Phonak Sphere DNN Chip Test?

Indeed. Looking at your audiogram the choice of vented seems obvious, but especially your right ear will still be exposed to lot of noise.
It should not cost you anything to test power domes to give it a try. Your audi should be able to demo it to you and to quickly recalculate the presets when changing domes. Just for demo purpose of course

I know you say you’ve done tuning, but you could tune to the extreme to make the effect very obvious. so set speech focus to full speech, set noise canceling to max. Then go into a crouded place and listen for a few moments and force the Phonaks into the Spheric mode with the app. I had quite vented domes and I could tell the difference with the Spheric mode engaged but I did have to tune quite powerfully to get that effect. you can also of course check the battery level to see if it drastically drops to remaining runtime when using sphere. If your rely on autosense it might not kick in sphere mode for you and if you try and use sphere mode in a quiet room with the audiologist, it’s often much less obvious and less effective.

I have been trialing the Phonak Sphere for about a month and have very similar problem. I have good low frequency hearing so Audi recommended Phonak Vent Dome but I find that while it is possible to detect Spheric mode engaging (I use manual program to be sure) it does not help my ability to understand speech. I think there are two issues involved: 1) Vent Domes let too much normal sound in canceling the Spheric effect and 2) Testing in a very difficult environment where SNR may not be sufficient to overcome background noise. My Audi did an initial Quick SiN test with Vent Dome and I did not see a significant improvement over normal hearing including at SNR of 0 and 5 dB. Again I think this is partically due to Vent Domes allowing too much natural sound into ears.
I then tried several other domes including Phonak Power Domes which provided the largest degree of improvement with detection of Spheric mode. However I found that 1) Closed Domes seem to cause sounds to be muffled and my speech understanding was worse and 2) Closed Domes cause Occlusion that I could not tolerate for very long (less than an hour). Also note that the size of dome makes a big difference - I found the Small Power Domes to be acceptable but once I had Audi test my Occluded response found that I was getting considerable leakage with them and had to go to Medium Power Domes. I have attached a couple of the measured Occluded response to show difference between domes.
Question: I currently planning to get Custom cShells to address this problem but I’m not sure what vent diameter I should try - thinking of around 1 mm but my Audi keep suggesting that I go larger than that say 2 mm and then I can use tubing to reduce vent size if needed. Does anyone have any experience with this? Does it work well and are there any problems with this concept?

Hi. Just a thought, have you tried adjusting the Spheric settings themselves in the app? when Spheric mode is initially turned on, the settings aren’t that great in my experience. I personally changed the speech focus to almost max and the noise reduction to max. Then it shrank the bubble and let a lot less sound in, picking out speech a lot better.
Yes closed domes will help you for sure. I’m afraid I can’t comment on what ones to use there, I used mine with vented and I found even with vented I was getting a really good effect, but everyones experience will vary of course. I would say though, go somewhere noisy and get someone to talk at you, then play around with the app whilst this is happening to get the best experience.

When you change to a closed dome, the software does need to be adjusted to compensate as far as I know. So you could try it, but your audiologist ideally should make the changes on the HA’s themselves. Beware closed domes can sound very boomy with your own voice.

@Xonic83 said:

ideal thing to couple with Spheric mode, but Phonak told my audi that it’s not designed to work with the platform.

Yeah but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done, so I’m guessing the AV is not an option when a sphere model is connected to target?

@Xonic83 said:

What does seem odd is that there’s no consensus on Activent working with the Infinio platform. I’ve read about people who have made it work and it seems the ideal thing to couple with Spheric mode, but Phonak told my audi that it’s not designed to work with the platform.

To my knowledge, ActiveVent works with Infinio Sphere and standard Infinio R models.

@TimMac said:

Question: I currently planning to get Custom cShells to address this problem but I’m not sure what vent diameter I should try - thinking of around 1 mm but my Audi keep suggesting that I go larger than that say 2 mm and then I can use tubing to reduce vent size if needed. Does anyone have any experience with this? Does it work well and are there any problems with this concept?

Probably I had close enough experience. I will write the answer later because, as “Pierogi Person” (I love that nickname, although I’m not sure if other Poles like it), I have dinner soon.

(@TimMac , if I forget to reply, please remind me about your issue.)

Despite advices above from the AudiologyOnline course (“Welcome to a new ERA”), I strongly recommend more closed fitting.

More closed fitting => less necessity for more power AI denoising => better battery life on one charge.

I just checked mine with open dome and was already at 7

@Bimodal_user said:

Despite advices above from the AudiologyOnline course (“Welcome to a new ERA”), I strongly recommend more closed fitting.

Dude! no.

Not for such a mild loss especially in the right ear. Complete overkill - and not necessarily the root cause of the issue. How do we know what the prescription IS in the canal, how do we know that the fitting software isn’t doing some weird gain averaging and/or ignoring the asymmetry? How do we know that the client doesn’t have a long term asymmetrical dysfunction which means that the Spheric stereo isn’t audible to him? How do we know that he’s not on a really low initial adjustment setting that makes the switch into the spheric function less obvious?

Increasing the acoustic isolation of a hearing-aid may bode better for more severe losses in more extreme circumstances, but you don’t want it to be at the expense of natural canal function and pinna directionality. Just like you get better grip with your winter tyres, but you don’t run them on your sports car in the summer…….

Reminder that I would be interested in any guidance or experience you have had with picking a vent diameter for custom cShell to get good/best experience with Spheric noise reduction and speech understanding. Thanks for any information/experience that you have to provide.