Widex Passion

i looks good, I wonder about the Zen program if it really works
I was surprise they still insist on the audibility extender, as it has not
been favourly reviewed.

I think it looks ok…but that is what Ipods are for.

Some one refered to it as elevator music

@Laura2008 said:

I finally received my Widex Passion today. First impression? The whistling drives me nuts. I tuck my hair behind my ear and every time my hand comes close to the aid, there is a terrible whistling sound. Is that normal? Can the HIS adjust that??

Apart from that, when it comes to comfort, it’s awesome. IMPOSSIBLe to tell it’s there! However, my ear canal is so tiny that even the smallest dome can barely go in.

And I can HEAR!! All kinds of sounds!!!

Hi Laura-My name is Barbara. I got my “Passions” two weeks ago. I have been back twice already for adjustments.I, too have a very small ear canal and have had very frustrating mornings trying to get them in;and stay in! I now have shorter wires and fatter openings.Everything sounded good in the office but at home voices sound really loud,(as do all noises), is this just something I have to adjust to? My hearing is good in the high ranges and poor in the low ranges.Both ears.I have only two weeks left to decide.HELP ANYONE!

Two months and I love them. Paid $4000 in NYC. Changing the “wax catchers” more often than the batteries

Okay, here is my review of the Passion PA-110 (sorry…it’s long)

Specs

• 10 Channels
• 10 kHz Bandwidth
• 2 available programs
• Adaptive directional mic system
• Volume control via remote only
• Program change via remote only

Personal Configuration

• Open ear-tip
• Monaural fitting (one ear only)
• No remote (so volume control or program change not available)
• Reverse slope

Discreteness

• Invisible from the front
• Mostly invisible from the side (would need to look very close to see the tiny wire leading into the canal (often obscured by hair).
• Somewhat invisible from the rear and 5- and 7-o’clock position (i.e. behind and to the right or left), depending on hair length and ear shape.
• This device is extremely small; pictures don’t do it justice, you need to see it in person
• Claims to be the smallest receiver-in-canal style on the market.
• My “significant other” hasn’t even noticed I’ve been wearing it yet!

Physical Comfort

• I don’t feel the BTE sitting on my ear at all since it is so small and light.
• Took several attempts to get the correct ear-tip and anchor size. Initially without anchor, the tip worked its way out but with the anchor, it stays in place and is extremely comfortable to wear.

Battery Life

• Rated at 125 hours (which is “best in class” for a device using a size 10 battery)
• I’ve been getting around 110-115 hours (8 x 14hr days)…not quite what the datasheet claims, but that’s still very good and I’m satisfied.

Handling

• Easy to position the main housing behind the ear and insert ear-tip in canal.
• It uses a size 10 battery (the smallest size), so it’s more challenging to replace, but that’s the same with any hearing aid that uses a size 10 battery. If you have fingertip dexterity challenges, then this probably isn’t for you.

Initial tuning (using Widex Sensogram recommended settings)

• The one thing that struck be immediately was that the recommended settings were very good. Widex has a method (called a Sensogram) that measures how the hearing aid is performing while in your ear and makes adjustments accordingly. The first time I got hearing aids (another brand), they sounded fine in the dispenser’s office, but awful out in the “real world”. The Passion was usable and comfortable right from the get-go. Sure, there were a few things that I decided I wanted tweaked after a few weeks and after experiencing different sound environments, but my initial impression was “wow, this sounds great”.

Use in quiet environment

• The Passion performs very well in a quiet environment. Then again, it should.
• Ambient sounds are heard, but not distracting.
• No problems with conversations; understanding people is certainly easier than unaided.
• No “circuit noise” is perceived (unlike my previous hearing aids)

Speech in noisy environment

• Much easier to hear side passenger and rear passengers while driving. Road and car noises are not too distracting. The sound of the indicator is much more noticeable.
• In restaurant, can certainly hear voices much more clearly. An undesirable effect is that I can also hear conversations from other tables and I would have expected the hearing aid to be much more “directional” in this listening scenario (where only the voices directly in front would be heard), but then there is a tradeoff to that as well (e.g. if you are sitting at a round table, or hearing someone beside you). I think this will just take some acclimatization on my part. Bottom line is I prefer hearing the conversations whereas I could barely make out anything when unaided.

Music

• My first impression (with listening to music in the car) was that the Passion was handling it fairly well (wasn’t great, but wasn’t awful either). I heard bits and pieces in songs that I hadn’t heard before.
• The acid test was listening to “The Three Tenors” on my home audio system. The results were not so good. Ditto for listening to a live soprano singer. Once the singer hit the highs, it was very unpleasant.
• The Passion PA-110 model offers two programs: the default “fully automatic” program and one which could be set to a “music program” that switches off noise reduction/speech intensification, sets the directional mics to omnidiretional (i.e. to capture sound from all directions) and changes the feedback cancelling mode to non-adaptive. It also provides a low frequency boost (more bass). Since I don’t have a remote, there’s no point in enabling a music program (since I wouldn’t be able to switch to it). I may get a remote to test the music program to see if it would improve the music experience (although I’m not all that keen on carrying around a remote. An “on-board” program button would be preferred.

Volume

• Since I don’t have a remote, I must rely on the automatic volume control of the device. I have to say that I am very impressed. There has only been one occasion where I felt I could have used more volume.

Own voice

• No complaints here. Yes there was a little bit of adjustment to hearing my amplified voice, but it wasn’t terrible. Note that this is an open, non-occluding aid and I’m only wearing one aid, so it may be different if using closed or custom ear tips.

Loud “impulse” noises

• I haven’t experienced any situations where loud, sudden noises have been startling or perceived to be too loud and uncomfortable.

Wind

• Have been in some very windy situations and the Passion works like a charm.

Feedback/Whistling

• If I cup my hand completely over my ear, there is feedback (which is to be expected).
• In everyday use, I have not experienced feedback even when wearing a hood.

Use with telephone

• On a couple of occasions, when I raised a phone to my ear, there was some initial feedback, but the feedback canceller kicked in and eliminated the feedback right away.
• Have not had any issues using a land-line phone or mobile phone.

Use with TV

• A “TV program” can be added to the Passion that optimizes the settings for TV listening. I believe the lows are reduced and highs emphasized more. Since I don’t have a remote to change programs, I simply adjusted the sound settings on my TV and that seems to work well.

Use with headphones

• “Open-ear” style headphones that sit lightly over your ears work fine (they are the ones that usually have a sponge covering the earpiece).
• Large, “closed-back” headphones that completely enclose your ears create feedback and cannot be used (in my experience).
• “Ear-bud” style headphones would not fit in your canal since the receiver ear-tip is in there… so not usable.

Durability

• Cannot rate this. It seems durable enough, but only time will tell if this device will last 3-4 years and if it can be repaired should it be required.

Modifications I’d like to see

• Onboard program button…but then that would make it larger, which would be undesirable. If they could figure out a way to enable program changes without creating a larger device…that would be awesome.
• Matte black microphone grid instead of shiny platinum. The shiny surface reflects light and may catch someone’s eye. The device is small and invisible, so why have a surface that may attract attention from a certain angle?

Value: Is benefit greater than cost

• With my experience so far, I believe the benefit outweighs the cost of this device. Bottom line is I can certainly hear better than being unaided. Does it improve my life? Yes.
• Of course, ideally the price should be half of what it is…but debating whether dispensers add the full value that they command is another discussion…
• This model was 60% the price of the high-end PA-115 device (that has 15 channels and an extra program). In my opinion, I do not believe that the extra benefit (if any) of the high-end device justifies the significantly higher price. However, I haven’t tried the high-end device, so I cannot say for sure.

Overall Rating

• Very Satisfied. There’s a few things ideally that would be different, but as with any product, there’s tradeoffs. Would I recommend this product to a friend? Yes.

Hope this helps others that may be considering this hearing aid.

@BarbLorraine said:

Hi Laura-My name is Barbara. I got my “Passions” two weeks ago. I have been back twice already for adjustments.I, too have a very small ear canal and have had very frustrating mornings trying to get them in;and stay in! I now have shorter wires and fatter openings.Everything sounded good in the office but at home voices sound really loud,(as do all noises), is this just something I have to adjust to? My hearing is good in the high ranges and poor in the low ranges.Both ears.I have only two weeks left to decide.HELP ANYONE!

Hi Barbara,

You and I have the same type of reverse slope hearing loss. Many audiologists do not program our hearing aids correctly and that is why they don’t work. Typically they add to much gain in the low frequencies to get them to “normal” range, but that doesn’t work well for most of us.

The following link is to an article about our type of hearing loss and how our hearing needs to be corrected. If you wanted you could give it to your audiologist if you are still having problems.

http://www.hearinglosshelp.com/articles/reverseslopelong.htm1

The Widex Passions are working pretty well for me so far.

@world89 said:

I noticed some people writing in with reverse slope hearing loss and it sounds like the passions work for it. Is this so? If so, do you have closed molds or the open ones? I am currently trying them out and I have RS loss too.

Thanks

I have a reverse slope. I use the open ear-tips. Tried the closed ear-tip which was recommended by the audiologist (in order to get the lows up to the target level), but I much prefer open (since I have “normal” hearing in the highs).

Good luck! I hope the audiologist listens. I am off to India tomorrow with my students and will be back on the 24th and check your posts to see if it worked.

Thanks.

That sounds like an interesting trip - what do you teach?

I flew back from India on Friday and slept for almost a solid day:) I teach Asian cultures and religions, but specialize in India.

I had some adjustments to the Widex, and they are working really well now. I am really amazed. I really like these hearing aids, and the programing is so important. I replied to you in another thread that I will find out how they are programed and get back to you about that.

Are yours still causing you a bit of a problem? Are the open fit better?

I really have nothing good to say about anything made by Siemen after trying the Pure700s (I didn’t try the other aids you mentioned), however you should keep in mind that I have a rare type of hearing loss that is reverse slope (I hear high frequencies well and low frequencies badly).

With the Pure700s the sound was unnatural, bad directionality, the blue tooth sent bad quality sound to my hearing aids, I couldn’t understand speech until the volume was unbearably loud…well I guess I would have to admit they were great with speech in noise. But apparently they do not have an extended band width which is necessary for natural sound, which is a bit bizarre because they have something like 17 channels. I think there are much better hearing aids out there. My opinion of Siemenn is that they simply added a bunch of bells and whistles (TEK and bluetooth), without caring about quality, so they could charge a lot of money for them. I just realized I probably sound kind of bitter:rolleyes: , but they were torture for me.

I have Pure 500s and have nothing but good to say about them. I haven’t worn Siemens HAs in the past, but I completely disagree that Siemens simply added “bells and whistles” to increase the price.

For me the sound is natural, my feedback issues were easily eliminated, and I love the Tek.

As I understand the hearing aid fitting process what works for person doesn’t always work for another, so it the Pures worked for you then you are ahead of the game.

As I stated in the past I liked my Dots, but I love the Pures.

I am glad to read that you have had a good experience with the Pures. It is possible that the problem may have been more with my previous audiologist who fitted me with them. Perhaps he did not program them correctly. Or perhaps they just do not work for my type of hearing loss.

I am a first time user of hearing aids. I saw an audiologist who recommended the Widex Passion 105’s. I wore them as a trial for several days and loved the difference they have made. When I went back to see her, I had some little gripes about a few things but nothing major. As a result, she bumped me up to the 110 to see if the additional channels made a difference. They have been great! The only hitch is that the price jump is huge! The price went from $5,500 for the 105 up to $7,700 for the 110’s. This seemed excessive to me and comparing prices found on the internet confirmed my feelings. Does the price increase/difference seem overboard and at what point do you compromise the “small gripes” for a bunch more $$?

Thanks,
cindie