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iSphere: Streaming TV, soundtrack music distorts speech at times

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Edited

I got me new Phonak Infinio Sphere 90’s on Monday. Getting used to them. Prior to this, I trialed a set of Audeo I90’s and which are very similar.

When I am linked to the Phonak TV streamer, I have no problem with word recognition when I’m listening to just speech. For example, watching the news. But when I watch any program or movie that has a musical sound track, even commercials, the music will slowly swell in loudness, along with the speech which gets distorted. If the music is intermittent, then the speech distortion will gradually diminish (along with the volume) until speech is no longer distorted.

Both the Audeo 90 and the iSphere do this, but my not my old KS9’s (same as the Phonak Paradise) which never do this. Is this something to do with Autosense 6.0? I’ve got an appointment next Tuesday to see my audiologist for some adjustments.

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That may be the issue. I think the sound starts compressing if you get too close to the max of the receiver. Ask your audiologist. Might want to try UP with the Sphere’s.

Jordan

I swapped back to my old KS9’s with the UP receiver and what a difference! At the moment, they are infinitely better than new iSpheres while streaming. I’ve got an appointment for next Tuesday to get my audiologist to do some tuning. did not really work out for me in this case.

Edited

I have exactly the same problem and it seems to happen randomly with any other media but it always does it when I listen to music, after around 10 second a new song starts. Then it goes back to normal again after like 10 seconds.

It’s like if the bass sounds slowly fade away and only the trebble remain.

I have Lumity L90. After I switched from M to P receivers it does this thing less often, I think, but it still happens…

Weird, isn’t it? I don’t know what its doing, but my audiologist doesn’t think that its Autosense. She thinks it has something to do with compression. But we’ll have to wait until she’s back in the office. She’s currently off sick.

Yeah, very weird, and for sure it doesn’t have to do with the microphone, because I turned it off completely on Target.

I noticed that, maybe, it might be triggered by some frequencies (higher ones), which would confirm what Jordan said… But it‘s strange because in my streaming settings I’m far from the target levels.

Keep me updated about what your audiologist said, mine didn’t have a clue!

Will do. I’m at a loss as to why my KS9’s don’t do it, with the same profile. I’d like to compare settings, but she thinks the KS9’s may be locked. I’m going to ask her to try anyway. I get my NoahLink Wireless 2 in early Feb.

I’ve been having a somewhat similar issue with my new Phonak Infinio Sphere 90s. The distortion is occurring with speech and sounds a bit like clipping or overdrive, for those familiar with those terms, and mostly with the higher frequencies. I have been struggling these past few weeks to find a reliable test case because the distortion is not constant. I finally discovered that it was 80% - 90% consistent with my own voice when I pronounced words that begin with “S”. The distortion makes it sound more like “Sh” than “S”.

I printed a copy of this forum thread and brought it with me to my audiologist yesterday. Based on my description of the problem and what she read in this thread, she tried MANY different adjustments and none seemed to help. Then something she changed made a HUGE difference for the better. She made a few tweaks after that and the sound improved even more. I asked her what she changed and she said that she used a different fitting function? I’m not quite sure what that means but wanted to pass it along here for anyone else having similar issues.

Ken

Yes, there are two or three fitting formulas, one of which was apparently developed at a university near me. The fitting is the base setup. Then is applied on top of that. Then tweaking from there.

My problem was mostly during streaming. We discovered that the factory default for streaming has changed, with low and mid frequencies beefed up for music. Buy since the streaming programs (music vs speech) overlap while watching a show, they needed to dial back the music curve to match manually the speech curve. That fixed my issue. Phonak knows about this.

Edited

In reply to @Kenigmatic

@Kenigmatic said:

. I asked her what she changed and she said that she used a different fitting function?

Ask her if it was indeed changing from to 5.0. Quite interesting.

@CaptainTrips said:

fitting formulas, one of which was apparently developed at a university near me.

I wonder do they plan make a newer version or “if it works good, don’t fix it”.

IIRC, DSL 5.0 Adult and Pediatric have over 20 years?

I diagnosed this myself via the Phonak Target 10 software, by comparing the streaming curves from my old Kirkland Signature 9s to the curves of my Phonak Sphere I90s.

When my audiologist called into Phonak to discuss what I had told her (complete with screen captures of the two sets of curves for comparison) the Phonak rep allegedly said, “Stop right there… yes, we are aware of this problem, and the solution is to manually match the streaming curves for music and voice. And no, you can’t cut and paste them. Take a pic with your phone and manually adjust the curves by frequency.”

And so, she did.

Phonak rep stated that they had enhanced the streaming curves for music to give a better music streaming experience for the Sphere, not realizing that it would have unintended consequences for streaming movies and such. There is no way to control Autosense when it switches between streaming music and streaming voice.

Fascinating. So there are faults needing remedy.
Just as I suspected.
When I complained about the crazy poor design of the Phonak App,
I assumed that other more functional faults had to exist as well.
That is why users must be more vocal and complain until fixed!

In reply to @Kenigmatic

I am experiencing something similar to this! The interesting thing is, I could experience the same issue with the behind-the-ear Lumity about a year and a half ago, and the audiologist could not figure out what the problem was. I reached the end of the trial and decided not to purchase even though those were incredibly better than the Signia Pure I had at the time. A few months later I tried the same devices with another audiologist, and the issue never occurred (the trial in this case lasted a little over two weeks because I really didn’t like the audi approach and I had anyway decided to wait a bit longer before retiring the Signia). Now I am back to audiologist 1, Sphere I90 with UP receivers, and sometimes it happens again: while in autosense, the “S” start degrading into “SH” and it gives the overall speech experience a very unnatural feeling. It does not happen as often as it did with the Lumity, but when it does, the only option I have to avoid the frustration and listening stress this causes is to switch to one of the custom programs I have created. I would definitely welcome a solution I can apply myself via the Target software, because normally I find autosense to be quite effective in picking the right program for the listening situation I’m in! I do agree with JordanK about the compression, as my high frequency hearing loss is slightly beyond the HA’s range, but there’s still the fact that with the Lumity programmed by the other audi the problem never occurred. I am considering reaching out to her just to ask if she could know what could be the reason for that, but I don’t expect much (she was extremely rude and unprofessional back then).

I assume that you have ear moulds? One thing that I discovered is that my audiologist didn’t know that they need to order a larger F3 type for the UP rather than the standard type that they usually fit, because the smaller ones restrict the sound output of the UP receiver.

In reply to @Bimodal_user

@Bimodal_user said:

Ask her if it was indeed changing from NAL-NL2 to DSL 5.0. Quite interesting.

I’m probably not understanding what she changed. She said she didn’t change to the fitting function and asked me if I wanted to try the NAL fitting function. I didn’t have time today to pursue it. She made some more tweaks today that definitely helped a bit more, so I’m going to see how that goes for a couple of weeks or so. The issue is becoming more subjective since I don’t have a good, consistent test case. That and I know our brains adapt some, making it even harder to isolate better vs worse. Today, I think she said that she turned off compression? Might have been frequency compression? She also said that she reduced the gain slightly for frequencies of 4k and above.

In reply to @CaptainTrips

@CaptainTrips said:

I assume that you have ear moulds?

Not sure if you are replying to me, but I’ve got standard-power receivers with open domes. My audi said I’m not anywhere close to the gain limits for the SP receivers, so she didn’t think that was the problem. I don’t really know enough (yet) about these to understand if more powerful receivers could help?

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