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"HiFi Music" program on Philips Hearlink 9040

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My audiologist at Costco recently loaned me a pair of Philips 9040 aids while my Jabras get their receivers and molds replaced. When I got a chance at home, I installed the app and streamed some music. The sound was as I expected from my previous experiences with streaming to hearing aids- thin and trebly. I idly swiped through the programs he’d set up. When I got to the “HiFi Music” program, something unexpected and very nice happened.

The character of the sound changed dramatically. Suddenly there was bass. Real bass. There was warmth and depth to the mids and the highs became much less jarring because there was overall balance to the sound.

I wasn’t expecting this at all. I’d believed that program was just for listening to music from an external source. Not so. In the couple of days since, I’ve been listening to music a lot- for the first time in a long time- and enjoying it. It’s been a bit like finding the holy grail by accident.

I searched the forums. There was a post from @Volusiano that mentioned this possibility. Otherwise, it seems to have flown under the radar. Now, my hearing is badly damaged. I’m a borderline candidate. Any pretensions I might have had to audiophile status have long since flown out the window. I’m pretty sure I’m not getting the subtleties that audiophiles value. Still… it’s nice to be able to enjoy music at some level again.

Unfortunately, they’re loaners.

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I have also noticed that putting them into hifi mode while streaming greatly improves sound quality. I am still going through my music collection and hearing nuance that I have been missing for years, I was an audiophile, producer and dj, music was my life. To be able to hear music this way again honestly sometimes brings a tear to my eye, right now I’m having a beer and listening to some old favs through my old studio monitors and it’s just amazing. So yeah hifi mode is good.

The HiFi music program from the Philips 9040 should basically be the same as the MyMusic program from the Oticon aids that started appear on the More. Oticon thought that it was a great hit because the respondents they surveyed were mostly positive about it. Oticon even wrote a whitepaper to explain the technical details of how they arrive at this “achievement”. It’s generally uses the Harman targets as reference curves to form a list of design principles that the MyMusic characteristics are based on.

Anyway, although it seems like Oticon got validated results from their group of surveyed respondents, the reactions from member of this forum, specifically those who are musically inclined, like professional and amateur musicians alike, have not been as positive. But musicians tend to have very discerning ears and are very particular about preserving the integrity of the music that they’ve used to hearing. I think the added colorations used by MyMusic based on the Harman targets might not have dwelled well with some folks. However, for many if not most other folks, and I think with music listening in general, it seems like the MyMusic program (aka Philips HiFi Music program) is a hit. So much so that Oticon decided to discontinue the legacy built-in Music program permanently and replaced it totally with MyMusic. I think it would have been a better decision to make both the legacy built-in Music program and the MyMusic program available and let the user choose which one they prefer.

@d_Wooluf said:

I could only stand the shrillness for so long.

You can also use the app eq to tone down the highs.
If they work like the Oticon, the fitting software should also have a setting for cutting the shrillness down when in the music program, or it can be enabled for all programs, as well.

@flashb1024 said:

You can also use the app eq to tone down the highs.

Not sure that the eq can tone down the highs but still retain intelligibility? It’s only a 3 band equaliser. This is a loaner so the audi didn’t do much apart from a quick first fit. But, really. The HiFi music program works amazingly well for me. I couldn’t come anywhere near the naturalness of the sound with equalisation.

One issue is that the streaming equalisation applies to all programs equally. So, the settings that make streaming sound ok-ish in most programs make it sound really bassy and muddy in the HiFi music program. It’s bad design. You want the settings to be saved on a per-program basis. Unless you’re happy to constantly fiddle with eq settings when you change programs, you can either zone out in isolation with great sound in Hifi Music or interact with the world and put up with poor quality sound when you stream.

@d_Wooluf said:

It’s bad design. You want the settings to be saved on a per-program basis. Unless you’re happy to constantly fiddle with eq settings when you change programs

I agree 100%!
Glad you’re enjoying the hifi music program.

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