More "hi-fi feeling"

Before the discussion began, I wrote down the following comments, focusing on the technical part:
I became interested in music in the mid-1950s. Back then we only had access to AM radio and 78 rpm records. So I’ve experienced the transition to FM radio and EPs and LPs. And later CDs. I have also been plagued by bad compressions of music to data files.
20 months ago I discovered that something was wrong with my hearing. Went to the nearest audiologist, who turned out to be owned by Oticon in Denmark. They only sell Oticon products. I was offered a few HAs and chose the most expensive one. Would have better sound quality than the others. Later I discovered it was called More 1. I also discovered there was an adapter for TV, the Oticon TV Adapter 3.0.
When I connected the HA with the TV adapter, a TV program with a symphony orchestra was broadcast, I experienced a sound quality that I have not experienced since I was young and listened through high quality headphones. It’s better sound than regular stereo. Imagine being able to hear the tambourine again! If the TV broadcasts with 5.1, you experience a fantastic four-channel quality. I am impressed by how such a small device can reproduce such fine sound.
Note that you have to test to get domes that suit your own taste.

How has Oticon managed to achieve such good sound quality?
My guess is that the explanation is due to the fact that the audio is not converted to analog until it reaches the HA. The sound comes digitally to the TV. The Oticon TV adapter is connected to the TV with a “digital link”. Between TV adapter and HA, Oticon uses its own protocol, they call BLE, on Bluetooth Classic.
One function I like is that you can adjust the hearing curve from the Oticon ON app. Especially useful at the beginning, as the ear is not used to the high treble.

When, after a few days, I was spoiled by the fantastic sound from the TV adapter, I bought an adapter for the computer. Oticon calls it ConnectClip, can be used for various purposes. I use it exclusively to transfer music from the computer to the HA. On the computer I have the disc archive and access to the internet. My source on the internet is ClassicalRadio and its sister stations. They maintain really good sound quality.

Once I discovered the benefits of streaming music via ConnectClip, the next step was to get a mobile phone with ASHA. I think that feature came to the iPhone several years ago. For Android, it came to Sweden in 2022 with Samsung. ASHA uses BLE. This means you can stream music digitally with the apps on ClassicalRadio.com1, directly to HA.

The description above is about Oticons More 1. I have no experience with other manufacturers’ devices. Since I bought a new mobile, Samsung S23, I have been listening to the apps on the mobile, and only used ConnectClip when I watch TV on the computer.

I think the excellent sound quality is due to having a completely digital transfer from the source all the way to the HA, where the sound is converted to analog. Distortion in the speakers is avoided. I have never before heard a grand piano as free from distosion as now in my HAs. So I don’t believe at all that you can get real HiFi through the microphone in the HA.

@Xomomo

Thanks for posting. I learned a lot, and appreciate it.

DaveL

@Xomomo said:

I think the excellent sound quality is due to having a completely digital transfer from the source all the way to the HA, where the sound is converted to analog. Distortion in the speakers is avoided. I have never before heard a grand piano as free from distosion as now in my HAs. So I don’t believe at all that you can get real HiFi through the microphone in the HA.

What you’re talking about here is about the sound delivery mechanism. It’s pretty obvious without any debate that a direct delivery mechanism via streaming is ALWAYS more superior compared to an indirect delivery mechanism, in which the content is played via an amplifier through speakers, then the sound gets moved through the air, gets picked up via a hearing aid’s mics, then gets processed by the hearing aids and amplified and reproduced by the hearing aid’s receiver, which is like through at least 6 different delivery mediums.

But I think that the debate here is not about direct delivery vs indirect delivery in the first place. The entire discussion here has already started out and evolves around “streaming” as the basis for the delivery mechanism. The debate is not which delivery mechanism is better. The debate is that why even with the streaming direct delivery mechanism (which is supposed to be the superior mode), the hearing aids still produce non-hifi quality sounds (per the OP)?

My contention is that it’s because the hearing aid’s receiver has a physical limitation in size that does not allow it to reproduce very low frequency sounds (below 125 Hz) very well.

The OP’s contention is that it’s not because of the size limitation, but it’s because of the crapping processing by the hearing aid with sole focus on speech clarity at the expense of hifi musical sound quality. Many folks chimed in to suggest that the OP tries out the built-in Music program of his Phonak Lumity to change from the speech-focused to the musically-focused processing.

I’d like to hear back from the OP after he tries the Phonak Lumity’s built-in Music program to see if he thinks it delivers enough of the hifi quality sounds that he’s looking for while streaming.

@Volusiano said:

But I think that the debate here is not about direct delivery vs indirect delivery in the first place. The entire discussion here has already started out and evolves around “streaming” as the basis for the delivery mechanism. The debate is not which delivery mechanism is better. The debate is that why even with the streaming direct delivery mechanism (which is supposed to be the superior mode), the hearing aids still produce non-hifi quality sounds (per the OP)?

I agree that the discussion has come to be about how low frequencies work with HA. As I write above, I wrote the text yesterday, before the discussion started. I focused on the words “hi-fi feeling”.
My experience with More 1 and TV Adapter 3.0 is that it has a fantastically good sound quality. I feel it is better than old Hi-Fi.
When the TV provider broadcasts with 5.1 sound, I feel like I’m sitting in the middle of the concert hall. And I can hear the bass section clearly and distinctly.

@user715 said:

Is there a brand that offers a more hi-fi feeling?
For streaming, no. (Other than models’ distortion specifications.) Despite that HAs can produce better clarity, the streaming 16KHz resampling rate is a hard limit. For live performance/in-air playback/over-the-ear headphones, yes. The standard in-HA digital to analog conversion sampling rate is, understandably, 20-24KHz for speech. There are better specs for sampling resolution and processing lag varies between brands/models

The Widex Moment models use a 32KHz sampling rate and that does make a noticeable difference for listening in-air and over-the-ear headphones. However, unlike your Phonak’s using BluetoothClassic, Moments use BluetoothLE (not the same as LE Audio capability) which is more limiting for connecting to phones, TV, receivers, etc.

I hope all that helps clarify what your experiencing. It’s probably not what you wanted to hear.

Wow, that was an absolutely fantastic clarification and so central to what I was trying to describe.
This is exactly what I experience and what I mean when I wrote that the sound sounds broken, no wonder I was frustrated with the soundstage.
I know that the music services, such as Spotify, do not deliver linear sound and that bluetooth has limitations, but that the hearing aid itself also compresses the sample rate so hard… I didn’t know that and that explains everything.
The thing is that I may be a bit sensitive to bad sound and, for example, can’t cope with using bluetooth headphones in Teams, of course the cord is a pain, but I’d rather have a cord than it sounds bad.

Nah, you’re right and that’s not what I wanted to hear and I’m wondering what makes the hearing aid companies use such a low sample rate, is it technical limitations?

Wow, this thread went somewhere else fast! Into Stig Helmer territory, and ironically, over Oticons.

@user920 said:

what makes the hearing aid companies use such a low sample rate, is it technical limitations?

It’s likely a lot of factors that reduce down to… only do what’s necessary for speech and do it with as little power as possible. Ultimately, it’s a life changing approach as all the Oticon, Phonak, and Widex HA’s I’ve tried made fully understanding speech all day possible again.

Having an experienced ear for music can be demanding on HAs, particularly with the 8KHz low-pass effect. I’ve learned to stream as a convenience, like in-ear muzak. For concerts, speakers, or headphones, I just leave my Moments in.

Hi, I agree with you.
Taking the step and starting to use a hearing aid is something I really don’t regret. It has given me insights and knowledge in addition to making it easier to hear what people are saying to me.
Life changing as you say.

I am now curious about Widex, do you think I will be satisfied?

@user920 said:

Nah, you’re right and that’s not what I wanted to hear and I’m wondering what makes the hearing aid companies use such a low sample rate, is it technical limitations?

I know that this question is directed at @user715, but because this is a forum to share opinion, I’ll offer my personal take on this question as well.

The normal hearing folks who are (or claim to be) hifi aficionados care about a high enough sampling rate (usually at 44 KHz) because their normal hearing can hear up to 20 KHz, so a high enough sampling rate is needed so that the sound reproduction can go up to this high a frequency faithfully.

For people with hearing loss like most of the folks on this forum, really the best they can hear up to is usually around 8 to 10 KHz at most. That is why there’s no need to have a high enough sampling rate to deliver up to 20 KHz sound reproduction for hearing aids, because that would be overkill in the first place because hearing challenged people usually can’t hear up that high above 8-10 KHz anyway. It’s not really because of technical limitations per se, except maybe again due to the physical limitation of the receiver size, although I think the physical size limitation of HA receivers is probably more limited toward lower frequency reproduction than high frequency limitation.

So when hearing challenged people like us on this forum complain about the lack of hi fidelity sound reproduction, they’re mostly not really complaining about how the hearing aid sampling rate is not high enough such that they cannot get the kind of fidelity they want to hear beyond 8-10 KHz, because they can’t hear higher than that anyway due to their hearing losses. The hi fidelity complaint is more or less mostly about the inability of the hearing aids to faithfully reproduce the low frequency end of the spectrum instead. After all, MANY people with hearing losses have normal or near normal low frequency hearing. Most of them just have hearing losses at either the mid or the high (or both) frequency range. Of course there are always exception to the norm, but at least that’s the norm → a ski slope loss with (near) normal low frequency hearing and worsening moderate hearing loss starting in the mid range and probably most likely moderate to severe or even profound hearing losses in the high frequency range.

So placing emphasis on why the HA industry doesn’t try to have a high enough sampling rate to reproduce sounds above 8-10 KHz would be a misguided focus. There’s a reason why they don’t do it.
It’s not because they can’t, but it’s because they simply (and correctly) don’t deem it necessary to go to a high enough sampling rate.

So while the Widex’s 32 KHz sampling rate may make a noticeable difference for folks like you who still actually have pretty good high frequency hearing at 8 KHz due to your cookie-bite type hearing loss, the Widex 32 KHz sampling rate doesn’t do squat for (many, many) folks like me who have ski slope hearing loss with severe to profound hearing losses at around 4 KHz and up. And there are much, much more folks with the ski-slope type hearing losses compared to folks with cookie bite or reverse ski-slope hearing losses who have only moderate loss or even normal hearing at the high ends.

@user920 said:

I am now curious about Widex, do you think I will be satisfied?

I don’t think that’s something anyone can answer until you try them. I started with Phonak and liked them very much for their signature laid back neutral sound, low distortion, and incredible ability with speech-in-noise situation. Even listening to hi-fi sounded hi-fi again, mostly. When I strummed an acoustic guitar was the first time I noticed something was still missing. I had to switch audiologist to try Widex, but with Moments the harmonics were back when strumming same a guitar. Sound with speakers and headphones had sparkle back.

Those were my experiences, with my ears, so it’s only an anecdote.

I actually don’t think it’s a good analogy at all because with eye glasses, you can in theory restore the vision to 20/20 and the ability to see the high resolution details, as long as you have a correct prescription, no matter how strong it is. In the case of the eyes, as long as they’re healthy but are simply out of focus, and the lens correction could bring back the focal point right on to the retina to restore the sharpness, then the person can have their focus restored 100% again and enjoy the higher resolution of the images.

In the case of the eye, the optical nerves at the retina are not really dead/gone/lost, they’re still there. It’s just that the cornea and lens are not perfect enough to bend the light and put the focus right on the retina, that’s all. But for hearing loss, on the other hand, if you have profound hearing loss beyond 8-10 Khz, the sensorineural hearing nerves are already dead, all gone for good. No matter how much you amplify those high frequency sounds, there are no nerves left that are sensitive to those frequencies to be present to pick them up. Only the nerves sensitive to the lower and mid and slightly high frequencies are left to pick up those lower vibrations.

The more appropriate analogy the other way around in my opinion is that nerve deafness/loss in the very high frequencies is more like vision blindness/loss, not simply just out-of-focus vision. If there’s no vision to be had, higher optical resolution is meaningless in the first place. Just like if there’s no sensorineural hearing nerve for 10-20 KHz to be had, then 10-20 KHz sound cannot be heard in the first place.

If your argument is not the above, but simply that the higher sampling rate at 44 KHz makes the clarity of the sounds below 10 KHz more accurate, then I don’t buy it either. If that’s the case, then why stop at 44 KHz sampling rate for normal hearing people who can hear up to 20 KHz? Why not do 400 KHz sampling rate to help make the clarity of the sounds at 20 KHz more accurate?

Here’s another way to look at it as well → if my vision is limited such that I can’t see anything smaller than a 10"x10" square black dot, replacing that 10"x10" square black dot with 100 of the 1"x1" square black dots isn’t going to make it any prettier or more accurate for me. 100 of the 1"x1" square black dots bunched together still look exactly the same as the 10"x10" black dot to me, because that’s all I can see.

It’s not about the clarity as much as it is about the ability (or inability) to see (or hear) that clarity.

@Volusiano said:

complaining that the streaming quality of music through their hearing aids is tinny and lacking in the low frequency

This reminds me of what I thought the first few days after receiving my More 1. The really bad sound when listening to music. I guess Oticon has focused on speech.
I purchased three other domes to test with my music.

• Open Bass, it was good.
• Double Vent, it was better.
• Power, it was the best. In my 30 minute test. It is worth a try.

I agree that the bass notes are weak, but it doesn’t bother me when I listen to a symphony orchestra. The bass violins in the string section sound good. However, with music played by a small jazz group, I have noticed that I like to put my fingers in my ears to strengthen the bass notes. But this is a weakness I can live with.

Yes, the more you plug up any of the venting or leakage in the fitting, regardless of dome or molds, the more it helps to contain the (already pretty weak) bass sounds from leaking out. Of course, if you choose a long term plug up solution for this, the trade-off is occlusion. But a simpler short term solution is to simply take a couple of soft ear plugs and plug up your ear canal opening when streaming if you want a more enhanced bass experience only temporarily while streaming music.

And when we say “bass” experience, it’s actually a pretty wide ranging span of low frequencies, and the HA receiver can actually amplify down to as low as 125 Hz, which covers a fairly good part of the bass spectrum already, just not all of it, especially the punchy, thumping type of bass. So that’s why for many people, the HA’s range is good enough, especially for like orchestral music. It’s mostly on jazz or rock or maybe even pop music that the very low bass sounds are noticeably missing more on the hearing aids.

Citation needed for this gem: “if you have profound hearing loss beyond 8-10 Khz, the sensorineural hearing nerves are already dead,”