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Phonak Audeo Spheres I90 -- Not loving them

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I’m on Day 6 of trialing Phonak Spheres. Custom molds. I have severe-profound cookie-bite loss. Long-time user. Started with Phonaks. Have been happily using Oticon OPNs for last 7 years, which is pushing my luck. I need new aids.

I’m not having a great experience with the Phonaks. I understand that things should improve as my brain adapts and I get more facile with them. But even so: Yikes. I’m meeting with my audi this week to tweak things and wonder if you any of you have any suggestions. He is terrific, btw. And yes, he did real ear measurement.

  • Terrible word recognition. People sound like they’re slurring or talking with their mouths full. I tend to zone out of conversations because I’m missing so much.

  • Perhaps a related issue: things sound different. Our 100-pound dog suddenly sounds like a Yorkie. Clock bongs sound tinny. Even the seat-belt chime sounds blurred instead of a crisp bing. Guessing my audi can adjust for some of that.

  • Connectivity is a disaster. So many issues: dropping in and out; not connecting. Problems with all my devices: iPhone, iPad mini, Surface laptop. Streaming drops in and out. Have received phone calls that didn’t stream (never an issue with my Oticons). Bluetooth settings offer 3 related devices: the R HA (the ‘master’), and LE-L and LE-R; the LE is for the app. All of them have issues, are often slow to connect and frequently fail to connect, although the LEs are worse. I’ve had to try to manually connect (which only works sometimes) or reboot or re-pair. Ridiculous.

  • The app is a serious battery glutton. Drained my phone to 40% by midday on one day. After a day when I was able to charge my phone briefly a few times, the phone was dead at 9p. Have never had that problem.

  • The Automatic program is incredibly flukey – giving me seemingly random volume changes. I know it’s probably doing what it’s supposed to; maybe this is a technology that I’m not suited to. It’s most obvious when I’m walking in the neighborhood. It continually adjusts for different conditions: wind, passing cars. Blocking a wind gust, for example, means that the ambient sound is also modified. The result is a very inconsistent sound environment: I can hear footsteps, crunching leaves, birds – but then can’t hear one or all of them. To be honest: it’s mentally stressful and fatiguing. It’s also potentially dangerous: I thought I had situational awareness and could hear passing cars, for example. But one surprised me, passing very close from behind. If I had sidestepped at that moment, it would not have been pretty.

I haven’t had a chance to try the vaunted Spheric program for noisy restaurants and such. But I don’t live my life in such places. I do like the double ear-tap hands-free control. The Music program is great with my car radio. And contrary to some online reports, my custom molds fit nicely into the charger case. I can also use the Hearing Device accessibility triple-click on my iPhone to quickly check the HA battery level.

I suppose there’s one upside of this experience: I’m more sympathetic to new HA users who struggle to adapt or don’t want to wear their HAs. I almost feel a sense of dread putting them on in the morning.

22 people in this conversation26 min readJump to latest

Couple of points:

  • What kind of receivers are are you using. I had similar clarity issues with the M receivers. Once my audiologist moved me to a P receiver, many of the clarity issues you list went away.
  • There is a setting in the app that keeps the hearing aids connected to your iPhone continuously. If you turn that off, the battery drain issue on your iPhone will go away.
  • I have ZERO issues with Bluetooth connectivity on my iPhone so you are definitely doing something wrong. The hearing aids only use the R (Master) to stream audio. The other two connections (LE-L, LE-R) is only used to connect to the app. Trick with these hearing aids is to understand that you can only have 8 devices paired and ONLY two can be active at the same time. TURN OFF Bluetooth on all devices when you are not using them. I only keep Bluetooth active on my iPhone all the time. I keep Bluetooth on all my other devices off and only turn them on when needed. If you stick to this, all your issues will go away.
  • As far as your other issues with the Automatic program (AutoSense), I suspect your hearing aids are not setup properly. I keep my Sphere’s in the Automatic program 99% of the time and I have had zero issues. I will say the Automatic program will reduce the volume for very loud noises and wind but it’s not usually that noticeable and the AutoSense does a really good job picking the best program in this mode. Perhaps it’s just a big change to go from the Oticon open approach to the Phonak AutoSense approach and your brain needs time to adjust. Not sure.

Let me know if you have any other questions. Also…try out the Sphere Noise program in a bad restaurant. It’s quite amazing.

Jordan

Hi Jordan–
Many thanks for response. I have an appointment with my audi tomorrow morning, and you’ve given me some good fodder.

I’m not sure what receivers I have – but I’ll ask!

Re your 2nd point about not connecting to the iPhone continuously: do you mean not to connect the app? I’m guessing I’d need to maintain the master R connection in order to stream any phone calls. If you do mean that I should disconnect the app, I gotta say that firing it up is a major pain – it takes a long while to connect.

Connectivity is a bear on the phone but also the other devices. Today, I am away from my laptop and have only the phone and iPad. Guessing they should be connecting. But they both connect/disconnect the app and the R HA.

Will inform my Best Beloved that he must take me to a bad restaurant soon.

Thanks so much!

In reply to @JordanK

Hi JordanK, on ​​the phonak target program what is your activation level for the Sphere Noise program? Did you leave it on default or did you move it further to the left so it activates easier?

Thanks for your valuable suggestions and reviews! They are really awesome!

S… I returned my trial phonak’s last week … I also had problems with receiving phone calls and not going to streaming mode… I would have to open settings in Iphone and right would not be connected?? I also had my left HA shut down multiple times and then turn back on after a few seconds … when I checked my phone I had a low battery alert on left HA… showing o% charge and right HA showed 85% after closing app and rebooting HA it went back to normal and showed 86% … I’m a big TV streamer and I also didn’t like that the little rocker switch on the HA did not control tv volume it controls ambient settings… just before turnng HA’s back in I actually had a meeting with the Phonak regional Rep at my audi’s office and she agreed that disconnecting was a problem but said it was a blue tooth issue… also after the mutiple times of left HA’s shutting down I was told that was a charger issue and given a new charger to try… very next day my left HA shut down twice as far as your HA’s constantly draining your iphone as Jordan said, in the app you can shut that constantly hooked up to OFF good luck

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In reply to @seaduck

@seaduck said:

Re your 2nd point about not connecting to the iPhone continuously: do you mean not to connect the app? I’m guessing I’d need to maintain the master R HA connection in order to stream any phone calls. If you do mean that I should disconnect the app, I gotta say that firing it up is a major pain – it takes a long while to connect.

Open the app and select the “Devices” tab at the bottom. You will see one of the options above is “Connection Management”. Click on that. There is an on/off slider that says “Stay connected”. If you leave this on, the iPhone will stay constantly connected to your hearing aids and use more of your iPhone battery. I keep this off.

Regarding connectivity: You can only have 2 live (i.e. Bluetooth is on) devices connected to your hearing aids at the same time. If you decide to leave Bluetooth on with more than 2 devices, the hearing aids will randomly grab and connect to whatever has the strongest signal and when you then go to connect a device, it won’t connect because the hearing aids are already connected to the maximum of two other devices somewhere else in your house. That is why I say that you must get into the habit of turning off Bluetooth on devices (i.e your iPad or computer) when you are not using them. The only device that I keep Bluetooth on all the time is my iPhone. Everything else (i.e. iPad, Windows laptop, Mac Laptop, Phonak TV Connector) I keep the Bluetooth off until I want to use the device. If you do this…you will have zero issues with Bluetooth.

Jordan

In reply to @DamonHill

@DamonHill said:

Out of curiosity: when you switched to the P receiver, has your audi reprogrammed everything from scratch or just let Target adjust your fine tuning to the new receiver automatically?

Did you redo a REM?

When the audiologist changed over from M to P receivers, I believe he changed the receiver type in Target too (or it sensed it automatically). He then repeated the Feedback Test in Target and followed this with a new test.

Jordan

In reply to @hikomun

@hikomun said:

Hi JordanK, on ​​the phonak target program what is your activation level for the Sphere AI Noise program? Did you leave it on default or did you move it further to the left so it activates easier?

Good question. I actually asked the audiologist to show me the settings in Target for the Spheric Noise program. I can’t remember where the slider is but I do remember it activates when the hearing aids detect about 75 db noise. You don’t really want it activating all the time because it does chew battery capacity. There is also a Speech in Noise program that handles less noisy environments well. You kinda want to save it for extremely noisy places like restaurants or crowded places where there are lots of people talking and making noise.

Hope this helps.

Jordan

In reply to @Ureout

It sounds as though we’ve had very similar experiences. I get little box notifications in the app saying a is about to run out of juice – I’ve learned to ignore those (seems to be a common problem). But I also get the batt level readings in the app sometimes going to 0; they recover and show correctly a few minutes later.

As far as streaming: Yes! I didn’t get into that. I have the problem of connectivity meaning sounds cuts in and out. But even worse is the volume control. With my Oticons, I can adjust the volume of an audiobook on the phone, and adjust environment sound (if, say, I’m out walking) with my HAs. But the Phonaks blare any ambient sound, drowning out the book. I had the impression that was a setting thing that my audi could adjust, so I’d get the dual volume control modes. But maybe not.

In reply to @JordanK

Aha – I do see the Connection slider. Just shut that off – will see how that goes. I had the impression it would also cut off streaming and phone calls, but it doesn’t seem to. Will probably just not use the app – it takes forever to connect.

As for the Bluetooth devices: I believe I have only had 2 live devices (right now, iPhone and iPad). Unless picking up the LE_L and LE_R counts as actual devices adding to the count? Will give this a shot with the app turned off.

In reply to @seaduck

  1. Try reboot your Phone and .

  2. If this doesn’t work, try resetting your HA. The manual should have information about it (likely pressing the lower button for 15 seconds, but I’m not certain).

  3. After resetting, uninstall the myPhonak app.

  4. Remove all Bluetooth pairings with HA on the phone… 5. Then unistall myPhonak app.

  5. Reboot your phone and install the myPhonak app.

@seaduck said:

. Have been happily using Oticon OPNs for last 7 years, which is pushing my luck. I need new aids.

That’s the key!
Oticon and Phonak have completely different paradigms.
Phonak Autosense, and Oticon OPN are totally different in sound processing, so what you’re experiencing is completely understandable.
If you wish to continue with the Phonaks, you will find (if your audi is skilled) that you will adapt to the difference in sound over time. Get rid of the Autosense program for starters!
When I trialed Phonaks, it took 2 months to adapt, but I could never attain the level of satisfaction I had with my OPNs.
I’ve been wearing the Oticon Intent since July, and am very pleased, so if you have an opportunity you may wish to give them a try.

In reply to @JordanK

Thanks JordanK!
I’ve been testing the spheres since Monday and will soon write a review!
Wow, they are fantastic! I’ve already ordered them after 2 days of testing, haha.

Ok, I set the activation level to “8” (two dots on the left) instead of 10 (default)

Consumption in sphere mode: I have found that the more noise there is, the more it will consume the batteries. If the noise is not much (but it is still there) it will discharge more slowly!
Have you noticed this detail too? It’s still too early for me to say for sure because I’ve only been trying it for 4 days. I will confirm this in the next few days as soon as I’m sure.

I am testing the new Sphere hearing aids since October and have experienced some similar issues as yours, I was Phonak Lumity user. I went to Audi today for 1st adjustment and here’s what we did:

@seaduck said:

Terrible word recognition. People sound like they’re slurring or talking with their mouths full. I tend to zone out of conversations because I’m missing so much.

I felt Speech in Noise and Speech in Spheric Noise are better than Lumity(Speech in Loud Noise), but in Calm speeches are muffled and suppressed. I am already using M receivers. My Audi told me that Sphere setting has less high frequency than Lumity. She increased high frequency for me. I feel that there’s more clarity now. But I need to test more in different environments.

@seaduck said:

Connectivity is a disaster. So many issues: dropping in and out; not connecting.

I had similar issues and had tried deleting app, reconnecting and restarting my iPhone. Then I noticed that my right aid had different version than my left aid. My Audi did firmware updates for my right aid today so that they are same now. At least Bluetooth is now connected automatically and so far no false low battery alert. You can check your hearing aid software version in the app. See picture below:

IMG_7101

Thank you for your post.

In a few years I shall be getting new hearing aids. I would buy them right now if I could

These aids have received. Amazing talk on this forum

I hope your concerns are resolved easily and quickly

Dave L

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