New Widex hearing aids not helping speech understanding

I have a pair of Oticon more 1 and I’ve found the same thing. They help when it’s one on one, but for instance if I’m in the Doctor’s office and the person in front of me at the desk is speaking to me and also there is someone about 2 feet from me speaking to another person at the desk, all the speech gets amplified and overwhelms me. (it especially doesn’t help if they are also wearing masks)
I only have one more emergency visit left with my fitter on the pair. Anyone have suggestions on what I need to ask for or if there is something that I can do to fix this sort of thing
(a setting on the phone app?) when it happens again?
One other beef is that they seem to have feedback when I brush the outside of my ear? Is that normal?

Hearing potential is being very kind and diplomatic. If those are your actual real-ear measures return the hearing aids and go elsewhere.

Went through the same thing.
Told my wife These things are stupid. I hear everything but voices.
Even shelved then for six months.
Took me what seems like forever to finally understand what people were saying.
Had a lot of adjustments.
Everyone is different.
Some people get it after a couple weeks, months etc.
It may take you six months with adjustments before you begin to understand speech.
You have to give yourself time to acclimate to the aids.
Couldn’t get that through my late brother-in-law’s head.
Refused to wear them.
Eventually he would go outside smoke a cigar because he couldn’t participate in the conversation.
Don’t be like that.
Stick with it.
If your not happy with your audiologist find someone else.
Good luck.

I really appreciate everyone’s insights.

I have a follow-up this week. I’ve nailed down at least part of my issue: when I use the devices on the “default” universal and music settings, an extra background sound is added in, like white noise. When I customize the settings via the app, the sound disappears. I know that sounds really odd, and I don’t know what could be causing it.

Threedimen said “…when I use the devices on the “default” universal and music settings, an extra background sound is added in, like white noise…”.
I get the same background sound on my Widex Moment 330 hearing aids in the Universal program setting. It goes away when I use the PureSound program setting.
My conclusion is that the extra background sound is the “noise floor” (see Wikipedia) from the large amount of processing done by the Universal program; the PureSound program does far less processing so the white noise is no longer there.
Just my 02cents

Hearing in crowded situations - ask your audiologist to install the standard Social (it may now be called “Party”) program and trial that out for crowded situations. Social uses the direction capability of the Moment so you will need to point your face at the person/s you want to hear.

How is pumping constant white noise into your ears not considered a massive engineering failure?

Could be, but unlikely at his level of loss and the fact that it’s also in the music program, very little if any processing going on there by default, a flat mild/normal loss across the lower frequencies and its noticeable for some people for sure.

@threedimen said:

How is pumping constant white noise into your ears not considered a massive engineering failure?

But it’s not or shouldn’t be, even if it is “floor noise” it’s only noticeable by some people in a very quiet place, there’s no way your going to hear this in a normal/loud environment, if your hearing this throughout the soundscape it’s something else at play.
If you have the Widex moment app installed then you can check what’s going on, you can for instance check to see if the tinnitus controller is configured and you can also use the equaliser and drop the lower frequencies (Bass) to see if it goes away or at least reduces this white noise your hearing.

For your information a lot of people hear a faint hiss when it’s “floor noise”

I see them tomorrow, so I’ll be sure to ask.

@threedimen said:

when I use the devices on the “default” universal and music settings, an extra background sound is added in, like white noise. When I customize the settings via the app, the sound disappears. I know that sounds really odd, and I don’t know what could be causing it.

I mean, you’re over-amplified pretty substantially at 2kHz and then under-amplified above that. It’s not that surprising that you’re getting some weird noise without clarity. When you customize settings to make it go away, are you turning down the volume in the mids?

@innerharmony said:

I have a pair of Oticon more 1 and I’ve found the same thing.

I use the “speech in noise” setting. It’s my program 2. It helps me with “speech in noise”. If you don’t have it on your app settings, you may want to ask your provider to add it.

hi i have hearing aids phonak for
a mild loss …
I am fine …
courage

@threedimen said:

I am going to the audiology department of one of the best health care systems in the area. If I can’t get someone there who knows how to adjust them, where in the world would I go?

Yeah, that’s hard, I’m sorry.

Let them know at your follow-up that you don’t feel like they are helping you and you cannot in good conscience KEEP them given that at this point they are not helping you and bring up your concerns about the trial period. They will probably recommend either extending the trial period or swapping them for something else.

I think I’ve decided in my plan. I have a follow-up now. If they can’t fix the white noise I’m going to return them. I’m also going to post my new audiogram (hopefully I’ll get one,) and if you all think it still looks problematic I’ll return them.

I’m done with my follow-up. The audiologist said she thought the white noise was floor noise, and the reason it went away when I changed the setting is that changing the settings dropped the gain. They were originally set at 90%, so she moved them up to 100%. She thinks my hearing loss is so mild that they have to be turned up to get any benefit, so the floor noise us inevitable.

She did switch it to Pure Sound, but didn’t recommend that because it wouldn’t help in noisy rooms.

She said I could return them and order a pair of Oticons, but music wouldn’t sound as good.

Welp.