Phonak Audéo Sphere

@WhiteHat said:

What I’ve seen was 6 times more powerful signal strength, resulting in double the distance. That doesn’t seem quite right to me due to the inverse cube law.

Microsoft Copilot AI answer on how BT signal falls off with distance:
(reference #1 in answer is official BT SIG site; just the humidity in the air can affect how BT signal strength is attenuated…)
Bluetooth Range on Vimeo1

Copilot

The strength of a Bluetooth signal does not decrease strictly according to a simple mathematical relationship like the square or cube of the distance. Instead, it’s influenced by several factors [1]:

1. Radio Spectrum: Bluetooth technology uses the 2.4 GHz ISM spectrum band (2400 to 2483.5 MHz), which enables a good balance between range and throughput [1].

2. PHY Receiver Sensitivity and Transmit Power: The value of the broadcasting power and distance determines the strength of a signal [4].

3. Path Loss: This is the reduction in signal strength that occurs as a radio wave propagates through the air. Path loss, or path attenuation, occurs naturally over distance and is impacted by the environment in which the signal is being transmitted [1].

4. Obstacles: Obstacles between the transmitter and the receiver can deteriorate the signal [1].

Bluetooth devices, operating over shorter ranges, experience a rapid decline in RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) with distance [3]. For instance, when the value of broadcasting power is 2–4 dBm, the strength of the RSSI signal is around -25 to -100 in the distance ranging from 40 to 50 meters [4].

So, while distance does play a role in Bluetooth signal strength, it’s not as simple as a square or cube relationship. It’s more complex and depends on a variety of factors. The signal is much stronger if the distance the signal has to travel is small [2]. The longer the signal has to travel, the higher the chances of interference [2].

Source: Conversation with Copilot, 8/7/2024

1. Understanding Bluetooth Range | Bluetooth® Technology Website2

2. Understanding the Measures of Bluetooth RSSI - mokoblue2

3. Understanding RSSI vs Distance for Better Connectivity - OneSDR2

4. Solve Your Connection Issues: The Definitive Guide to a Stronger …2

@Neville said:

But is Truhearing one of those third party American companies that reimburses clinicians peanuts such that you get next to zero coverage for follow-up care?

From the following truhearing.com3 web page: How It Works | TruHearing

Ongoing support

We help you successfully adjust to your hearing aids by including one year of follow-up visits with your provider for fitting and adjustments. You also get educational information sent directly to you and a library of support materials.1

So, the first year is covered and after that, it’s pay-as-you-go. But with my ReSound Quattros, I had almost a half-dozen issues with my left Quattro. Each time, ReSound replaced the complete HA body at no charge, and the audi said she was reimbursed by ReSound and charged me nothing through my entire 3-year warranty period with the Quattros. In my 2nd year with the Omnias, I’m pretty sure I damaged my left Omnia body microphones by careless, very sleepy cleaning with a Jodi-Vac needle. I volunteered to pay, saying I could see damage under a dissecting microscope. The audi said, “Let’s send your left HA body in for repair.” I lucked out in that ReSound replaced the HA body with a new one. Again no charge from ReSound or the audi. So, with warranty issues, truhearing.com is not involved. It’s between your HCP and the HA OEM. Especially if you are in a big city, you can get a list of truhearing connected providers from truhearing and shop around until you find an HCP you like. In San Antonio, there are both individual audiologists and chain hearing care centers connected with truhearing. As a State of Texas retiree, my Blue Cross-Blue Shield mentions truhearing.com as a source of hearing aids in the hearing aid coverage section. You do have to hunt around on the truhearing website, though, to find any mention of them selling the big-brand HAs. They used to have a database catalog that listed HAs by brand, price, features, etc. Now you have to personally contact truhearing or your truhearing HCP to find out about availability and price.

Hearing Aid Manufacturers | TruHearing2
(scrolll down page to see major brands they sell through HCPs - they want to sell their own in-house brand first!).

@bigaltavista said:

This suggests that Sonova probably partnered with or acquired Audatic at some stage and has since figured out how to run their denoise algorithms on a hearing aid-sized processing chip, instead of a smartphone, which was their previous model.

The thing that struck me in the 2/15/23 Nature paper cited by Abram was the extensive discussion of the applicability of DNN denoising towards hearing aids and their optimism that with the help of Moore’s Law (! ), they expected a DNN might run on hearing aids in a few years time:

Outlook

A challenge for neural network-based denoising algorithms is their computational cost compared to denoising methods traditionally used in hearing aids. As with most deep learning-based systems, the performance of our network improves with the available computational resources. Here, we limited the size of the network such that the algorithm runs in real time on a laptop. Hence, the computational power required to achieve the presented results is higher than what is available in current hearing aids and scaling the technology to the point where it can fit in a hearing aid still requires engineering more powerful hardware and/or more effcient models. However, the gap is not prohibitively large, and we speculate that Moore’s law and the exponential improvement in computational power per watt46 should lead to a feasible implementation on a hearing aid within a few years. Additionally, the rapid progress in the algorithmic effciency of neural networks47,48 should further shorten adoption time.

In summary, we have presented a denoising system that enables hearing aid users to achieve speech-in-noise intelligibility levels comparable to those for normal hearing listeners and generalizes across noise environments. Deep learning-based denoising systems could hence facilitate an entirely new type of hearing improvement that is directionally independent and could prove useful not only for hearing impaired users, but also for normal hearing listeners who wish to reduce noise in noisy situations, such as crowded restaurants or bars.

Since my search said that Audatic was a Swiss company, I made the unwarranted leap that Sonova must somehow be involved. Glad to hear there’s some further evidence that might be so. As the Nature discussion says, the two key things are the hardware and the computational design of the algorithm. If Phonak has both those things locked up, maybe it will be awhile before anyone else can catch up. OTH, maybe it won’t. The discussion points out that denoising would also be of tremendous benefit “… for normal hearing listeners who wish to reduce noise in noisy situations, such as crowded restaurants and bars.” Phonak doesn’t make earbuds (yet! ). I wonder if some company who does, who’s not going to compete with Phonak in the HA sphere (pun intended) might be their next big customer?!