOS, it’s very easy to check and reconnect the classic BT connection if needed. Swipe fully down the right side of any phone screen (including the lock screen). The iOS Control Center pops up. Tap the “Bluetooth” label, not the BT icon. When the partial listing of the top/most recent BT connections pops up, tap the “Bluetooth Settings…” label at the bottom of the list box. So, two taps starting from any screen immediately brings you to your functional BT setting listing. If the classic R-Phonak Hearing Aid connection listing says “Disconnected,” just tap it to immediately connect, if that’s what you want. To disconnect instead, just tap the circled “i” icon on the right of the R-Phonak Hearing Aid line, then tap the Disconnect line on the resulting screen.

Playing around with connecting or disconnecting the classic BT connection may sound like too much trouble. Since I rarely care whether I have a classic BT connection with the Spheres (few phone calls a day, only one or two streaming sessions a day), it’s no bother for me, and I rarely lose the classic BT connection once I turn it on. Also, all the MyPhonak controls are done through the left and right LE Phonak hearing aid BT connections. Reading the SOC of each HA comes through those LE connections, too. All turning off the classic BT connection does is affect phone calls and streaming.***

ReSound Omnias, with their unstable MFi connection in iOS 16.x, much improved in iOS 17.x, now flakier again in iOS 18.x, were much, much more trouble on a daily basis. And unlike the Phonak connection, if the Omnia connection failed because of “iPhone separation,” it was much harder to get it to turn on again. If one were lucky, turning BT off and on again might work, and force killing the Smart 3D app might help, but in the extreme, a hearing aid and/or a iPhone reboot might be needed.

So, I’d think most iPhone users of ReSound hearing aids would find the BT connectivity of the Phonak Spheres a decided improvement over the state that Apple and ReSound have let MFi connectivity lapse into. Whereas I initially bought ReSounds thinking Apple worked closely with MFi HA OEMs to make sure they had a great product, now I feel Apple is lost in its own little audio world and doesn’t particularly care blip about how someone like ReSound got them started with MFi HAs…

****Footnote/Appendix to this compendium!
If you’ve got classic BT off, you can answer the phone and tell your caller, “Just a sec,” and the Bluetooth double tap I described from the Control Center screen will allow you to switch to a streamed phone call quickly. You can toggle classic BT on or off without losing the phone call.

Media streaming from your phone doesn’t quite work that way. If you start to play a podcast and discover the classic BT connection is off and sound is coming out of your iPhone speakers, the Control Center Bluetooth tapping will easily turn streaming on. Toggling the classic BT connection off while streaming stops media streaming, though.

it would depend on the program I’m watching… but overall I would need CC to understand what they are saying especially if there is any background noise

The basic answer to the question is, “No, why would I subject myself to a lesser experience when relatively poor understanding of TV speech was the reason I got my first steamer (ReSound). and since then I’ve never watched TV without using a streamer.”. Our family room has poor acoustics as I previously pointed out. Watching TV requires moving stuff around to set up speakers for wife (and I listen to them as well in background), turning on the Blu-ray player or Tivo, plugging in amplified TV antenna, etc., so testing in my normal listening situation is more complicated than, “Why not just flick on the TV and give it a try?” We never watch TV except for bought or rented movies and major sporting or public events. Otherwise, it’s smartphones, tablets, or computers for any other media consumption, entertainment. Since we watch so little stuff on the TV, I unplug ~everything when done to avoid parasitic electric drain in between our home theater sessions, ~once a week. We subscribe to NO cable service other than basic Internet and Netflix. We pull in digital over-the-air TV when the Tivo and the amplified antenna are both plugged in.

A simple “no” (+ 20 characters :>) would have sufficed. Why might one be interested to know? For me to know if the extra tech is necessary. CVKemp found it was no longer necessary with his Oticon Intents. WhiteHat above states that TV Connect is notably better than his Spheres above. Thanks. Edit: Correction. WhiteHat does not have Spheres.

The point is to emphasize is that it’s not my hearing that’s the problem. My speech understanding is excellent except for my soft-spoken wife. I understand most speakers quite well without my hearing aids. It’s the room and our normal complicated home theater setup that makes testing complicated. DVD/Blu-ray audio is often not too great, too, especially with movie sound effects, etc. For our viewing situation and habits, I think trying to figure out how good the the TV sound with just hearing aids is pointless. Driving home that point to you was the reason for my long-winded answer. My previous answer several posts ago that streaming makes up for decrease in speech quality with distance from speech source, refections, and reverberations should have been enough. Hearing aids by themselves cannot reinvent sound physics… If you want the best instead of “good enough,” get a streamer.

The one reason for not using a streamer is, IIRC, that a Toslink optical audio input must be PCM from the TV for the Phonak TV Connector, so you’ll only get stereo sound. So if you want true surround sound, you might want to go streamerless for that reason.

The scenario I was imagining the Sphere’s “magic” might be nice is trying to hold a conversation with somebody while watching TV.

@jim_lewis, I am completely certain (as MDB) that in a stationary situation, such as at home, the TV streamer undoubtedly provides superior sound quality. I also have a TV streamer.

However, just out of curiosity, “for science” (wink), I am also interested in whether the sound processing in Spheres has been improved (compared to, for example, Lumity/Paradise) to the point that I am able to watch TV in less stationary situations, such as when I have just arrived at my friend’s house and forgot my TV streamer (as is the case for me today ).

I am aware that your home setting is quite unique, so you could not answer for sure to compare that with less complicated settings.