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Widex Dream 440

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I am so disgusted with my new hearing aid “experience” so far.

  1. I had the mute program removed but now my volume control does not work at all despite replacing the battery with a new one. I tried to use the to mute my hearing aids on the metro train when the loudspeaker was excruciatingly loud, but only got an annoying hum and no mute. I did not want to remove my hearing aids on the train so I suffered the unbearably loud noise.

  2. I had a reduced background sound program added but it is terrible. It does not seem to mute anything and sounds even worse than the master program in the noisy restaurant in which I tried it.

  3. I’m still getting chirps in my hearing aids, and I do NOT want them - even though you said to put up with them. The chirp in might right hearing aid happens when I mouse click and other chirps sound off at random occasionally for no reason in either hearing aid. The chirps remain but they are now higher pitched and shorter in length.

If I’m only using one program (the master) because it’s the only one which is satisfactory, I certainly didn’t need five channels in an extremely expensive hearing aid which does not even have its own built-in volume control. :frowning:

I sent an email to my audie to schedule yet another appointment. I’m three months into my hearing aids, and am so upset with all of the problems I’ve had.

chirp chirp :frowning:

P.S. Thanks for listening. No one but other hearing aid users can understand the aggravation and frustration of it all.

I do not know anything about your hearing aids, but either your aids have an issue or the audi is not setting them correctly. I feel sorry for your issues. I do not know if you still have any time on your trail period but the issues you are descripeing you should not have.

— Updated —

I do not know anything about your hearing aids, but either your aids have an issue or the audi is not setting them correctly. I feel sorry for your issues. I do not know if you still have any time on your trail period but the issues you are descripeing you should not have.

I see two options for you at this point. Full custom mold, or get rid of Widex. Or find a new audi, but that may be a challenge to get one to work with you when you didn’t buy the aids from them.

I can’t get rid of Widex as I bought them in July, 2014. I am scheduling another audi appointment. She will consult with the rep and promised to get rid of the chirps. I’ll do whatever my audi suggests next. :frowning:

momof2+dog…I sent you a private message (in two parts) but have no way of knowing if you got it. I cannot get a confirmation on this forum.

I’m trying a brand new set of Widex Dream 440s (my third set) with a different double dome (it’s gray). I’m still getting mouse click chirps. I’m going to ask my older son to bring me some other mouses (mice?) to try with my computer. My audi will fit me with custom molds if the chirps persist. I put off the mold impression because I didn’t want ear wax removal done today. I’ll report back to my audi in a week with my decision. I might have to go with the ear molds, though. What a pain getting used to these new hearing aids! sigh

Ear wax removal?? That sounds odd, I’ve never had to have any specialized stuff done prior to having a mold impression taken…

I will be very curious to see if you do go to full custom molds if it cures your issue. Not only do I have to use full custom for my loss, I also have to plug the vent, as I’m pushing the envelope for my loss with a aid as it is.

@SqueakyChu said:

I’m trying a brand new set of Widex Dream 440s (my third set) with a different double dome (it’s gray). I’m still getting mouse click chirps. I’m going to ask my older son to bring me some other mouses (mice?) to try with my computer. My audi will fit me with custom molds if the chirps persist. I put off the mold impression because I didn’t want ear wax removal done today. I’ll report back to my audi in a week with my decision. I might have to go with the ear molds, though. What a pain getting used to these new hearing aids! sigh

— Updated —

Ear wax removal?? That sounds odd, I’ve never had to have any specialized stuff done prior to having a mold impression taken…

I will be very curious to see if you do go to full custom molds if it cures your issue. Not only do I have to use full custom for my loss, I also have to plug the vent, as I’m pushing the envelope for my loss with a CIC aid as it is.

@SqueakyChu said:

I’m trying a brand new set of Widex Dream 440s (my third set) with a different double dome (it’s gray). I’m still getting mouse click chirps. I’m going to ask my older son to bring me some other mouses (mice?) to try with my computer. My audi will fit me with custom molds if the chirps persist. I put off the mold impression because I didn’t want ear wax removal done today. I’ll report back to my audi in a week with my decision. I might have to go with the ear molds, though. What a pain getting used to these new hearing aids! sigh

I read somewhere that ear wax might cause feedback. I don’t know if that’s true or not.

I’ve determined that it’s not only the mouse that is causing the chirps as I also had right hearing aid chirps tonight while cooking dinner and left hearing aid chirps while out walking in front of my house. If there were any mice there, they were the furry kind! :wink:

So this is my plan:

  1. Ear wax removal
  2. Change my new gray domes for bigger domes
  3. Delete feedback cancelling system from my new program.
  4. Last resort - get custom molds

Finally…some progress. my son bought me a new mouse (JSCO - gaming mouse) which is supposed to be “silent”. It has 95% silence control. It stopped the hearing aid chirping with mouse clicks!!!

My plan is to go ahead with the adjustments noted in the previous post because I still get occasional random chirps in either hearing aid at odd times (doing the laundry upstairs, cooking dinner, sitting in my car with the engine and radio off (I have no idea why this happens!)…but the most annoying chirps (the mouse click ones) seem to be gone. knocks on wood

Update: My last visit with my audi, the rep reset my aids completely…and now I’m listening to music videos on the web! They sound really, really good! I’m listening to acoustic guitar (Dave Mason, Jesse Colin Young) and singers (ABBA, James Taylor). I’m showing my age, but the music finally sounds like music…after 15 years or so! I could just cry.

I still need to get rid of those squeals, but this ability to enjoy music now is amazing! I love it!!! <3

I’m miserable. I got larger domes. The new ones are gray, not clear.

Problems:

  1. All sounds are way too loud, and I was discouraged from using the volume control by the rep who said my brain needed to get used to the loud sounds. I find these loud sounds extremely uncomfortable and terribly unpleasant.
  2. I get that occluded feeling in my left ear whenever I move my jaw (mostly with eating) because the dome changes position. I cannot stand that feeling so I move the dome to a different position, but it always eventually goes back to the occluded position. This does not happen with the right hearing aid dome at all.
  3. Chirps still occur in both hearing aids, less frequently, but still at random places and times.

Next move…custom ear molds. I have an email in to my audi.

Why is it taking seven months to figure out how to fix the problems I’m having with my hearing aids?

sigh

I decided to schedule an appointment for ear molds in January. I will try to get used to the louder sounds, but will use my volume control if they get too uncomfortable. I can’t believe that these louder sounds won’t damage my hearing!!

I will request my music program back. I will also request a reduced background program because I cannot hear audio-books or people speaking on the radio above the amplified road noise. I have always listened to audio-books and don’t want to stop due to road noise.

It seems as if I’m talking to myself on this forum now, but I’d really love to hear from other users of the Widex Dream 440s, both about the good they can do and the problems with them.

I love my improved omnidirectional speech discrimination and music tones. I’ve worked very hard with my audi and the Widex rep to get to this point. It has been totally worth it! Once I get rid of the problems mentioned above, I’ll be so happy!

I’ve passed on all of my experiences, I don’t know what else to say. You WILL have to train your brain to handle the hearing aid. You WILL have to get used to random squeals with this iteration of the Dream 440. If you go back and re-read your posts, you are very up and down - one day loving the , and another hating it. This hearing aid, nor any other, will not give you back “normal hearing”. I recommended full custom molds a long time ago, among other suggestions, which were mostly ignored. Maybe full molds will help you - they will certainly go a long way towards minimizing random feedback. It could even well be that Widex is just plain not for you.

Hello SqueakyChu, I’ve read your post and looks like you’re having a pretty bad time with your Widex aids - Thought I might try and give you some advice, I am an Australian Audiologist and work almost exclusively with Widex so am trying to think of what I would do when presented with you as a patient! Firstly - Custom earmoulds I think would be of GREAT BENEFIT and I cant stress this enough. & if you have the thin tubes then I would make the moulds, (or CEETS as they’re called) with some concha locks so that they’re even more likely to stay in - They are made for your ears, and your ears only so are always going to provide a much better response than a generic dome, and, with a good fit, the chance of chirpy feedback should be minimised- Also, I noticed in your above post that you mentioned wax - If you want your aids to be less likely to whistle and chirp then the less wax the better - wax will bounce sound back out your ears and make the hearing aids want to feedback so also a very important step. In addition, from a clinician perspective I would make sure a full sensogram and feedback test has been run in the widex software and potentially look at reducing the soft sound high pitch gain, which takes less workload off the chip resulting in less feedback. Hope this helps and gives you a few things to talk over with your Audi - as for different voices etc and different situatiuons sounding different… Well to a certain degree that’s just hearing aids - Use your remote and this should help!

Thank you MFAUD.

[[ I am an Australian Audiologist and work almost exclusively with Widex so am trying to think of what I would do when presented with you as a patient!]]

Haha! I’m a difficult, complaining patient, but I do have a lovely audi who is kind and patient. I want to get the best performance I can out of these hearing aids because I spent top dollar on them. I know that I’ll be satisfied in the end. It’s just a long, arduous journey. The technology is there. It’s just fine-tuning it to what I need and want.

I have told my audi that I want custom ear molds and will schedule an appointment for January. She
offered to take me in right away, but I’m too busy during this holiday season. She will take the impressions next visit (unless she finds that I have to have ear wax removed first).

I am actually very happy with my ability to hear and understand speech in all kinds of environments, but I’m certain that my hearing aids can be tweaked to make them work even better for me.

This is what I’ve been doing in the meantime. I’m wearing the small dome in the left ear and the large dome in the right ear. That has stopped the dome migration in the left ear. The sound is tinny (which I hope will be improved with ear molds) so I listen to music by plugging up my ears with my fingers. The music then sounds astoundingly excellent - and I mean excellent to a degree for which I haven’t heard for twenty years! It’s like having earbuds and good hearing.

The chirps are infrequent, but I wiggle around the hearing aids each time I hear a chirp until the feedback stops.

For listening to audio-CDs in the car, I use the volume control to turn the volume way down and turn the volume on the CD player way up. That works for me.

These are all work-arounds until I get my ear molds. I was afraid to get them because I thought they were permanent and I had to keep them even if I didn’t like them. My audi told me that is not true. I can still go back to domes if I want later.

No problems,

Well good luck with your journey and hope your clinician and yourself reach a good outcome - And yes sometimes it can take quite a while, but with a good and patient aud (and sounds like you have one) you should get there! And yep, if moulds don’t work you can always change back to the dome configuration - sometimes you won’t know what will work until you try it!

:slight_smile:

In reply to @RevStaceyG

@RevStaceyG said:

Dear all, thanks for this good discussion.

Quick introduction: I woke up six years ago with sudden hearing loss and it has since gotten worse (I have tried to demonstrate my audiogram below). I had a Widex Mind 440 which I never made friends with (I really had not made friends with the idea that my hearing had disappeared overnight.)

Anyway, fast forward six years, and I need to hear! I have also come to realize how difficult it is to have “mono” hearing. I have been trying a Dream 330 and find the sound tinny and blaring. I have just today told my Aud that I want to trade it in for the 440, which apparently has more channels. So my questions:

  1. Do you think more channels help the hearing sound more natural? I am pretty sure the Mind had 15 channels, and although I was not friends with it, it did sound good.

  2. Can someone simply describe what the Iphone hookup does?

  3. On the Mind, I liked and used “audibility extender” a lot, which I understand brings down some of the frequencies (good for my kind of hearing loss). On the 330 that I have been trying, I find that this feature causes almost an echo after each word, which is not helpful and actually distracting.

Sorry for a discombobulated post, I appreciate whatever info you might offer! Stacey

left ear: perfect!
right ear: 1000 2000 3000 4000 6000 8000
10 55 65 70 70 60

Hi,
Just wanted to say, if you found the sound good on the Widex mind, then you should find the Dream range of hearing aids much better. Widex have the most natural sound of all hearing aids, and if you go up to the 440 model you will have 15 channels as you had before. If you liked the audibility extender, then you can use this with the dream models as well, your audiologist should be able to make alterations to help the echo you have been experiencing. Don’t forget though, hearing aids are as they say “an aid” they are not a cure. Hearing is not just about putting aids into your ears and hearing as you had done previously, a lot is to do with the cognitive retraining, depending on how long you have had a hearing loss, and how accepting you are of the loss, depends on how your brain will accept the changes. Hope this helps a little.

Carol

I’m now a few days into using my ear molds. I think that my hearing acuity for speech was actually better with the double domes. I still hear a few random chirps, but very rarely with the ear molds. What I have noticed is that sounds are excruciatingly loud now. My audie told me to expect that since the receivers now sits deeper and more occluded (although vented) in my ear canals. She said that the loudness is not dangerous to my hearing. I’m trying to get used to these loud sounds, but occasionally I do use my volume control to reduce the sound a notch. It took me such a long time to be finally somewhat satisfied with my double domes that I’m willing to take that same amount of time to get used to the ear molds. If I continue to experience sounds as too loud, my audie said she will turn down the volume.

My question is: Will these very loud sounds start to sound less softer the longer I’m exposed to them? Sometimes when I hear speech in my house, I jump if I’m not aware someone is going to start talking. It sounds that loud and scares me. :frowning:

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