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New user, musician, testing Sony CRE-20, Phonak RIC, looking for options

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55 year old man, mild/moderate HF loss particularly in one ear but some in both. Played with the iPhone/airPodsPro a few weeks ago and was surprised how much I was missing. Decided to go to audiologist, got a full test, and they sent me home with demos of Phonak model worn behind the ear, with open dome RIC. I also ordered the Sony CRE-20, which I guess are based on the Signia Silk Charge&Go 7ix.

So far, I haven’t really cared for the behind the ear thing, I wear glasses and find that I constantly bump them, and find them hard to “install” properly. But I imagine if that style is the best for me I could get used to it.

The Sonys I did not like initially with the close dome, but I bought a set of vented domes and I like them a lot with these. They are quite comfortable, they are a bit visible but are also easy to pop in and out, and I don’t have to fight with my glasses.

Sound wise - this is what I am most in need of help with. I am a non-pro musician, and a bit of a music lover as well, and whatever I eventually choose needs to work for my life.

With both hearing aids, I find a lot of phase distortion particularly in the middle frequencies which make spacial location difficult.

In all cases I have tested listening to music “naturally” - not using or any direct connection (I did try it with the phonaks and it was horrible). Listening to music on my studio speakers, or even just our “boombox” I found a few things that I’d like to change:

  • There is quite a lot of “automatic stuff” going on - volume reduction/surging, compression, phase shifting
  • Most disturbing - both brands seem to get confused with any steady tone and some chords, and invoke some “tremelo” effect. Its very annoying, and I found that even some steady low tones (like our refrigerator when running) will cause a phantom “tweety bird tremelo” to appear in one ear or the other or both at a higher tone.

My question: Where do I go from here? Googling around I find lots of similar posts from musicians and music lovers. My hearing is probably better than most, as I have mild loss above 4K (20db at 4k, 30db at 6k, 50db at 8k, and I do still have hearing at 12k but not sure how bad but I was able to “test” this with a tone generator)

What are the best aids that can be set up with as close to possible as a true “just boost the damaged frequencies” with no, or as little as possible, additional processing? I.e. “analog curve boost”? I realize that such a program would perhaps not be the best choice for all daily living, but I really want the option for music, playing guitar/keyboard, and live music situations. I have tried with both the current aids, and the distortion around pure tones/certain chords is just unbearable.

I have an appointment next week with the audiologist. They offer every brand I have ever seen mentioned on here. I did mention my concerns with music and they put me in the phonaks because they have “lots of user adjustment in the app and a music program”. I tried that, and was not impressed. Also not a big fan of the fit/physical constraints.

One thing I believe I have noticed, is that with the “” there is quite a bit of phase difference between the sound from the , and what is passing by the HA in air. I have read that Widex has some of the fastest processing, and might be good for musicians. Or its all marketing and who knows. Also there are so many individual models of each aid!

Finally, specific question - I like the Sony other than I wish it could be tweaked to remove the compression/auto gain/feedback prevention in some program. Well the Signia Silk C&G is the programable version, so looking for any experiences with those and if its possible to create a good “music” program with minimal processing and feedback control.

Thanks for any advice, I will upload my as well.

14 people in this conversation24 min readJump to latest

I should mention that I found this thread last night (after experiencing the phantom tweety-bird from our fridge, and trying to tune my acoustic guitar and wondering why I was hearing strong vibrato on the G, B and high E strings). Phonak Marvel - vibrating tremolo effect for high pitched (electronic) sounds - #35 by legsmaniac69

It seems to be the anti-feedback feature thinking it is hearing feedback.

I’m a professional musician – and am in the same boat. I tried the Sony CRE 20 but couldn’t
connect with the sound. I get better results with my AirPods Pro 2. I am also searching for the optimal music . I’m researching Widex for their low latency claim. Also Oticon has come up-- but don’t know much about them. Going to an audiologist- who on the phone-- said that everyone is different in respect to which brand I would be better suited. It’s just difficult with the demands of what a musician wants to hear.

As a guitarist myself and a relatively new user (September, Phonak I90 Sphere) I share your frustration. It will take an iterative process, working closely with your audiologist, to improve your experience. That, and time: your brain will need to adapt to your new soundscape and the enhanced inputs. It may take several weeks to a couple of months for that process to play out and it is likely that some of the experience that bothers you at the beginning of it will recede over time. Hearing more high frequency information than your natural hearing delivers can seem very jarring at the beginning. It is also likely that some of the adjustments you make through the rudimentary control you have via the app and even some of the much more complex and robust control of the internal processing that your audiologist can alter will seem less helpful as that brain-adaptation continues. And don’t forget that HAs are designed to improve speech recognition primarily - which involves a very different kind of processing than what would be optimal for a musician.

All ears and HAs are different, but musicians seem to have a better experience while playing by having their audiologist create a separate custom setting (mine is called "Guitar’) that turns off things like frequency shifting, feedback control, and much reduces the compression strategy used for speech. Feedback control in particular seems to create havoc with skinny string notes up the guitar neck since many of those notes correspond to unwanted HA squeals. Turning that off can sound more natural - and reducing gain of higher frequencies or just the overall volume of the HAs can improve the experience too. Some HAs use a frequency shift strategy - moving some sounds down an octave or more - to combat feedback, which can sound very weird to a musician who wants those notes.

In addition to those, I’ve had a better experience on acoustic guitar at home by much reducing the rear-facing microphones on my HAs (which seemed to contribute to a sensation of phasing).

Much of this will depend on how “closed” your fitting is - whether you have vents in your domes letting in some frequencies “naturally” while processing the the ones where your prescription says you need augmentation. With an open fitting your brain will adapt and combine those two sources… eventually, hopefully. But until it does you may experience an odd kind of warble.

There’s a difference between “listening to music” and “making music” too. Many factors involved from hardware to software to phone settings… and not all strategies will work for all musicians in all situations (without even getting into bluetooth streaming, where your source and phone settings complicate everything further).

It was frustrating and disappointing for me at first, especially since musicians are used to noticing very fine irregularities in what they hear. But over the last six months of trail and error my audiologist has worked with me to improve my guitar playing experience and tweak things for me as my brain adapted.

Hopefully we can both find a solution. I agree with you also - the AirPods sound far better in some ways, less “auto adjustment” going on - but the occlusion effect is pretty strong. Did you try the open domes with the Sonys? I found that made quite a bit of improvement. I honestly could totally get used to the AirPods but wearing obvious earbuds around all the time is kinda weird. And after a few hours they do start to irritate my ears, whereas I can wear the Sonys all day.

I have my home studio set up with proper studio monitors that I have EQ’ed to ‘negate’ my hearing loss above 4-8K, so I know how things are “supposed” to sound. I just want a way to replicate that (and just that) in a hearing aid .

I can record and produce music and I wish I could just DIY this hearing aid business. I realize its not exactly that simple, and I would have no clue what ’s to DIY with, but neither is all the other stuff I have leaned over the years in IT (day job) and music (hobby/side gig). I’m sure with some guidance internet and trial and error I could figure it out.

I guess what I was hoping to gain from the community here is at least a few recommendations of brands/models to try that have the ability to be adjusted in a “music program” or two setting that applies just very basic EQ and little else (perhaps a limiter for very loud sounds only). Maybe one setting for home/studio that is EQ only and one for live music that has some limiting/mild compression.

I find that under the right circumstances even the Sonys can do OK. Mild volume listening on my monitors and evenly dymanic music they sound OK. A few weird artifacts. But on more dynamic music they “surge and cut” as the auto gain gets agressive, and also they clamp down on the HF response when cutting. Artifacts are particularly bad on synthetic chordal music, strings, and songs with any steady tones. I get that warble effect. The AirPods seem to do much better with all of that (less processing).

Long time semi-pro musician and home studio recorder here, been wearing hearing aids for about 15 years. The answer to your problem is two-fold. First, you need to find an audiologist that understands how to set up hearing aids for music (both listening and playing), and second I would recommend you learn how to program the hearing aids yourself.

Audis that understand how musicians want to use hearing aids are few and far between in my experience. Most focus on setting up for hearing speech and have little if any knowledge of how to optimise for music. But more importantly if you really want to optimise your HA experience for music you need to self-program IMO. There are two issues - first, you need to turn off all the clever processing that optimises speech in difficult situations so that you get a more natural experience. A good audi should be able to do this for you in a dedicated music program. Second, you then need to reduce/tweak the inbuilt compression in the fitting rationale so you get a music experience that works for you. The only effective way to do this is with the software itself because it is a time consuming process (you have to tweak all the relative gain settings across each of the individual frequencies). Also, you need to be sat in front of your studio monitors so you can do A/B testing against reference tracks of your choosing. There’s no way you can do this in an audiologist’s office.

I’ve been able to create a really good experience for both listening to audio and recording music in my home studio. I don’t play live anymore so can#t really comment on that.

Edited

@OldMusicGuy Thanks I really appreciate the comment. Having just started on this journey, I had already kinda come to this conclusion - that if I could get a basic setup, and get ahold of the software and necessary hardware I could actually tweak a couple of really stripped down programs for music listening/performance/playing.

This is probably a question for the forum (which I just discovered) but wondering if Widex and or Signia/Rexton are DIY-able.

I plan on returning to the audio next Monday and plan to ask for a trial of the Signia vesion of the Sony CRE-20 (Signia Silk C&G ix7) and or the Widex Smart . Both of those seem to be able to be tweaked to “bare bones” and I watched all the videos on the Signial software and it seems very approachable. Only gotcha for the Signia C&G is that they are not and have their own programmer that is $400.

The Widex SmartRIC seem to get pretty good reviews in regards to music/natural sound, and they tout “musician” on their website in a number of places.

Yes another non-pro musician here who’s going through the search for hearing aid options that work for natural (non-streamed) music. I have moderate cookie-bite hearing loss, so not a match with your hearing loss, but I’ve tried old Oticon hearing aids, the Earlens system (which requires a lens on your eardrum), Sony CRE-E10s, Apple AirPods Pro 2, Widex SmartRICs, and Phonak Audeo Spheres. For listening to music from my audio system / out at live shows, the Widex SmartRICs were clearly the best, with the Earlens system nearly as good. None of the other hearing aids I’ve tried work well for me for natural music.

I think for people with mild-to-moderate hearing loss, the comb filter effect is the biggest obstacle for music listening with hearing aids; maybe that’s what you’re referring to by “phase distortion”. Widex minimizes the comb filter effect by reducing the latency of the processed/amplified sound, especially in their Puresound program. Earlens does it by not producing any sound in your ear canal, instead using induction to control a lens on your eardum.

The Widex Puresound program isn’t made for music, but the Widex app has a feature where you can create a custom program out of Puresound that’s tailored by “” for music listening. I found that my custom program gave me as close to a natural music listening experience as I’ve had in over a decade, with minimal feedback control or compression. Probably a better Puresound-based music program could be created by your audiologist or through self-programming.

Although this article5 isn’t all glowing regarding Widex, it does confirm that the latency of the signal is ~0.5ms as claimed, which is a drastic difference compared to Phonak (~6ms), Oticon (~8ms), or Signia IX/Sony (~12ms), and the difference is very clear for me when listening to music.

Regarding , I prefer it for music; on my current Phonak hearing aids, the audiologist applied a low-pass cutoff at 6 kHz and a high-pass cutoff at 500 Hz for me, and for your hearing, you might consider a high-pass cutoff as high as 3 kHz to reduce the comb filter effect at lower frequencies.

Regarding with Widex, I was able to get the Widex Compass GPS software from a random website, and I intend to buy a NoahWireless or Widex hearing aid programmer, either of which is available for ~$200, after I return my current Phonak hearing aids and replace them with the Widex SmartRIC. (BTW Widex just released a new platform, Allure, which might be better than SmartRIC in many ways, but the cloud-based programming software sounds like a DIY killers).

My Widex Moment 440s required very little tweaking beyond Compass’s recommended settings to be very good for music. I based all the settings on Compass’s built in rather than my previous audiogram from Costco. Also, the Pure Sound program is very clean sounding without noticeable shifts in volume and quality of sound.

In reply to @jbrinker

The part of the forum is great, people are very helpful. If you have used a DAW, tweaking your in the fitting software is well within your capability. I found a superb audi who talked me through the software and we worked together to get them set up - he did the initial fitting and I then tweaked the aids at home. I spent several hours getting the gain settings right for music. The other advantage of DIY is that you can also tweak the non-music settings as well, which allows you to try various tweaks of the “clever” features and test them in the real world without going back to your audi.

The best thing to do is to trial different aids before you commit and get the ones that seem best. I chose Oticon because their speech in noise was best and also the Intents had good levels of technology. At the time I bought my aids the Widex technology platform was old and my audi was wary of me getting to commit to it. The Oticon music program was not the best of the aids I tested but I now have it tweaked to a perfect solution for me.

Edited

I have an audio appointment next monday, and will take all the advice here with me and see what they say. Based on @artrockunicorn comments I will see if they would try me in one of the newer Widex with Puresound, and ask that they do a proper fitting so that I have at least a usable music program with no feedback corerction and minimal compression.

I will mention the thought of a high-pass filter too, I had actually been thinking about that making a lot more sense with an aid (maybe they just didn’t bother with an actual tweaking on the trials the sent me home with). I’d like to try seveal options (I’d really like to tweak myself and am sure I could do it -having watched the training videos for Signia it does not seem hard at all maybe just time consuming). Like you said if I can use a DAW with plugins I think I can figure out hearing aid self fitting/tweaking.

The “feature” on the Sony/Signia that is giving me the most grief (who knows how they are actually set up its all black-box) is the auto-gain/limiter (with high cut) and the anti feedback. If I could tweak or turn those off, I think I could get used to much of the rest.

There definitely is some “comb filter” effect (I hear it more as a phaser guitar pedal effect) at mid-frequencies. Some of that might be due to delay vs air, and some due to the processing itself. My mid-range hearing is fine though, so perhaps that high-pass filter is the way to go.

Interestingly, I have called my audio 3x in the past week to report that the right side HA they gave me seems to be not working right. The “speaker” will sound like a broken paper cone at times, as if its being over driven. This happens even at very low volumes in , and I can hear the effect at other times too. I think its either mis-programmed or the reciever/speaker is damaged. Each time I call I got the “we’re busy leave a message” voicemail and never have gotten a callback. Not a good sign for this office. I will mention it Monday.

Anyone have experience with the big online vendors? Seems as if they might actually be more responsive than a physical office once I figure out what direction to go.

Which of the brands are most “friendly” to tweaking? I know none of them officially support it, but are some more locked down/unfriendly/impossible to work with or get software for than others?

Edited

Another musician here. I Agree completely with OldMusicGuy. Perfect advice!

However, after trying everything, I have pretty much settled on Phonak for the accessories, world-wide support networks, and ease of programming. YMMV

Made sure the Neural Noise Suppression was off, fixed omni directionality, wind stabilizer off, then spent several hours sat in front of studio monitors tweaking all the gain settings across all frequencies while listening to various reference tracks to get the music reproduction just how I liked it.

Edited

Follow up question for everyone and anyone below.

First an update: I abandoned the Sony’s the other day and decided to give the Phonak one more try. I tested them by playing tones through them, and found that the right receiver was clearly very messed up as I suspected all along. I popped the cap off it and looked at the opening with a magnifier and it was pristine. I blew it out with compressed air and re-tested. Better but still sounded like it was crackling. I snapped it around a bit blew it out again, and tried again. This time it sounded right! I put on some music through BT and, although tinny as expected due to , they sounded “correct” - at least like normal music sounds not distorted garbage and rattles. But now the right ear (the one I had cleaned) was 1-2 notches too loud (before it felt too soft). I suspect this receiver was messed up when they fitted it to me.

I went back into the phonak app, and reset everything to defaults, balanced the volume L-R, and tried the various programs and settings in room. I was able to tweak the music program to at least be acceptable, and I found that with the volume set right, voice set to “wide”, “boost/cut volume setting” set to “middle” which hopefull does little, and tweaking the high band of the available 3-band EQ (wow! so many bands! lol) I could get something that sounded mostly like I was hoping for. The only real remaining issue was the sound delay, but it was at least tolerable and only really noticeable on cymbals and other very HF sounds. Its a little weird, since I hear the main part of those sounds a few ms early and the HF part sounds like its clearly coming from the , not where the sound originated, but its way better than before. No comb filter effect, no phaser effect, and I could tune my guitar without weird phantom noises (that was a Sony specific issue).

I believe that with a bit of help from the audio, or some self programming, I could live with this quality of sound improvement.

Now for the question: I really do not like the RIC/behind the ear thing. I was mostly OK with the sony “open fit” style. Does Phonak, Widex, Opticon or anyone else good, make a CIC or style with the same quality of sound, most or all of the features of a RIC style? And even more important can they be made “vented” like the Sony’s, Eargo, etc? Its not about style for me, but I really find the cable/RIC/earbob thing a PITA with glasses, short hair, and tiny ears. Even the Sonys which are pretty “big” for a CIC were better overall fit-wise (not sound wise!). I know nothing at all about real prescription CIC/IIC aids, other than they are custom made - do they let you trial those?

@artrockunicorn - I finally got around to reading that article you linked. Very interesting on the delay measurements. The rest of the article was also interesting, but frustrating in that he programmed the for “typical loss” and did not re-do his testing with a “flat response” profile. That would have been much more interesting IMHO in terms of frequency response, and the effect of the various settings. This does really make me want to try the Widex however.

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