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Oticon vs. Widex (2026) for musicians?

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First, I understand that there is no "right" answer regarding brand for an individual.

My background: I have been wearing Oticon hearing aids for the past several years (currently have Oticon More 1 ). I am a high woodwinds player (flute, piccolo, clarinet). I use a combo of audiologist support & collaboration (mostly for speech and speech in noise) along with home for my music performance setting with great success. I have an atypical (congenital) hearing issue with loss primarily in the lower frequencies, so most any "standard" setting is a "fail" for me. I am satisfied with my More 1's for music performance, but the Bluetooth connection is failing in everyday life, I would enjoy greater clarity in the speech setting, and overall it's time to upgrade to newer technology (my Oticon More 1's are now completely out of warranty options).

My questions: is Widex considered superior to Oticon for performing musicians (some discussion threads seem to imply this), and if so, why? If I currently have a satisfactory music performance setting, would I be better off sticking with Oticon and not risking that Widex technology would be less satisfactory for me? Am I correct to assume that in a satisfactory (for me) music setting, human speech clarity (conductor, section mates) is just not going to be all that good regardless of brand? Is there any other information I should be considering? Is the Widex software as accessible as the Oticon software?

Thanks in advance for your input!!

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Skipping to the end a bit, but the most current Widex platform is only programmable on a cloud-based software that as of now is only available to Widex accounts. If self-programming is something you have to have, then going back a generation in Widex (Moment platform, programmable with standalone software) would be the way to go. Is the Moment platform still great? Yes. However, I would not necessarily approach Widex the same as I would Oticon.

With a loss like yours, if I wanted to use Widex I would pretty much insist on earmolds, whereas one might be able to get away with domes more easily with Oticon. This is primarily a feedback issue. Although one could get away with domes more easily with Oticon, I would still recommend custom earmolds.

If you self-program, you probably have appreciated how many frequency bands you have access to with Oticon, particularly level 1s. Although Widex offers enough bands to be helpful (15 at their premium level), on its face you may feel limited compared to Oticon (24).

That you've been successful with a music program with Oticon is huge. This along with your preference for self-programming points away from Widex, at least for their current platform as of today.

Edited

Many of your questions have been answered elsewhere on the forums, so I'm going to limit my response to short points.

  1. Widex is preferred by musicians because it; a) has the highest sampling rate in the industry so can faithfully reproduce sound with more accuracy; b) has the fastest processing in the industry so can accurately reproduce the timing information in musical compositions, and; c) has the most natural sound processing (least enhancement of sound) in general.
  2. The software for Widex Allure and standard Allure products is cloud-based and cannot be accessed by non-professionals. You need to go back to the older moment products to have ability to self-program.

You should try Widex as part of your journey, but if you don't have a strong preference for it not everyone does. Some users prefer more "enhanced" signal processing.

As a fellow Oticonian DIYer, I think if you've achieved a satisfactory outcome with your More 1 music program, it would seem logical to export your settings to the new Oticon Reveal platform. I'm still wearing the Intent 1, and am not a practicing musician, just a music lover who attends a lot of live concerts, and a has decent home music environment.

I've also created a custom music program because the MyMusic one is awful.

Regarding bluetooth, the Intent, and the new Reveal both feature / which is a giant leap forward from the More's / Bluetooth. The key to great Bluetooth on the new Oticon platforms, is a Samsung or Pixel phone which is LEA compatible with them. Apple hasn't implemented LEA, and there's no indication as to if/when they might.

Flash, for the rest of us live music fans. Can you share what you did in your special music program that is different and better than the Oticon Intent Music program? I'd appreciate it.

Audiologists who specialize in Widex do seem to have greater appreciation and training in the specific needs of musicians. However, I believe that musicians need to self-tune, , so one cancels out the other. I am a piano player and have tried Widex a few times but prefer Phonak.

I've had the Widex Moment 440 for about a year and a half. I had a competent audiologist try to adjust these for me but still they just do not sound natural. I recently had an outer ear infection causing me to not wear my hearing aids for about 10 days. I have found that I actually prefer slightly diminished natural hearing as opposed to enhanced and processed hearing aids. I need to hear what's real even if there's less volume. I wish there was a way to provide a linear audio signal with zero processing that would pass at least 75 Hz to 10 kHz. I'm not concerned with speech processing, noise processing, none of that. I would just like to have natural hearing professionally amplified through a receiver that can pass these audio specs. Has anybody else had a similar experience? Does this make sense to anybody but me?

In reply to @Lour

@Lour said:

Flash, for the rest of us live music fans. Can you share what you did in your special music program that is different and better than the Oticon Intent Music program? I'd appreciate it.

I used @e1405 settings as a guide, but didn't go into the detail they did, since I'm not a musician.

But briefly, I used the General program set to v5 adult to start with, based on my regular General program. I disabled all the speech enhancement features in the More Sound Intelligence fitting screen, but set Virtual outer ear for Aware, and the In the Directionality menu I set the acoustics to Pinna Omni, which gives natural all around sound.

In the Automatics section, I disabled all the settings, but tinkered with Feedback manager, to eliminate warble, which worked for me on Low setting, you may wish to set it to Off.

Wearing my Over Ear headphones with my Intents in my ears, I played some music I was familiar with, and just touched up the gains in the Fitting screen.

It works great for Live, and recorded music, as well as movies, and TV shows.

The Intents do a good job with streaming, too!

For streaming, I went to the final screen Accessories under Phone, etc, and set Power Bass to High. Since the Intents can get down to 80Hz, the bass is noticable! You may need to occlude your ears if not wearing or molds.

The MyMusic program is based on the popular Harman curve, which emphasizes bass & treble, but really compresses mids. I find it unusable.

Hope that helps.

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