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Widex Allure

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Hello everyone, this is my first post so I hope it is helpful. I have had the luxury of demoing a set of Widex Allure’s for the last three weeks. I am a high school music educator (band director) and have been using these in place of my Widex Moments 440.
My initial impression is OMG the quality of sound. I honestly feel I can hear the instruments like I could prior to my mild-moderate hearing loss. The quality of “pure sound” is truly emotional and greatly improved my teaching. Streaming: great! Speech in noisy environments: great! Wind noise reduction: great! Ability to hear behind me(I know, weird): great! I’ve always been a Widex person and these are by far the best I’ve used.

However, I do have one very big concern. Again, band director, not an audiologist, but there is a very weird warble to the sound when pure sound is switching programs. Another descriptor would be a wave sound from out of tune to in tune. This warble last about 3-4 seconds each time, from my perspective, programs are being switched in pure sound. Has anybody else experienced this? A fix?

My audiologist is incredible and I’m very thankful for the opportunity to demo these. My concern, it appears Widex is aware of this flaw. When I reached out to customer service, they communicated with my audiologist to hopefully make a few adjustments to eliminate this.

This forum seems much more educated than me on these matters. Is this something I will just need to live well? As indicated above, the improvement and naturalness of the sound is something I can’t let go of. However, when rehearsing and then speaking to students hundreds of times in a rehearsal and transitioning between programs and the associated sound has become very frustrating.

In summary, these hearing aids are truly the best I’ve ever heard and quite literally bring me to tears when being able to hear like music like I used to. I’ve had no experience with the app as the demo version in the US doesn’t appear to connect.

I’m happy to answer any questions or provide perspective if beneficial.

I sincerely appreciate any guidance you can provide in advance.

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As 2 says, yes, probably an anti-feedback mechanism. You say switching programs in pure sound, do you mean changing from Pure sound to another program? I’m also curious, you say you can hear behind you, do you know if this is in the universal program, or the Pure sound program? It used to be only Universal had this ability but I believe Puresound has been upgraded for this now.

Hi Xonic83, I’m sorry I wasn’t clearer. Yes, I am staying in Pure sound and, as I understand it, because of the new chip, they are able to layer in additional programs that previously didn’t exist. In my mind, for example, that means switching between a music/speech program. Also, the sound behind me is in Pure Sound.

I appreciate what you and WhiteHat have to say about the anti-feedback mechanism. Do you think there’s a workaround for that or a way to disable?

So I saw a review on Youtube recently which mentioned something about the feedback mechanism recalibrating during puresound and the fact it was very annoying. Not sure how accurate this is as it’s not clear to me what feedback protocols are now active in Puresound. There is a way to disable the feedback manager in most hearing aids though and in fact you could do it with the previous generation Moments as that’s how I had mine configured. It may be that for your hearing loss, that would introduce a lot of feedback, but you could at least get your audiologist to try this and see if the warbling goes away. If it does go away but you get feedback, you may need to look into other methods of sealing the ear.

Another thing to do is to try and remove certain programs from the hearing aid to find out exactly which ones are causing the issue, or if it’s a change between programs itself. In short I think it’s going to require a lot of experimentation sorry. These are still so new out. I am trialing a set in a couple of weeks myself and I do like to tinker a lot, plus, I disable any sort of automatic program switching, so I can let you know what I come up with assuming you stil have them and are still having the same issue.

Since Widex is getting quite a bit of attention with the new Allure (and I’m planning to trial it as well), I decided to look into it a bit more and I put together an explainer below.

The short of it is that in PureSound mode, there is no really good way to do effective feedback suppression.

It’s possible that Widex implemented the ‘warble’ when the detects that you are at risk of impending feedback. The intention would be to disrupt any feedback loop. If that’s the case then I can only think of three options:

  • Learn to live with it - it should only happen when in PureSound mode.
  • Ask you audiologist to lower your gain settings so that there is more headroom before you are getting into feedback territory. But then you are not getting the gain you should be getting.
  • Switch to a more occluded fitting, i.e. use instead of open ones, etc. You might not like that option either…
Explainer: Analog vs. Digital vs. Widex PureSound vs. Marketing Fog
Thanks - that’s interesting technology from before I started paying attention to HAs. I did put a question mark in my overview table regarding compression with analog HAs. I suspected that it would be possible to do, but probably not with the same accuracy that today’s HAs can achieve. Analog beamforming is another feature I’m not 100% sure of. It’s clearly possible to do it in the time domain, but can it be done with purely analog technology? It might require at least a CPU for A/D conversion…

I agree with the others. It is most likely the feedback system. Try to ask your audi to configure the feedback system for the puresound program to a less aggressive setting.

Edited

how often is pure sound switching between programs? I could live with a three second warble if it only happened every once in a while.
My Signia AX7s have a dedicated musician program–and yes I’m a classical musician. I had to further tweak that program to eliminate the warble you mention, which was constant when playing my instruments. Mostly it was a matter of turning OFF feedback management in that dedicated program. Of course it remains on for all the others. The pre installed muscian program had that feedback control function dialed down, but not off. not enough!! the warble and other artifacts remained.
Many here have learned to self-program their aids. I know myself and that’s beyond my technical expertise. Another approach is to learn how bex\st to program for musicians and bring that information in to your provider or audiologist, who has the equipment set up before her and can easily make adjustments for you in an office visit.
search “PDF for musicians to bring into audi” on this forum.

Hi Jeffrey, thanks for the feedback. For me, the PureSound switching happens quite frequently in rehearsal. In everyday life, not as much. In rehearsal, I’d say every 30 seconds or so from music to speech.
I didn’t even know that self-programing was an option, I really appreciate you and the others letting me know of the option.
If I can provide any other feedback, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Thanks again.

You know, your latest post makes me wonder if Widex with it’s new beat detector is trying to pick up on the music and switch. You stop the music, it switches. you start it, it thinks ah ha, new beat, and then tries to do something funky with the program switch.

Obviously in a rehearsal there is a lot of starting and stopping. I wonder, you say you can’t use the app in demo mode, but can you force it into a program with the button and see if it stays there during a rehearsal, rather than let it do its own thing?

In reply to @Robsmusings

Hi Rob- based on a recent Widex video posted here, as well as company info, it appears that programming for your new Widex Allures is accessed through the cloud. That may make it inaccessible to those of us who , unlike using Compass GPS to program the Widex Moments etc. So before you consider investing in a Noahlink for programming, maybe wait for feedback as to whether you’ll have to rely on your audiologist to perform adjustments.

Widex has different programs such as ‘Universal’ or ‘PureSound’ which are user-selectable.

Within these programs, the tries to automatically detect individual Sound classes such as ‘speech’ or ‘music’. According to Widex, the transition between sound classes should be seamless, so I doubt it would go along with a warble.
Also, this type of automatic environmental classification is usually a bit slower.

@Robsmusings, maybe try if you can detect any other commonalities when the warble occurs. For example during particularly loud passages, certain instruments, or when you transition from quiet to loud or vice versa. That kind of information will likely help your audiologist.

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