Phonak Audéo Sphere Infinio 90's .. another review

@Deb630 said:

Also did anybody give you the heads up that phonak suggests the Pistons in the activant receivers be replaced every 6 months. My audiologist charges $160 per device every 6 months. Thx

I think the warranty is six months. Mine lasted a lot longer than that.

@Deb630 said:

I hope that maybe you can help me with my question. I just ordered mine yesterday and then today he had me come back in to do an ear mold. He says that If you are using the active vent receiver, these have to be worn with an ear mold. You can’t use regular domes with them.

You can wear them with universal slimtips. They come in a variety of sizes.

WH

@raylock1 said:

I think the warranty is six months. Mine lasted a lot longer than that.

Considering a lifespan of 5 years for a set of Hearing Aids, is the hearing experience of the ActiveVents worth the additional expenditure of $3,200 on receivers alone ($160x2x2x5)?

Only you can know if they are worth it. Mine did not cost anything beyond the initial purchase for the year and a half I wore them. They are still attached to my backups. I now need stronger receivers. I guess somewhere along the line you could change to cShell’s or slimtips at the price of the activents replacement if you wanted.

I’m glad you can enjoy the ActiVents through the VA. You deserve it for your military service and the hearing loss it may have caused. Thanks for helping to look out for all of us! My wife seconds my opinion (and when I kidded her about that’s where the income tax she pays is going, she said she was glad to pay for that!).

They are cheap in areas I’d wish they were a little more generous, but unbelievably generous in other areas. I have often said that I received far more from my service than it cost me. I can’t imagine what life would have been like if I’d taken another route.

WH

Just thinking tonight as I look at the upcoming week, my appt to order my new HAs is Tuesday. It occurred to me there is a possibility I’ll have them in time for Thanksgiving dinner. Big family gatherings are impossible for me. This could be a game changer. I can’t wait.

WH

@Ureout said:

so if you JUST want to change the volume you need to get up and walk across the room to the streamer and use the volume Adj. on the streamer…

I don’t know that I’ve tried my phone volume button, but there is the volume slider up and down the middle of the screen in the MyPhonak app, and also pressing down on a hearing aid rocker button will decrease the volume of the TV streamer if your HCP set it up. I’ve never had to go over to my Phonak TV Connector to adjust the volume and I’ve done it many times. In streaming media, the phone volume button works to control volume and it does so in finer increments than the volume slider in the MyPhonak app. I presume the phone volume button should work for TV streaming, but I just haven’t tried it yet. Because of the finer increments of change for the phone volume button, maybe you didn’t push the volume button enough to realize you were making a change? What I like about Phonak streaming is that if you’ve set the settings to turn off ambient surrounding sound, as soon as you stop streaming, you go back to your normal listening program. With ReSound hearing aids, you have to manually switch back to hearing surrounding sound. With the Spheres, all I have to do on my Apple Watch is to hit the pause button in the podcast player to go back to my normal hearing settings. I don’t have to further fumble with my watch or pull out my phone to stop listening exclusively to streamed media and hear everything normally again.

Edit_Update: Yes, I agree. With the TV Connector, the phone volume button has no effect on TV volume, but the vertical slider for the TV Streaming program does control volume within limits. My Spheres are set up so I can just switch out to the Automatic program, and I go back to normal environmental listening if I don’t want to hear any TV. And you have your choice in TV streaming to select how much surrounding sound you want to hear with the Adjust Program slider at the bottom of the TV Streaming screen. Even with ReSound HAs, I always kept my phone handy on a nearby metal phone stand. I’ve never walked over to either the ReSound TV Streamer 2 or the Phonak TV Connector to adjust anything.

Jim, with the resound HA’s you don’t need your phone to adjust the volume … you just click the button on the HA it takes 2 seconds … it’s much easier and definitely faster than reaching for your phone clicking on app and waiting for phonak app to open and then using the volume slide bar … I don’t believe what you posted above that your rocker switch on your HA adjusts TV volume… try it by opening your app then click the rocker switch and see if the volume bar setting changes… IT DOESN’T what changes is the ambient setting below … so if you are trying to lower JUST your TV volume it actually raises the volume of your surrounding noise … so if you click your HA switch twice … yes it seems like the volume of TV lowered but now I want you to say a few words as if talking to someone and see if your voice and their’s isn’t MUCH louder …
and yes the resound app also has the same feature as phonak the sliding bar for surrounding noise… my point was I do not understand why a VOLUME TOGGLE BUTTON on the HA doesn;t adjust the volume of the TV …
as far as having the audi change the set-up there is no change for that… he called phonak and talked to there tech. dept and they do not have a change for that … my audi said that he believes that Phonak is the only brand of HA’s that does this?? and no the volume button on my Iphone will not change the volume of the TV streamer … and yes you are correct with resound when I stop streaming and turn the TV off the HA’s do not switch back to my All Around prog for several minutes so I manually do it

@Ureout said:

I don’t believe what you posted above that your rocker switch on your HA adjusts TV volume… try it by opening your app then click the rocker switch and see if the volume bar setting changes… IT DOESN’T what changes is the ambient setting below

You’re right. While watching election returns the other night, I thought the TV was too loud. I pressed the rocker on my left HA down, and the TV volume went down, and since the TV was still loud and there was little other noise in the room, I didn’t appreciate that the TV volume decrease was associated with an ambient volume increase (I didn’t have the TV playing through its attached amplifier’s speakers). I don’t find it so hard to reach for my phone to control the volume. If my iPhone has gone to the lock screen from the MyPhonak app timing out, all I have to do is swipe up, and the MyPhonak volume control is right there and ready to use, especially if I’ve left the HA/MyPhonak connection on in the Device tab settings in the MyPhonak app. Not much different than reaching for the regular TV remote control as normal hearing listeners have to do to effect a TV volume change. If you’re near any other viewers (I’m slightly off to the side in my wife’s field of view; she likes to sit much further away from the TV), it’s probably distracting to have someone else reaching up to their head, moving their arm around visibly in your peripheral vision. Even worse if you’re sitting right next to that person. I think you’re making an artificial case about the difficulty of grabbing your phone and using it like a normal TV remote. Having to use a rocker switch on an HA to change anything is not an HA interface advantage, as far as I’m concerned. But each to his own. If having a HA button sequence to control TV volume is a must, it makes sense to go with HAs that offer that functionality.

Will have to answer later. Wife is off to see her older brother on his deathbed. Either he or his doctors overlooked a rare side effect of Targisso, lung inflammation, and now he may pay the ultimate price. Both his lungs have collapsed and he doesn’t want to be intubated. He was very reluctant to see a doctor about his shortness of breath until he was too far gone…

@Ureout said:

Jim, 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?

I have I90s and have noticed the same thing. Sometimes both hearing aids give me the descending chime sound and quickly give me the “turning on” chime. I guess it is a bug that will hopefully be fixed.

Sorry to hear this

MDB… since Jim is not able to answer… The phonak streamer is as good as my Resound streamer and I’ve been streaming TV for years … I can’t believe the difference in comprehension when streaming… if I’m not streaming I need to have CC on because I might understand about 50% of the dialogue… when streaming my comprehension goes up to about 90% and I sometimes have to tell my wife what was said…lol