Phonak Spice

@bledbet705 said:

Is there an aid that is hands down the best to have? People seem fussy about the Phonak Smart 9’s. Is there an aid that comes close to matching natural ear performance? I am still in the grace period on my new 9’s and I don’t want to make a $4200 mistake. However, I must say, though I may have forgotten what natural sound is, the 9’s in an uncrowded setting are “natural”. I have had them for a week and a half. Do I have the Target 2.0 software?

For natural sound try the Widex 440 Clears. far clearer than the Phonak S Smart IX

@bledbet705 said:

Is there an aid that is hands down the best to have? People seem fussy about the Phonak Smart 9’s. Is there an aid that comes close to matching natural ear performance? I am still in the grace period on my new 9’s and I don’t want to make a $4200 mistake. However, I must say, though I may have forgotten what natural sound is, the 9’s in an uncrowded setting are “natural”. I have had them for a week and a half. Do I have the Target 2.0 software?

I hope you are trialing multiple aids. I mean would you test drive one car when buying one? The phonak spice aids have a reputation due to their 20 channel support for sounding natural in quiet situations. But they are horrible in noise and in some cases quiet situation due to their soundflow feature. however, their stereozoom feature that uses 2 aids to focus on sounds in noise, turns a dud of an aid into the front runner. The aid that used to be king of the hill were the oticon agil pro line of aids. people who hate phonaks typically claim oticons to be more natually sounding probably due to their speech guard feature. for single aid performance in noise oticon can’t be beat. I would suggest you start a new thread and include your hearing test results if you want further help.

widex also have a reputation for sounding more natural, possibly due to the way they use frequency transposition. But they perform not as well in noise.

I just loaded TARGET 2.0 to my HA and icom. What a difference. Most of the raspyness and problems with hearing my own voice are gone. They seem to have reduced the over amplification of low noise without sacrificing the amplification of the high end sounds.
Something members with Phonak Spice aids should look into

@carnutfl said:

I just loaded TARGET 2.0 to my HA and icom. What a difference. Most of the raspyness and problems with hearing my own voice are gone. They seem to have reduced the over amplification of low noise without sacrificing the amplification of the high end sounds.
Something members with Phonak Spice aids should look into

Thanks! I get mine upgraded soon; raspyness and too much emphasis on background noise is definitely what I am suffering from, so I am looking forward to the upgrade. I’ll post back here what difference it makes.

@DaisyD said:

After my 16th visit and 11 months down the track my Audie turned off sound recover completely yesterday and it has made quite a significant difference in my understanding of speech. I still would not recommend these aids to anyone and I still think that they are a “rip off” but they are starting to sound OK.

Yes I am doubtful about the benefits of Sound Recover. I think the theory is that because it helps you to hear sounds that you have the lost the ability to hear otherwise, that this will help with speech comprehension etc. But this seems to me to be to the detriment of the “naturalness” of the sound. If speech sounds more unnatural when using Sound Recover, then perhaps it should not be used at all? I have yet to try it switched off myself. It is so frustrating having to rely on the audi for trying things out like this…it makes the whole process of adjustment so long drawn out…

@Tatters said:

Yes I am doubtful about the benefits of Sound Recover. I think the theory is that because it helps you to hear sounds that you have the lost the ability to hear otherwise, that this will help with speech comprehension etc. But this seems to me to be to the detriment of the “naturalness” of the sound. If speech sounds more unnatural when using Sound Recover, then perhaps it should not be used at all? I have yet to try it switched off myself. It is so frustrating having to rely on the audi for trying things out like this…it makes the whole process of adjustment so long drawn out…

Nearly all of the patients I have that have Phonak hearing aids do not like how things sound when sound recover is off, or they don’t notice too much difference. The only times I’ve noticed people preferring sound recover to be less strong is for brand-new users who are not accustomed to hearing high-frequency sounds at all. Then once they are used to hearing those noises again they have very good performance and clarity of speech.

The difficulty in dealing with those who are after “natural” sounding sounds is they haven’t heard “natural” in years so what are they basing that comparison off of? The point of a hearing aid isn’t to make things sound “natural”, it’s to make sounds (specifically speech) clearer and easier to distinguish sounds on the part of the wearer. In my experience, sound recover does benefit the patient in most cases. I don’t think I’ve turned it off for anyone.

How does soundrecover affect frequency range? I guess, with soundrecover , freqeuncy range is wider to the user. I don’t know how sensitive is the microphones of my hearing aids( naida V sp) but I think I do hear sounds beyond 6900 hz with help of soundrecover. My soundrecover is set at 4khz with a ratio of 2.1 so I can hear sounds up to around 9000 or 10000 hz?

SoundRecover can be excellent : it ‘saved’ a car mechanic client of mine.

He could no longer hear the slipping of an alternator belt … not career enhancing.

(The belt whine is at 2300 Hz … I measured it … how about that for service!)

Anyway with SoundRecover I shifted that down to 1900 Hz, so he could hear the slipping belt again!

He did notice initially that it didn’t sound ‘right’ … but within days it became the ‘real’ sound for him.

He is now a VERY happy bunny!

I measured my frequency range as 25 hz - 9000 hz .

I used my computer and a headphone and a speaker .

@EnglishDispenser said:

He did notice initially that it didn’t sound ‘right’ … but within days it became the ‘real’ sound for him.

I’m glad I happened to see this because I’ve really been curious/confused about how the SoundRecover actually sounds. Academically I understand how it works, but in practice, won’t it actually change even the modulation of a person’s voice? And if so, mightn’t that at times distort a person’s meaning? Am I making sense? For instance, in the Thai language, tone and inflection can completely change the meaning of a word. Now while that’s not generally true in English, a persons tone (and frequency surely sometimes enters into that) can completely change the meaning of a word. For instance, to let a child know you’re very pleased with them, you might say “Charles!” with a high pitch, but if you’re mad at him it’s more likely to be a very low, growling “Charles!”

@Deb_in_CO said:

I’m glad I happened to see this because I’ve really been curious/confused about how the SoundRecover actually sounds. Academically I understand how it works, but in practice, won’t it actually change even the modulation of a person’s voice? And if so, mightn’t that at times distort a person’s meaning? Am I making sense? For instance, in the Thai language, tone and inflection can completely change the meaning of a word. Now while that’s not generally true in English, a persons tone (and frequency surely sometimes enters into that) can completely change the meaning of a word. For instance, to let a child know you’re very pleased with them, you might say “Charles!” with a high pitch, but if you’re mad at him it’s more likely to be a very low, growling “Charles!”

Soundrecover takes a lot of time to adjust. I’m in my eighth week and have begun to notice outcomes. I still need more weeks. The brain needs a lot of time to give meaning to new sounds. But benefit is worth.

@DocAudio said:

Also a suggestion is to turn down the volume for the soft sounds (this would be the 20dB Gain tab). That might help with the “shushing” sound. You might be picking up a vent or some other noise in the office.

the 20dB Gain tab doesn’t exist for ipfg. How can I make it adjust for my naida V sps when necessary? What does tk mean in the software ?

@eyesgreendeaf said:

the 20dB Gain tab doesn’t exist for ipfg. How can I make it adjust for my naida V sps when necessary? What does tk mean in the software ?

Increasing the TK will decrease the volume for very soft sounds (counterpart to the Target 2.0 20dB tab). TK stands for Compression Threshold Kneepoint. If you change the view on iPFG to Input/output and then Target and select 500Hz for example, by increasing the TK you decrease the output for soft sounds. By decreasing the output, you decrease the amount of volume for those soft sounds.

HTH

Ok, I get it. Thank you.