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Phonak vs Starkey for music

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My current provider only offers Phonak or Starkey. I’m trialling Phonak Audéo Sphere and they are fine except when I’m playing the organ. In that case, quieter, purer tones (e.g. flute stops) are definitely annoyingly distorted. I’ve talked to audiologist who says they have turned off everything they can but they don’t appear to be able to disable all the sound processing. They commented that quite a few customers prefer Starkey for music.
I wondered if anyone here had any comments on that?
Thanks

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Edited

Does this audiologist have experience setiing aids for musicians?

“few customers prefer starkey for music”. What does that mean? : Streaming music? Listening to music? Singing or playing an instrument? Did he/she gave an explanation why Starkey works better for music?

The standard audiologist is trained to tune the for speech, not music. It’s not like the HA will magically be better if the programming is the same. For example, some fitting formulas usualy do not increase the gains significantly >6Khz because it is not critical for speech. (An audiologist told me once: Why do you want more gain @ 8Khz?, there is nothing there).

The only way you will find out if the Starkey is better is to try them: Sound preference is very personal. Also check Widex: They target their HAs to musicians and I (I am not sure) expect a Widex audiologist to be trained in this area.

My Phonak infinio has a Music Program that was added by the audiologist, have you tried that?

Pardon my typos, I’m typing from my mobile device.

Are you using a dedicated Music program, or just the Autosense? It is not possible to turn off all the speech sound processing within Autosense, but you can get more control within a dedicated Music program. I have never used Starkey, but I like the Music program in my Phonak Naida Paradise P90-UP better than my old Widex Dream Power.

In reply to @Hildegard

Yes - tried the music program. Helps and is quite good on music with a high harmonic content but makes little difference on softer, purer tones. The audiologist has turned off all the processing that they have access to in the music setting but there is obviously some other processing still going on.
Thanks

Your hearing in the lower frequencies is quite good, so I am guessing that you have some sort of open fitting. I have no idea why this might be the case, but it could be that you perceive the processing delay more with the flute stops (those have suppressed even harmonics or something like that?). Widex does supposedly the shortest delay, so it could be the solution.
Marshall Chasin in Toronto is the expert on these matters, though I do not have firsthand knowledge of his work.

Many thanks - As you say, it’s so subjective. At the moment I’m tempted not to worry about it as my hearing isn’t to bad anyway so I can just take the aids out when I play.

I have owned several pair of Starkeys (including my current ones) as well as several other brands. I find that Starkey works very well for music and even just anything that has a tone. So think alarm panel, automobile sounds and other machines that emit sounds for user feedback. And this is with or without noise reduction.

I’m going to guess your audiologist fitted you using the NAL NL2 algorithm. I have found that Phonak’s proprietary algorithm called Adaptive Phonak Digital gives me the most natural sound for speech, TV audio and bluetooth music streaming. I don’t play an instrument, so can’t help you there.

I’ve tried v5.0; NAL NL2 but feel Adaptive Phonak Digital sounds the best to me.

Everyone responds differently but it might be worth a try.

In reply to @sclg

Did you have SoundRecover2 turned on? It is in default, but it does frequency compression, which you may hear as a distortion of the high frequencies.

Another cause may be your low feedback threshold due to your possibly open acoustic couplings (e.g. open domes) then kicks in frequently causing slight distortion of the high-frequencies due to fighting with the feedback.

So, go to your and ask him aboud SoundRecover2 turning off and consider more closed coupling (? vented domes? it’s a bit a trial and error and after each change of kind of domes you may need new adjustments).

This is the basics of fitting.

I play violin and evaluated the newest versions of Phonak, Oticon, ReSound, Widex, and Starkey. The loud volume and close proximity of the violin to the ear overwhelms ’s in general and the sound is distorted, but of these, the Starkey were the only ones that were tolerable and that was after the audiologist turned off nearly every feature.

@Yosh said:

The loud volume and close proximity of the violin to the ear overwhelms HA’s in general and the sound is distorted

Which receiver did you have? It sounds like you had too weak a receiver with too low , and it was oversaturated. The solution is simple: change to more powerful receivers.

If you have too weak receivers, you may encountered, for example, peak clipping phenomenon.

I don’t know what receivers I had. I only know I had two different audiologists try what they could to make them work.

In reply to @Yosh

@Yosh said:

the Starkey AI were the only ones that were tolerable and that was after the audiologist turned off nearly every feature.

Did you take your violin to the appointment so as to test them?
Any audi worth their salt would create a custom music program for your use case, and have a successful outcome.
All speech enhancing features need to be turned off for your music program,so the aids are only providing your prescritive correction, and fitting tweaking can be performed if any frequencies, or other problems need correcting.
As a musician, you should peruse the search function for more info on music, and do a web search of hearing aids and music.
Don’t rule out , as the best way to achieve your goal.

Edited

I agree with your last statement. The truth is, in my experience, the audiologists I’ve seen have no clue about music. They have told me explicitely that the aids are for speech.

Example: I have high frequency loss and, the software fitting formula prescribed the necessary amount for speech but , in my case, that was far from the amount I needed for music. What I did is I changed the gains at high frequencies and did until everything was at 20db in the audiogram. It was a very time consuming exercise. I did this with Phonak Target.

When I got my Widex, Widex music section has some awesome options, including a high frequency boost. When I selected those, I was happy to see they matched the results that took me so much time to get on Phonak target. It was so easy to do in Widex Compass.

So, in short, I fully agree with you … is the best way to achieve the goal… just be prepared to spend time doing it. It is more than selecting and de-selecting features.

Below: My tuning for speech (first fit) and my tuned music chart

Screenshot 2025-08-08 at 11.00.32 PM
Screenshot 2025-08-08 at 10.59.57 PM

@OcramSagev said:

Below: My tuning for speech (first fit) and my tuned music chart

Screenshot 2025-08-08 at 11.00.32 PM

Screenshot 2025-08-08 at 10.59.57 PM

Interesting, I would say the second is for speech (with much more gains in 4-8 kHz range) and the first is for music to avoid “tinny sound” perception in music.

You have ? And it’s , at least in the first graph?

Edited

The opposite, 2nd one for music.
Oticon OpenBass domes - The behave exactly like closed/vented domes/sleeves for me (the feedback curves are almost identical)
Widex formula on both (the music one has the high frequency boost setting), the speech one does not have that option enabled.
I use the high frequency boost setting for speech, but I did not post a picture of that one.
These ones only have a manual adjustment @ 4K
No, they do not sound tiny at all :slight_smile:
Below is my Phonak modified one which I had to do manually. I use this for both speech and music.Look at the jump >= 6K

tempImageXG8mXk

Edited

This is NAL-NA2 but the adjustments I did are based on 5 – you are correct
The issue I had with DSL5: Past 8K, the curve kept increasing to 10K and I was starting to get feedback at that frequency and I could not adjust it because the I30 doesn’t have many bands for adjusting. So I took NAL-NA2 and, after a manual adjust, gave me a flatter curve at 8K
What I was trying to show is the big difference between the recommended target and what I did >= 6K
Fun, isn’t it

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